Temple of Heaven

This is Allen standing on the center of the earth according to the Chinese emperor at the Temple of Heaven. We had such a good afternoon. A shuttle came and picked up a group of us to go to the pearl market. We had been given the names of two places that were reputable and I had a great time looking at the pearls and picking some out. The Temple of Heaven is directly across the street from the pearl market but it is like an 8 lane road. But fortunately they had a crossover pedestrian bridge so it was not a big problem except for Jim's walking. We just took it slow and got there just fine. It was a beautiful place-the grounds and the buildings were so vibrant and some ladies were dancing and a group singing on one of the long corridors. At the end of the afternoon, We felt we had gotten to all the things on our list of things to do in Beijing. We took a cab ride back to the hotel and fortunately, we got one of more tame taxi drivers so it didn't scare us to death.

We cleaned up and got ready for the goodbye dinner and it was a delicious western dinner. I had baked red snapper and it was served over rice and asparagus with hollandaise. It was really good. We said our goodbyes to our trip mates who are not going on to Tokyo. It is always hard to say goodbye as we have bonded and shared really good times, stories, books, jokes and feelings. We told our Program Director Steven how much we appreciated all he had done for us as he was just superb. We have depended on him and dread facing Tokyo without him. Hopefully, our new PD there will be a good one. It will be interesting to see how different the culture is. We know the pocketbook will feel the difference as things here are really reasonable.