Beijing Days 1-3

Day 1

We arrived in Beijing, without too much trouble, at 11:00pm. By the time we were in bed after a "brief" briefing it was 1:30am and we had to be up and at breakfast by 8:00am, argh! We did all manage it though. Most of us stayed in the actual Care For Children building in the different therapy rooms. Ours had a double sink, 4 camp beds and a heater. It was freezing the first night because we'd turned the heater off before we settled down. Lesson learnt though! My room mates were Jo, Lauren and Esther.

After breakfast we were taken to the Great Wall of China! And it was so amazing! It was a bit misty and very cold so the pictures look a bit grey but it was perfect weather for walking. We got the cable car to the top and then walked along the Wall. Ok stating the obvious but it's really long... Even just to walk to the place where you can go back down to the food and souvenir stalls. I think we walked for about 45 minutes. And then we got to tobogan down to the bottom! It was so much fun!! It wasn't just a quick 2 minute slide either- it went on for about 10 minutes and you went so fast on the corners. Someone at the front of our group kept going really slow though so it caused traffic jams at the flat bits. Grr!

In the evening the Care for Children centre hosted a "Friday Night Live" youth event aimed at non-Christian teens with a live band, food and a talk by a guy called Lennie and Mark Russell. It was really good. Well, I wasn't so into the music that night, but Mark's talk was awesome. He gave a brilliant illustration of how valuable we are to God- if we take a £20 note we can crumple it, stamp on it and spit on it, but it is still worth £20. So no matter how many times we sin we are still worth the same to Him. Cool, huh?!

Day 2

We had another early start because we were helping Care For Children hold a carnival for all the local children. There was an Easter egg hunt, clowns, an acrobat who squeezed herself into a tiny tube,an Egg bashing game, free photographs, free manicures and massages, a silent auction, face painting and lots of food including chips mmmm! Me and Lauren dressed up as Mickey and Minnie mouse and greeted the children by the entrance before the official start of the carnival. It was so strange wearing the costume- when people were taking my picture I was still smiling even though I had the "head" on, and it's so hard to see anything between the "eyes". A woman gave me her baby to hold and I couldn't actually see the child- talk about scary.

I manned the bouncy castle for a while, until it deflated haha. I think there was a power cut. After that I helped with the ball toss game. I watched the magical mask-changing man, the very bendy acrobat, and a cute clown juggle hats as well as got myself a caramel dragon made. It's amazing watching the guy do it- he takes a ball of caramel and blows it into whatever shape you want.

In the evening- before dinner at a nice restaurant- we went to a prayer meeting at the Beijing International Christian Fellowship church (BICF).

More videos to follow!