First Group Dinner

Last night was our first chance to meet members of our tour group, at a dinner a few blocks away from our hotel. The food was excellent and not, as we feared, too "westernized." We sat with a family from Toronto and one of our guides from the OCEA, a young man who grew up in one of the southern provinces, attended university in Guangdong and now lives in Beijing. Part of his job is traveling to the US and providing materials to schools on Chinese language and culture. We had an interesting talk about dual-language schools, US politics, regional cuisines and the ancestral homes of China's current leaders, among other things.

After dinner, we collected our "goodie bags" - two T shirts and a hat each, plus backpacks, pins, books and a few other things. Tomorrow we're all to wear our yellow shirts to the Temple of Heaven.