I went to Beijing to see where my stepmother is from.  I had missed my chances many times before.  Beijing completely exceeded my expectations! To me, it is one of the great cities of the world, that everyone should see at least once.  The history in this place! And it was so  wonderful to see where she is from.

My stepmother's family is musical royalty and I got an insider's look at where my uncle was a symphony director and where her father had a private office to compose music in the royal summer palace!

People are always asking me what country has the best food, and I'm never sure what to say.  But now, I can confidently say, China.  Every meal I had was 10/10 on presentation, flavor and ingenuity.  I shouldn't have been surprised honestly because most of the things I ate I've had in my stepmother's house before.

For the first time, and immediately after landing, I lost my passport.  Through the miraculous and heroic efforts of my uncle and the Beijing airport police department, I got it back.  Read more here.

Luckily right before my trip, apple came out with live translation for Chinese which was such a great help! I liked that my stepmother didn't have to translate every single thing but that my headphones could catch some things-we took to calling them my Chinese ears.

In the video to the left, you will see at Tsinghua University, a set of stairs and ramp with a sign in Chinese.  I walked down the ramp and fell right on my bum.  I bet you can guess what the sign said!