We Survived The Heat!

We did it!  Made it the whole day. And boy was it HOT!  But we had fun. We met the 3 other families in our group.  2 are going home tomorrow. They adopted older boys and wanted to let them tour Beijing too. The other family is also adopting an older boy (2 months younger than Hope). Their Gotcha Day is also on Monday.  They will be flying to Guangzhou tomorrow.

Forbidden City & Tianamen Square was, well the same as the last time we were there.  At least I can now say I’ve been there when it’s been so cold that it snowed and so hot that we melted. LOL

Then it was off to lunch. No weird food. No fish head (Jadyn I thought about you and knew you would be disappointed).  After lunch was the jade factory. I had to get Jade bangles for Hope & Maggie (since I have some for Abby & Jadyn).  That was hard to choose. We walked out getting 30% off and 5 little free gifts. They told me not to tell anyone.  Oops.  LOL

Next stop The Great Wall.  We walked for 15 min and were done. It’s just too hot.

Oh, guess what?  I see blue skies here. Another first for me.  Yay!

I’m so glad we did not skip Beijing.  As we were on the bus I just looked at the people and reminded myself that this is the country that 5 of our kids are from. I honestly forget that Abby, Jadyn & Ethan are from China.  I can’t wait until we can bring them back here so that they can experience the culture that they were born in.

It’s almost 9 PM now and jet lag has kicked in. I’ll upload some photos.  Bill & I just got back from taking a taxi to guess where?  The Apple Store.  Bill was in HEAVEN!  We got a thing for internet. Yay!  I did not like going to the lobby for WiFi.  

We have an 8:10 AM flight tomorrow to Anhui.  I’ll update as soon as I can.  Probably after noon our time.  2 more sleeps!!!!!  

OK, internet is EXTREMELY slow.  So no photos tonight.  I hope internet is better in Hefei.  

Hugs from Beijing!  

Breakfast in Beijing

Good morning from Beijing! We got about 4 hours of sleep. And surprisingly I feel rested. The bed is very hard. But that did not stop us from sleeping.

Before I talk about breakfast, I wanted to share that 3 things I worried about have already happened. 1) flight delay 2) no Internet in our room and 3) my flat iron would not work. Yes that upset me. :-). So I might be wearing a hat most of this trip. Lol

Now about breakfast. It's okay. A lot of foods the Chinese obviously like for breakfast. I had a little " Americanized" food. And it filled me up.

I embarrassed Bill & took a few pics. We are getting ready to go tour Beijing now. Should be back around 6 PM tonight.

Tomorrow we have an 8AM flight to Hefei. We are going to try to find a flat iron so my hair will not look so crazy lol

Be sure to check out Bills blog too. He is Princess Journals Dad on my blog list.

Until next time......



My breakfast


The buffet


This sign is for my kids. :-)


Sushi for breakfast anyone?

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Location:Dongsishitiao,Beijing,China

We're Here!!!!!

I'm so giddy. I'm in China!!!!! Seeing signs in Chinese, listening to the people talk, the sounds, the smells etc. just makes me excited. I don't know. Maybe I'm just over tired. Lol

So, 11 hours at the Chicago airport was fun. Not really. Ha ha. We were so happy to see our plane show up. Business first class was awesome. I'm so glad we were able to upgrade now. We both slept about 7-8 hours. And no Advil PM was needed. We were so tired from sitting all day. And only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before.

We met a couple on the plane who is also adopting. They adopted a 12 year old girl 5 months ago and are back adopting a 10 year old boy. They gave us a lot of good info on adopting the older child. God definitely put them there for us. Because they calmed a lot of our fears.

We got off of the plane quickly. Made it to immigration. The guy looked at me, looked at my passport, looked at me again. He said " You lose lot of weight?". I said yes. He said "How you do that?" I said exercising and not eating a lot of candy. He laughed and said "I bet that hard". Then let me through. He made my day. :-)

Our driver was waiting for us. He did not speak any English but was really nice. We met our guide at the hotel. She seems sweet. There are 3 other families in our group. We will meet them tomorrow at 8 AM (right before I upload this). There is only wifi in the lobby. Internet Is in Our room but cable does not fit in our laptop. So I'm typing this at 12:45 AM and will upload before our day of tours.

3 more sleeps without the girls. So hard to believe.

We did Skype with our kids. They were happy to see us. We were happy to see them.

I'll post some pictures. I hope they come through.

Thanks for praying.




Nice Leg Room


Bill ready to go


Some people flew backwards. This guy slept most of the flight


Here We Go!



Sunset


Snack. Real glass again. :-)


Melissa Whitten please tell David that "Hope is everywhere" lol


Appetizer. And no I did not eat the shrimp. :-)


Dinner. Beef & potatoes.


Ice cream for dessert.


Map


Debbie's breakfast.


Bills breakfast


We made it!!!!


Our hotel room.



Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Pictures So Far

Since I have all day here, I'll post the pictures we've taken so far. I'm not sure what order they will appear below. I'm using a new program for the iPad and it does things differently than my laptop. So I'll describe in the order they should be in. :-)

Bill & our WONDERFUL friend Mike. He picked us up at 8 PM and then turned around and drove Bill back home to get our video camera. Thank You Mike! You saved the day. All of our videos this trip will be dedicated to you. :-)

The Marriott at the airport was nice. Made me realize we will be staying in 3 Marriott's this trip. Time to get on their reward program I guess.

We took a pic of the view we had from our room. BTW by time Bill got back & we watched some of the swimming on the Olympics, we passed out after midnight. The alarm scared us at 3:45 AM. Too early.

We're weird. We take pics of the screen for the flights we take in our adoption trips. Lol

Watching the sunrise this morning was amazing. I felt such a peace. Even though I cried some tears at take off (thinking about our kids) I felt God's presence in that sunrise.

Ok, I've never flown first class before. Getting orange juice in REAL glasses impressed me. The seats were very comfy too.

Breakfast was insane. I could not eat it all. It was good. Did not taste like airplane food.

Maybe there will be another update before we leave for Beijing. Probably will be another update. Do check back later.

Love, Debbie.

 

Delayed!

A word you NEVER want to hear when you travel. We got off of the flight in Chicago and looked at our email. United emailed saying our flight to Beijing is delayed 5 hours or so. So we are stuck at the airport for 9 hours. Gets us into Beijing after 7 PM Friday night (china time).

We are thankful we upgraded to business first (we used points & paid a little $). We are hanging out in United's Priority Club enjoying free sodas, juice & snacks. They felt sorry for us and also gave us 2 $20 food vouchers for lunch. If we have To be stuck, I'll take free stuff. Reason for delay? Maintenance. Honestly kind of scares me. I guess it's good they are doing it before we leave.

So now we sit. Thankful for free WiFi and snacks. We leave after 5PM Central Time. Flight is UA851 if you want to track us.

Here's a picture of our morning drinks. Hot chocolate (for me) & orange juice (for Bill)

Here We Go!!

This journey has officially begun. And it started off with us forgetting our video camera at home. Yup! We realized this when we arrived at the airport hotel at 9:00 PM. So we got checked in & our friend Mike drove Bill back home to get it. Bill got back after 11 PM. We finally got to sleep around 12:30 AM. The alarm went off at 3:45. Too early.

So we hope we did not forget anything else. If so, oh well.

We are on the flight to Chicago now. We were able to upgrade all the way to China to Business First Class. Very nice up in the front.

Here is a photo of us in the plane. Thanks so much for the prayers.

It's "Go" Time

The day is finally here.  Travel day.  Well actually we leave very early in the morning but tonight we said goodbye to the kids.  That was so hard for me.  And the girls did not take saying goodbye too well either.  Lots of tears shed.  Broke my heart.  Ethan on the other hand looked at us like we were weird.  He said "you sad?  I not sad".  LOL  He was happy to be playing with his friend.

So the kids are where they need to be.  And we are finishing the last minute packing.  Our friend should be here in 20 minutes to take us to the airport. We are spending the night at the hotel so we can be there for our early flight.

I plan to update the blog from Beijing and I plan to be on FB too. PLEASE send me emails.  I'm already homesick and we have not even left yet.

Here are 3 photos for you.  The packing. What a chore. Bill wanted to be as simple as possible. I don't do well with simple.  So the girls & I have enough clothes for the 2 weeks.  LOL  Bill used his "magic" and made EVERYTHING fit into 2 medium bags and 1 small bag. And we are under weight.  Hopefully China will not give us a hard time about having 3 bags.  Once we have the girls we'll be okay (we're allowed 1 bag per person and it has to be under 44 lbs each).

So, here are 2 photos.  The "before" and the "after".  Amazing huh?

Abby & Ethan really wanted to go.  Unfortunately the airlines don't accept children in the luggage.

Today I asked our friend Pinky if she could take one last photo of us as a family of 6.  

Next post should be from Beijing, China!  :-)