Day Two- Part One

We got to our hotel on Friday evening around 5pm or so. We knew that despite the fact that we’d only had about 5 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours and all we wanted to do was collapse into bed, we knew that it was in our best interest to stay up until at least 7 or 8 that way we wouldn’t wake up quite so early the next morning. This was advice given to us to combat the jet lag so we took the advice. We settled into our room, sent a few “we made it” emails and realized pretty quickly that we’d never stay awake if we stayed in the room. So we decided to venture down to one of the hotel’s restaurants for dinner. It was our first real cultural experience.

We were the only Caucasian people in the whole hotel, much less this restaurant, as far as we could see. No one spoke a single bit of English. here we go- we knew we’d encounter this, so we just dove right in. :) They immediately walked us to a table and gave  us picture menus. We pointed to what looked good and hoped for the best. We each ordered a coke and they brought it to us in cans with a wine glass to pour the coke into. And of course, it was hot, and they offered no ice. This was another cultural thing that we’d heard of that I was dreading. When we go out, I order EXTRA ice in my drinks! Hot coke isn’t so good to me… but we were in desperate need of some extra caffeine if we were going to stay up for at least a couple more hours.

The meal came and the food was surprisingly delicious. We ended up having a lamb dish,a spicy shrimp and vegetable dish, fried rice (which was maybe the most delicious I’ve ever had), and some meat dumplings which were fabulous. All of it was good. The 4 of us ate and ate until we couldn’t eat anymore and we still had food left!

When it came time to pay, it got a little more interesting. No one spoke English and we obviously don’t speak a lick of Chinese! We started asking who/how to pay and we got major deer in the headlights looks. Several different employees came to try to figure out what we were talking about and it didn’t help much. Finally we began doing our best charades and using motions and hand gestures and the guys whipped out the money. Now we were getting somewhere! We had been told that it wasn’t customary and therefore unnecessary to tip at restaurants in China. Both of us couples pride ourselves in being really good tippers when we eat out, so this was really hard for us and we wondered if it really was ok.

Finally, the guys decided to leave the change on the table. When we left, they noticed it and tried to chase us out with the money! We told them no, that we didn’t want it, that it was for them. You should’ve seen the confusion on their faces. They just looked down at the money, then back at us, then back at the money. We just kept walking out and left them to figure it out :) We felt comfortable about tipping and frankly we were too tired to care much. Plus the amount of CNY didn’t amount to much in US dollars. (A few days later, we all realized that in our tiredness, and the fact that we didn’t have a clear understanding of the exchange rate yet, we really did over tip. Let’s just say it would’ve been considered a really nice tip in the US where tipping is expected :) Oh well! We all decided that we really just wanted to bless them and we hoped that the sweet servers had been able to keep the money like we’d intended.)

We headed back to our rooms, I blogged a little while Jason showered. He took an Ambien and he was out before his head even hit the pillow. I decided to take my Ambien before I took my shower to give it time to kick in. I’ve never taken it before and let’s just say that I didn’t need much time for it to kick in! I felt like I couldn’t hold my head up before I even got out of the shower. I was stumbling around and half crawling around the room trying to get in the bed!

We, obviously, went right to sleep and we slept pretty good. We each woke up several times, but thanks to the meds, we were able to go right back to sleep each time. We were wide awake at 4am though- which we expected. So, we decided to just get up and start our big day. We skyped with my Mom and Dad and Rhett and Gracie and sent an email to Braden (he was unavailable to skype that day).

We got ready and headed down to the hotel’s breakfast buffet early so we could enjoy and not be in a rush. We woke up STARVING! The breakfast buffet was just as wonderful as we’d heard. So much fresh food and fresh juices to chose from. We definitely filled our bellies!

We met our AMAZING guide, Rocky, in the lobby at 7am to start our BIG, LONG, WONDERFUL day.

Here’s the outside of our hotel.

We began our day with a walk from our hotel to Tiananmen Square. It was about a 30 minute walk.

Here’s Scott, Rocky and Jason leading the way. Rachel and I were bringing up the rear taking 900,000 pictures of every little thing :)

Some sights along the way. We walked over that bridge.

Walking on the bridge.

I was in awe of all of the signs in Chinese. What a beautiful written language!

Street view

We walked past this wall, which was one of the original city walls. It is several hundred years old. The age and history that is present all around you in China is amazing. Considering we live in a country that is so young and only has a couple hundred years of history!

View of Tiananmen Square as we approached it

In Tiananmen Square looking towards the Forbidden City

All 4 of us. Behind us is the building is Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall. It’s the mausoleum/final resting place where his body is on display in a glass case. 

I love this picture of us. Look at all those hundreds and hundreds of  people behind us in front of the Memorial Hall. Those are all people in line to view Chairman Mao’s body.

I was in awe of the uniformed soldiers everywhere. Not something you typically see in the US.

Forbidden City

Standing hear the Forbidden City, looking back towards Tiananmen Square. You can see Scott and Jason in the background- like playing Where’s Waldo :)

We were having so much fun, soaking in all of our amazing touristy experiences!

Walking back to the hotel

 

After we got back to the hotel, our driver was there with the van waiting on us. After a quick stop up to our rooms to repack our backpacks for the day, grab some snacks, etc. we hopped in the van and headed out.

First stop: The Olympic Bird’s Nest and Water Cube

We drove quite a while (Beijing is a HUGE city!!!) and then we saw it! It was so cool to get to see, in person, iconic places that you’ve seen only on tv. We jumped out and took a bunch of pictures.

This was a really neat shaped building across the street from the Olympic Venues. This was a huge hotel that had housed media, athletes, etc. during the 2008 games.

Next, we headed to a Jade Market.

This Lion was outside the front door. Later we realized that they are in front of almost all buildings! There’s always a set of 2- a male on one side and a female on the other.

This man was carving a jade family ball (which was on our list of things we wanted to purchase on our trip) so we watched for a few minutes. Very cool!

He showed us what he was working on. They start with a solid piece of jade and carve it into a ball. Then they carve the designs and then carve the interior of the ball as well and it ends up being several balls inside of each other- representing generations of families. Amazing and beautiful.

This was a huge and gorgeous, detailed carving made out of jade.

Here is the retail area. This was a HUGE room full of jewelry and other jade items for sale.

 

Here’s some pictures of the medals used in the 2008 Olympic games. They used jade in the medals. They were beautiful.

Here was our guide at the Jade factory.

We only bought the jade family ball here. Everything was so beautiful, but the prices were too high for us :)

This was only the beginning of our day. There was SO much more to come. You’ll have a hard time believing how much we crammed into one day! Our guide told us that most people do what we did in 1 1/2 days in 3 days! But we only had a short time there and we wanted to make the very most of every minute we had in Beijing. We can honestly say that we did. We had no down time and stayed moving!

More to come on our time in Beijing!

The first leg of our trip

I was too focused on bonding with Khloe (and also too busy and too tired!) to blog while we were in China, so I'm going to go back and tell the story of our trip in sections.

Part One: Getting There!

We left our house at 5:30am on Thursday, March 21. We stopped to pick up our dear friends Scott and Rachel on the way. Yes, we all got to travel together!!! Isn't God just SO good?!?! This was a miracle and an answer to prayer.
We had barely slept a wink the night before and I was worried that we were starting off the trip already so tired, but we were just so excited!

All of these pics were taken with my phone. There will be better quality pics on future posts :)

Getting ready to check in at the counter!!


We flew from home to Detroit. When we got to Detroit, we had a few hour layover, so we had a nice meal at the airport Chili's before shopping for drinks and snacks for the long plane ride, then we waited to board our plane.

Here we are-- waiting to board in Detroit! Looking tired but happy :)



Excited Mammas ready to hold their babies!!


I have never flown further than Mexico, so I was thrilled to see such a large, roomy plane :) And we each had tv screens in the seats in front of us! Let me tell you, these saved the LONG day :)


We all tried to make ourselves stay awake for the most part because we would be landing in Beijing at 3pm on Friday afternoon and we wanted to acclimate ourselves to
china time ASAP. When I started to get sleepy, I played a little Mahjong to keep myself awake.


Took this photo from the area behind our section during the flight. It was neat to see everyone's tv screens going at the same time.


We loved checking our progress on the flight tracker! Almost there!


Time to Destination: 1:10!!!!!!


Trying to take a picture of the mountains as we were approaching to land. There was too much smog... It was majestic! Beautiful!


Scott and Jason waiting on our luggage at the airport in Beijing. Rachel and I in the background fervently praying that all of our luggage showed up :)
And Praise God, every bag was there!!!


Just as we stepped outside the Beijing airport.


It was an overwhelming feeling that I can't really describe. Finally being there- in China. The country of my daughter's birth. The place I longed to be, but in my weakness feared I would never get the opportunity to experience. I feared that I was too
unworthy to be able to experience the blessing of finalizing the adoption of our daughter. You know, I am. But God, in His goodness and mercy blessed us anyway! I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am.
We were finally in China! Tired doesn't even begin to describe it, but my body just went into survival mode and I was fine! Ready to see the sights and counting down the hours till I would be holding my daughter!!!

Ni Hao from Beijing!

We made it to Beijing yesterday afternoon at 3pm China time. Our day of traveling was uneventful but very LONG! We left our house at 5:30am on Thursday morning (after only sleeping about 3 hours), went to pick up Scott and Rachel at their house and then headed for the airport. We said goodbye to the kids really quick and then headed into the airport to get checked in. After going through security we ate a nice breakfast and then it was almost time to board our plane to Detroit.

The flight to Detroit was only about 1 hour and 45 minutes long. When we got to Detroit, we had about 2 hours until we had to board our plane for Beijing so we stopped and had a nice meal at Chili's. Then we grabbed a bunch of snacks and drinks for the plane ride and waited just about 10 or 15 minutes then they called for boarding.

We found our seats quickly as they were towards the front of the plane. They were great seats. We had the middle seat and the aisle seat on the right side of the plane. The guy next to us that had the window seat was a really nice 29 year old guy who was traveling to see a friend in Beijing. He was a good seat partner for the long trip :)

Each seat had touch screen video screen in the headrest. So, we had hundreds of movies, tv shows, songs, games, etc. at our fingertips. It was awesome! It totally saved the day!! I can't imagine how long it would've seemed without that!

J and I each watched about 3 movies, we took some short cat naps while listening to music. As tired as we were, we just couldn't really get comfortable enough to get any good sleep. My lower back was aching before we even got off the first plane in Detroit! I had brought one of those heat wraps just in case and I am SO glad I had it!! After the first hour or two, I put that on and once it got hot, it TOTALLY saved the day!!!! It helped so much. It even stayed warm the entire flight!

At the suggesting of a good friend, I wore knee high compression socks and I really think it helped me tremendously. We stretched as much as possible, got up and walked around/stood for 10 minutes or so every hour or two and that really helped.

They served us 2 full meals, a big snack and also came around with drinks/water about 3 other times. It was a great flight!

I was so ready to get off the plane by the time we landed in Beijing! It was crazy to think that after all this time and after all that traveling, that we had made it!

We had a very easy time going through immigration, getting our luggage and going through customs. Our terminal wasn't very crowded at all. After we got through customs, we walked out and our guide was right in front of us holding a sign with all of our names on it!

His name is Rocky and he is very, very nice. He took care of us from there. He got us out of the airport and to the van waiting for us outside. He and the driver loaded up our luggage and then as we were driving to the hotel, he gave us a quick run through of what to expect and then just started answering that many questions that we all had!

The traffic is crazy. So many cars! He even told us that to help control the traffic situation, depending on the last digit of your license plate number on your car, there are certain days that you can't drive. For every personally owned vehicle, there are 2 days of the week that they can't drive their car. Wow! Life sure if different here!

We unpacked some of our stuff and quickly realized there was no way we were going to be able to stay up another 4 hours! We were too tired! So, we went down to the Chinese restaurant on the 2nd floor of our hotel. No one there speaks English! And we speak NO Chinese! Uh oh! They gave us picture menus and we pointed to what we wanted and hoped it would turn out ok.

We ended up having lamb, a hot shrimp dish, fried rice and some delicious meat filled dumpling things that we forgot the name :) And we washed it down with coke! I like my drinks cold and always order with extra ice... so I was already mentally prepared for the lack of ice. My mouth is dying for a COLD drink of something already and it's only very early in the morning on Day 2! Not a good sign :) All kidding aside, it'll be totally fine :)

We went back to the room after dinner and took quick showers and each took an Ambien. I was trying to do some things around the room but those meds kicked in fast and I could hardly stand up. We both fell right to sleep a little after 7 and slept until about 3:30 am this morning. We each woke up a few times, but were able to go back to sleep pretty quickly after waking. (Thank you sleeping pills!) :)

We got to Skype with Meme, Papa, Rhett and Gracie for a little bit already this morning so that was awesome! We couldn't really see them because the video screen connection just wasn't working, but they could see us and we were able to talk pretty well with only a little delay. Being able to hear from them made my day! We are hoping to Skype with Braden soon too. He isn't near a computer today.

Today, we are going to have breakfast in our hotel, then meet our guide at 7am to walk to Tienneman Square, look around then walk back. Then our driver will pick us up and we will take the hour and 1/2-2 hr van ride to the Great Wall. After that, we will tour the summer palace. Tonight we are planning to go to a Chinese acrobat show.

Tomorrow, we are going to take a rickshaw tour of the Hutong district before catching the high speed train to Shanghai!

Our gotcha day is scheduled for 9am Monday, so that's about 8pm Sunday night back home. Only 2 more sleeps apart!! And we'll finally have our baby girl in our arms!!! Yay!!!!!!!

Thank you guys for all of your prayers! We can definitely feel them! Keep them coming, please! We have a long 2 weeks still ahead of us!

Love you all!!
I tried to upload pictures, but it's going SO slow and I don't have time. Will upload some when I can!

More shower pics

Here's my wonderful friend Lydia who hosted the shower for me in her beautiful home!


She had gotten lanterns for us to light and set off and say prayers for Khloe as we watched them ascend. How cool is that?!?!





Unfortunately, it was SUPER windy that night and we only got a couple of them to go. But she gave all of them to me to take home and do with Jason and the kids another time.

It was such a sweet idea that I loved SO much!!!

Pre baby Family Pics!!

We had so much fun taking pictures with the Benningtons. Rachel and I took pictures of each other’s families one morning.

Here’s pics of our family!