Adoption Story, pt. 1

Home.  Dorothy had it right; there is no place like it.  We've now been home for about 14 hours, and we couldn't be happier to be here.  For the past year (since we got Liesel's referral), we've known who and where she was, but we were unable to go and get her.  Then, when we were able to get her, our other daughter was half a world away.  I cannot tell you how happy and thankful we are that our family is FINALLY united.

I also want to apologize for not doing due diligence.  Apparently, Blogspot has been blocked in China since 2009, but I was unaware of this.  The last time I was in China was 2005, and Blogspot was not blocked at that time, so I expected to be able to access it.  I know there are many who checked my blog for updates at my direction, and unfortunately, I was not able to access my blog at all.  I emailed updates to as many as I could, directing a friend of mine to let people know on Facebook; however, many of you may not be Facebook users.  Fear not!  I plan to write in full detail about our experiences in China.  Better late than never, right?

We knew that getting there and getting back would be long and arduous.  Unfortunately, we had problems both ways, so our travel became longer and arduous-er.  Hey, I'm operating on 4 hours' sleep right now!  We left Austin for China on Tuesday, July 10.  Our flight to LA was supposed to leave at 7:40am, so we were at the airport by 6am.  It was not early enough.  There was a huge backlog of passengers that were trapped in Austin due to bad weather.  They all showed up early trying to resume their travel after being stranded in Austin the day before.  To make matters worse, we were having problems accessing our reservation.  We attempted to check in curbside, but they couldn't pull up our reservation.  Nor would it come up on the kiosks.  Finally we asked a ticket agent for help as we knew we would miss our flight, but she too could not pull up the reservation.  We were forced to accept that we would miss our flight and need to be re-routed.  We finally got up to the counter and were re-routed through Chicago.  We ended up arriving in Beijing just four hours later than we were supposed to originally.  It was a blessing that we lost so little time.

We landed in Beijing around 10pm on Wednesday, July 11.  Our guide, Helen, met us at the airport and took us to our hotel for some much needed sleep.  We planned to drive to the Great Wall the following morning and agreed to meet at 9:30am.  The hotel had WiFi in the lobby, so we were able to video chat with my parents and daughter every morning before we ate breakfast.  After our chat and our breakfast, we left for the Great Wall.  Helen took us to a newly opened section of wall that was less crowed than the famous Badaling section, which I had been to previously.  Helen also said that she believed the scenery was better.  I agreed.

Beautiful!

Toward the end of our climb, looking at the ground we'd covered.

I'm huffing and puffing after that steep climb!

This was at the end of the climbable section of wall.  We had to walk back after we got here. 

A VERY steep section of the wall.  It made me very nervous!

Some of the sign translations were funny!

We got up to the wall just to the right of center on this map and climbed all the way to the end on the right side.

The weather was absolutely perfect that day!  It was in the low 80s, mostly cloudy with a nice breeze.  The breeze was great because the climb is so difficult; we worked up a really good sweat.  The top of the wall is not a smooth walkway, its almost entirely stairs.  You also are not just ascending; you ascend and descend, so you get a thorough leg workout.  In addition to the actual wall, there was a substantial amount of stairs that we had to climb to get up to the wall.  As a result, my calves were very sore for about three days following our climb.  In spite of that, we had a great time!  We spent about 2.5 hours on the wall, and returned to Beijing around 3pm that day.  Our guide took us to a hot pot restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner, and then gave us the rest of the evening to relax and recover before our next day's activities.  

The next morning, we met Helen in the lobby, along with a family that just arrived, Jeremy and Heidi Turner and their two teenage kids.  That family was adopting from the same province as we were, so from that point on, they were with us in China.  We started off the morning in Tienanmen Square.

Looking toward the Forbidden Palace

Chairman Mao's tomb.  The Chinese people will line up as early as 5:30 am to get a ticket to go inside this building to see the Chairman's tomb.

After we walked through the square, we went into the Forbidden Palace.  It's amazing; it's huge.  It has 999 rooms!  It took us at least and hour and a half to walk through the Palace.  We also learned that it took eight years to collect all the materials to build it and six years to actually complete the construction.  It always amazes me that people so long ago could build such amazing structures.  

Our guide, Helen, and the Turners

Gorgeous artwork inside the Palace

A sea of humanity

                                  

                                          Another funny sign translation on top of the air-conditioning unit

When we finally finished our tour, we went to a local restaurant for some Peking duck, dumplings, and other yummy Chinese food.  

In the afternoon, we went on a tour of the Hu Tong area of Beijing.  As best as I could understand from our guide (a different one from Helen whose English was hard to understand), Hu Tong is a Mongolian word meaning, water well.  In the past, people would dig wells for water and build walls around their wells to protect them.  These walled plots were also residences.  They are usually very small and compact, with very narrow streets.  Some are too narrow for cars.  Now, these plots are VERY expensive to buy because if you own one, you are one of the lucky few who actually has land, as small as it may be.  Also, most of the Hu Tong's don't have a private bathroom!  Most people have to walk to the public bathroom any time they need to go to the toilet.  I can't imagine!  We rode around in a rickshaw through the Hu Tong area.  Our guide took us to a local market and a Hu Tong dweller's home for a tour and a Q & A session.  It was really quite interesting.  The man whose home we visited was fortunate enough to have a private bathroom!  He was a well-known Kung Fu instructor.  

The home-owner we visited.  He played a traditional Chinese instrument for us.

His "land".  It's actually a very small garden-like terrace.

The spice section of the local market. 

The next day was Saturday, and it was time for hubs and I to fly to Taiyuan, Shanxi, where we would get Liesel on Monday, July 16.  Our flight left Beijing in the afternoon, and we arrived at our hotel by 5pm.  We met our new guide, Anna, and got checked into our hotel.  The other family, the Turner's, would be joining us in Taiyuan on Sunday.  Upon our arrival, we also learned of a third family that would also be arriving in Taiyuan on Sunday.  We were happy to know that there would be two other adopting families in our hotel with us.

To be continued....