"I can't believe we are in China!" I've heard our boys say that almost every hour since we arrived. We left the house for Orlando International Airport on Wednesday the 2nd at 6:15am. After flying to Minnesota, we headed to Japan (see our photo from the airport in Japan). From Japan it was finally to Beijing. We landed in Beijing at about 10:45pm local time on Thursday the 3rd (or 10:45am Thursday morning). That made for 28 1/2 hours of travel time from our front door to the Beijing airport. We finally made it to the hotel about midnight. It was a long, long day of travel, but we all made it safe and sound.
Our hotel (Chang 'An Grand Hotel in Beijing) is great. They have a western breakfast buffet each morning, so the boys are able to eat plenty of familiar food every morning to get them through the day! We met the other families travelling with us yesterday morning and everyone is very nice. It's been great getting to learn why all these families have decided to adopt as well. Here's a pic of JJ with one of the other travelling families (Bethany and Danny).
After our morning meeting, we went to the bank to convert our money over and then it was off to the super market to get some water that will be safe to drink (and coke, coke zeros and vitamin waters). It has been a lot of fun just walking the streets of Beijing seeing the culture. Caleb's been in charge of the camera and has already taken over 300 picutres. We should have some awesome pictures to post tomorrow after our trip to the Great Wall later today. Here are a couple of pictures Caleb took at the hotel, the super market and around town.
The final piece of the day was taking in a great acrobat show. It started with a man stacking about 11 chairs on top of a table and balancing on them (see the picture below) and ended with seven motorcyles driving around together in a very small globe enclosure! Craziness. Upon our return back to the hotel JJ, David and I headed to down to KFC to bring a little "home" back to the hotel for dinner.
Thanks so much to Jimmy Peterec for trying to help me out in posting this. China has a ban on social networking sites and on blogs! I'm so thankful that Jimmy was willing to take the time to post these so everyone can keep up with us.
More to come tomorrow ... from The Great Wall Of China!
shane.
We were referred to your blog from Jamie, and I am so enthralled in your posts!! We are just starting the adopting from China process. My blog is http://everygoodandperfectthing.blogspot.com/ and any advice you have would be greatly appreciated! Can't wait to read the rest of your posts!!! :)
ReplyDelete-Erin