Wow. What a ride that was - literally and figuratively! I posted a picture of Adam and I at the airport yesterday and since then have slept almost three hours (on the plane). We traveled to Chicago, waited three hours, then had an almost 14 hour flight to China. Once we arrived here it took over an hour to get our luggage and go through customs. Then we took a car with our CCAI rep to our hotel, which was at least another hours drive. The ride was smooth, but my goodness, that is a long time to sit still! It was fine with us, but I need to start breathing out of a paper bag when I think about our flight home with a little one sitting on my lap! One day at a time, right?
Thank goodness for texts. I can send and receive texts (no pictures) for only a few cents but can't use any data... but II can use wifi at most of our hotels. We stay in Beijing for three nights total. The next two days are sight seeing and visits and then the next day is another day of flying to the province where they found Christian and where he started his life. Sunday we travel and Monday sometime Christian becomes ours! Please continue to pray that he adjusts well with us and the transition is smooth We get to stay there for six nights, then off to another two cities!
Adam and I were really thirsty tonight and a little hungry, so after checking into our hotel we went for a little stroll down the streets of Beijing. We only passed one other Caucasian family, and they were speaking in french. What a good learning experience, especially as our little one will soon be the minority. We ate at a real Chinese food restaurant. Most of the food was similar to what we have seen at the US. A few things were NOT (picture a whole fish with it's head propped up vertically and pig knuckles). Fortunately, the menu had pictures for each item, so we could just point to what we wanted in the menu. The waitress showed us our bill on her ipad, which was good because as much as I wanted to learn Chinese this summer, that didn't happen. We then stopped at a little shop to buy two bottles of water. In our exhausted state we almost paid the man his asking price of 90 yuan...until Adam caught the conversion in his head and said we are not paying 15 dollars for bottled water, even if it is the good stuff. We walked a few more blocks and stopped at a convenience store and bought four bottles that were a little smaller for 2.50 total
Thank you all for your continued prayers, thoughts, and sharing in our exciting journey! It meant so much to me to open up my facebook account and to be flooded with love. We are so blessed to have you all in our lives. AJ & Abby are doing well with mom. She has been such a blessing. I shared her post on here about how the kids did today. I didn't know what to do for them to help them understand and adjust with us gone for so long. The paper links REALLY seemed to help. They rotated days taking off the chains and that visual has seemed to make this pretty concrete for them. I have seen some parents share that they gave their kids one present each for every day they were gone. That sounds like fun, but all I can see is dollar signs. Plus, I really wanted them to appreciate this process for what it is... we are growing as a family and there is a whole lot of love involved. I didn't want this to turn into them wanting selfishly for toys that would eventually end up in a dumpster. SO, my small token of a gift to them was little cassette tapes. One to each of them with a special message and song, then the other two I read some of our favorite books out loud so they could read with me whenever they want. I am glad they liked them!
I can't even figure out how many hours I have been awake at this point, but I think other than the few short naps it has been a straight 27 hours. I am off to bed, but hope to post some updates and pictures tomorrow (it is a 13 hour time difference, so right now it is 7:51 pm here). Good night!
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