Hooray For Internet!

It's 8:23pm in Zhengzhou and we just got our internet working on the computer for the first time.  So thankful!  Caleb and Mason are asleep and I am going to try and post a few quick things I've written over the past few days... 

Wednesday morning we departed Denver and flew to Beijing, via Chicago, where we met up with another family from Denver, also traveling and adopting with CCAI.  (Our agency).  They are adopting a sweet little boy who is from Grace’s orphanage, and like Grace has spent most of his life being cared for at Shanghai Healing Home in Shanghai.  Once in Beijing we met up with the more families who we will be traveling and adopting with over the next 16 days.  All together we now have 8 families with us in addition to ourselves.

The flight was good; Caleb and Mason were in heaven, as they got to watch Captain America and play video games on their own TV screens - for 13.5 hours!  (A REAL treat, since we don’t own a gaming system!)  They did sleep for a bit as well.

The highlights were getting past the turbulence (Daddy and Mason loved it) and flying over the North Pole.  :-)  I actually slept for the majority of the flight.

We arrived after midnight Beijing time (14 hours ahead of Colorado) and slept until about 5am.  Our hotel is a beautiful 5 star hotel, complete with some unique features!

The “double beds” are really more of a twin size (quite cozy 
;-), and Caleb and Mason are opting to take turns on the floor.  I am struck by how tiny everything is here (including the people - we are on day 4 and we haven’t seen an overweight person yet!).  The ironing board is about half the size of my one at home, and the back of the toilet is maybe 4 inches deep - it doesn’t even hold my pajama pants while I shower!

The other unique room feature is the glass wall between the bathroom and sleeping area!  Fortunately, their is a mini blind to close.  :-)

On the first day we were able to tour the Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City.  (Forbidden to the common people.)  There were literally thousands of people who had traveled from throughout the country to pay their respects to Chairman Mao’s embalmed body(!!!).  The line had to have gone on for miles and I thought he must have just died.  Nope!  1977.  It was Black Friday and Mardi Gras put together in one.

This ones for Addie!  This was just a duck 
in front of a restaurant.

Afterwards, we took a Hutong Tour through old Beijing, riding through narrow alley ways in a rickshaw cart and pulled by an elderly man on bike.  

We stopped for lunch at a local families home, which was a fascinating experience.  They cooked about a dozen traditional foods, which we ate off of tiny plates, and sat around a tiny (maybe 4 feet?) round table.  We got to see the kitchen afterwards - 2 burners on the stove and maybe 2 feet by 2 feet of counter space.

The preperation space was the area in front of the cutting board. (Slice of log)

That afternoon the boys and I swam and walked to the infamous “Snack Street” where we saw everything from roasted scorpions to bbq baby ducks with heads still on.  We passed!  Travis stayed home and finished online school for the week.

Snake on a stick

Baby ducks anyone?

Roasted Scorpians

That night we had dinner with our new friends Danny and Amy (from Denver) at local restaurant, which was fun and just over $20 for 3 entrees and an appetizer.  Our boys think Mr. Danny is SOOO funny!

Breakfast!

We’ve had a lot of fun and MANY good laughs about the food we are getting to try.  Many times we have no idea what it is.  The hotel has an unbelievable breakfast buffet where we get to sample all kinds of local foods each morning.  Travis took a bite into a delicious looking croissant to discover a stick of something.  Vegetable?  Meat?  A root?  Not sure.  Danny recommended the dumplings with fig jam; to which another Dad explained it was not fig jam but bean curd.  ;-)  He wasn’t joking.

The song “This is the Great Adventure” by Steven Curtis Chapman keeps running through my mind.  Before I accepted Christ I thought the life of a believer would be B-O-R-I-N-G.  Restrictive.  No fun.  Instead, I’ve found it to be quite the opposite - more like an exhilarating high speed adventure.  (Especially being married to Travis ;-)) The Lord’s plans for my life have been so different than mine - I thought I was going to live in a ritzy home, play tennis, and drive a BMW - snobby I know - and yet I am so thankful for the better life God choose for me!