January 30 part 1: Beijing tour day 1...Tian’anmen Square

We both woke up around 4am and flipped through some TV channels to entertain ourselves.  Kevin went back to sleep from 6-7am.

A morning view out our hotel window.  (This is where the dancing/music takes place each night.)

We went down to breakfast and lots of the other couples in our group were there.  I guess everyone woke early!  The buffet was decent- lots of choices.

After breakfast we headed back to our room to get ready for a day of touring.  We met the group down in the lobby and took the bus to Tian’anmen Square.

Our adoption agency rep, George.

More Beijing traffic!  It is always like this.

Tian’anmen Square

January 29: Arrived in Beijing

Our first views of China- mountains and tall buildings very close together!

Our flight arrived in Beijing at 1:20am our time, which was 3:20pm local time.  We went through customs/immigration, got our luggage, and found our adoption agency rep, Cecilia, very easily.  We waited until we had everyone and then boarded a bus.  We picked up another couple at a different terminal before heading to our hotel- Sunworld Dynasty.

Yay, we made it!  Do we look a wee bit tired?!

Our first view of Beijing traffic!

It took quite a while to get to our hotel because of rush hour traffic in a town with 20 billion people.  After getting all checked in we walked over to a noodle shop next door.  We ate with another couple in our group and enjoyed getting to know them.  Communication was a bit comical but we finally figured out that they had Sprite!

This looked the least adventurous to me, so that’s what I ordered.  It was actually quite good!

Sprite, please.

Tea for Kevin.

So much food!  We paid about $8 total.

We had both had some experience using chopsticks but these slippery noodles were a whole new ballgame!  After a while I longed for a fork!  As soon as we were done eating we went to leave and an English speaking man tried to lure the other couple upstairs to an “anniversary party.”  Luckily, they saw through this common scenario (get the Americans to drink expensive tea and force them to pay for it) and walked away. 

Kevin and I headed to a 7-11 to buy some water and possibly snacks for the next day.  That didn’t end up working out for us.  Haha.

Candy at the 7-11.

We were about to drop by this point, so we went back to the hotel.  There was a large group of people dancing in the square outside our window.  We could hear the music.  I texted with my mom and brother, updated on FB and crashed at 9:30pm.

January 28: Travel to China day 1

We tried to go to bed early the night before, but it just didn’t happen.  There was last minute packing to finish up and instructions to give.  I thought I might be too excited/nervous to sleep, but that really wasn’t the case.  Still, it was a short night.  We got up at 3:30am and were out the door an hour later.

Here we come, China!  The plane took off at about 6:30am after a short delay for de-icing.

Good morning, Chicago!  We arrived in Chicago on time at about 7am.  Yes, a very short flight!

After arriving in Chicago, we found the gate for our next flight and then got some snacks.  We had a few hours to kill but mainly just sat at the gate and entertained ourselves with our phones.  We ended up meeting 2 of the other families in our travel group while waiting.  (A 3rd family in our group was also on our flight.  We just didn’t meet them until later.)

Chicago to Beijing!  Are we ready for a 13.5 hr flight?!  Our flight took off at 12:30pm.

We quickly figured out that we had outlets underneath our seats, despite info to the contrary from various sources (including seat guru online)!  Yay!

A view of the inside of our 747.  We were in the economy plus section, which gave us a little more leg room.  I would definitely do that again, if given the opportunity.  We did not have individual screens for this flight but the screens up in front of us were plenty sufficient.  We really didn’t have any trouble keeping ourselves entertained.  They fed us lunch at 1:30pm or so, a “light snack” (bag supper) at 7pm and breakfast at midnight.  We thought a lot about how much harder it was going to be on the return flight with a toddler!  EEK! 

Packing

Here are a few pics from packing.  I just wanted to share how much I loved our packing cubes.  They really kept our suitcases organized!  We took 2 large (29 inch) hard sided suitcases.  I found the lightest weight ones I could.  We also took 2 backpacks- Kevin’s was large (for stowing in the overhead bin) and mine was medium (for keeping under the seat in front of us and our daily outings in China).  We did end up buying an extra suitcase in China for our souvenirs.  It was inexpensive and easy to find.

These are the gifts we took for various officials as is customary.  We didn’t need to take this many, but I wanted to be sure to have a few extras just in case.  We ended up eating 1 or 2 of them ourselves!

I packed them in a plastic shoebox container and that worked really well.  It gave us a protective case for some of our souvenirs on the way home.

This is all the food we took, aside from a few snack bars in our backpacks.

 

Going to try to catch up the blog

We have been home from China for 2 months and I think I’m at a point where I can start trying to catch up the blog.  Sorry to leave you hanging for so long (I think most are on our FB group anyway), but it just took some time to start feeling like we were settling in and to find our new normal.  There was no time for blogging for sure!  We have thousands of pictures and some video, so this may take a while for me to do!