Another Travel Day

Today we started the day with a quiet breakfast by ourselves at our hotel in Beijing. The other three adoption families were traveling to their provinces, so we were left to ourselves to prepare to move on to Shijizhuang in Hebei Province.

Alison and I had a nice day of exploring the area surrounding our hotel in Beijing and made a stop at the local mall and a sushi restaurant before meeting up with the Smith Family (with their new addition, Chen), and we were then on our way with our new guide, Michael.

We had a very entertaining train experience, as they open up the flood gates approximately 20 minutes before the train departs, and everyone is constantly shuffling and weaving. There is zero personal space as you enter the train station and pass through security until you board the train, it is a crazy ordeal.

We were able to get a glimpse of Baoding (Bo's current city of residence) from the train about an hour into our two hour trip. There were some very new industrial skyscrapers in the city, but China has not explored the concept of urban sprawl - so you go from people everywhere to nothing but farm land rather abruptly.

We arrived at our hotel at around 7:30, and we quickly found out that we are definitely no longer in Beijing. There are some beautiful hotels (like ours that we are staying for the next two weeks), yet this city is relatively small by China's standards and we may have trouble communicating. We wanted a quick bite to eat this evening, and we discovered a Pizza Hut right across from our hotel. We were fascinated by the menu variation (Alison had a curry dish) while I chose the old personal pan pizza stand-by (tasted just like home).

10 hours from now we will be meeting Bo, so we will cut this short for the evening, but hope to have photos to share with everyone tomorrow. For now, enjoy a picture of Alison enjoying a refreshing Coke Light!

Ryan

What is wrong with this picture?

One tourist had a very bad day when they backed their car off the ledge, almost falling into a ditch about 10 feet deep. There were 3 or 4 people in the car when it happened and we watched as a bunch of Chinese people ran to them and the back-seat passenger got helped out. This happened when we first got to the great wall and the car was still lodged there with no one even attempting to get it off the ledge when we left an hour and a half later. And for the guys in the office... yes, it was a female driver :)

sightseeing, part 3

So after the Forbidden City we visited a silk museum and then made our way to lunch and then to the Great Wall. We visited the wall at a famous pass where there are a series of very steep steps to climb up to various watch towers. The steps are old and uneven so you have to climb very deliberately. In some places it was so steep that you had to pull yourself up by the hand rail. There were many people who gave up and just quit, sitting on the steps before even reaching the first watch tower. If you make it past the first tower there is a sign that says "hero cards" but the building where they give them out was closed so we just took our picture next to the sign. We walked up to the second watch tower and then waited for a little while but the wind was gusting pretty strong so we decided to come back down. Everyone in our group made it past the first tower and a few went all the way up past where we stopped. Ryan probably could have made it much further than me but my legs were like jello on the way back down. I'm glad we have tomorrow free to take it easy. We leave for the train station at 3 PM so we can just rest all morning, in case my legs are too sore from all the stairs. After the Great Wall we drove back into town, passing the olympic stadium. The photo of the odd shaped building with many identical buildings beside it is of a 7 star hotel that overlooks the olympic stadium and the water cube. Our bus driver said that he picked up Kobe Bryant at that hotel during the olympics. This is just adding to our new celebrity complex, we have the same bus driver as Kobe! My diabetes success for the day was that after walking about 3 hours through the Tainnemen/ Forbidden City area and then hiking up the Great Wall for an hour I still had a pre-dinner BG of 145! That after abruptly changing the time on my pump yesterday (go me!), no small feat. We went to dinner with the group and the coolest thing was I actually got to use some of my Chinese when I asked the waitress to split some of the bill onto our credit card. I said yi, bao, and then made a 0 with my hand for 180 yuan. The rest of the group was impressed. A year and a half of CDs and stuff is finally paying off. Off to rest, there are a ton of photos here and we have many more but it takes a while to upload them. I'll try to upload video footage of us climbing the Great Wall tomorrow AM. Zuo Tian (goodnight)!

sightseeing, part 2

The Forbidden City was the next stop. It is the former emperor's palace and grounds. Everything is ornate and you travel through many series of huge gates before getting to the various areas inside the compound (multiple palaces, political offices, residential wings for the royal family). The funniest moment inside the palaces was when one young Chinese man decided to grab my hands and practice his English with me (last photo above he is walking towards me). The conversation went something like this :
Him: hello hello
Me: hi, ni hao
Him: good you are in beijing, welcome to be enjoying in country
Me: yes, you have very good english
Him: hello hello hello (still holding my hands, still not letting go)
The best part is his nose was caked in snot so I may have contracted the bird flu but he was such a sweetheart and it was valentine's day so I humored him as long as I could and then said goodbye. So now I think I kind of know how celebrities feel. On the way to the bus after the tour we passed a family and the father waved me over to take a picture with his kids, random but they act like it totally makes their day so on we go. Grace told us we have big noses so we look different and that is why we get so much attention.

Crazy Day of Sightseeing

What a day! We've been on the go since 7 AM and it is now 8:45 PM local time.

I'll jump back to last night first: Ryan and I met up with Andrew Mak, an Air Products colleague now living in Hong Kong who was in Beijing on business. We took a walk around the neighborhood with our hotel and then had a fabulous dinner, highlights were hot chili oil beef (very hot Sichuan style) and the lily petals side dish. After dinner we tried to stay awake as long as we could so we wouldn't wake up too early but by 9:15 we were both fast asleep. Ryan woke up at 2:30 AM and did some email but I pretty much slept until 6 AM.

Our guide, Grace, met the four families in our group here at 8 AM and we headed to the first stop: Tiannemen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiannemen square was as huge as we expected and then some. Everything in Beijing is big but this place takes the cake. Tiannemen was the first place where we started getting our photos taken by young Chinese people. They were all very friendly and we just acted like rock stars and smiled for the camera. At the end of the square by the entrance to the Forbidden City is the famous giant photo of Chairman Mao. We of course had our photo taken there.

Welcome to Beijing

We made it! After a crazy landing in Newark due to high winds and a 14 hour flight we are here. The flight from Newark to Beijing was actually quite pleasant. They kept us well fed and we had an empty seat in our row so we were able to spread out a little. It's 2:30 AM CST and 4:30 PM Beijing time so we are exhausted but plan to stay up for a while. We need to go to the Wu-Mart to buy water for our trip tomorrow out to the Great Wall. Here are a few photos from today (us before and after the flight and the view from our hotel room), tomorrow we will have much better ones since we are actually sightseeing most of the day. Good evening/ morning to all of you!

Last weekend home

We leave for China on Thursday morning, so early you could say we leave Wed. night. I spent Thursday and Friday this week in Houston for work so I got back late Friday and just watched a movie and crashed early. Yesterday Ryan had his first track practice in the morning so I got up early with him and got started on the regular chores and packing. Our house always seems to be a mess so I spent the better part of the morning cleaning, after all we want it to look nice for Miss April who will be doggy-sitting for us while we are gone. Then after Ryan got home we made packing lists for all of the stuff we need to remember. I'm usually very nonchalant about packing for a trip because there's always the idea that if you forget something you can just pick it up later. However, being diabetic and using a medical device to keep you alive definitely adds a bit of complexity, especially when you're going to a country that doesn't have as easy access to medical supplies.

After the tedious list-making was done I got down to the fun business of packing up Bo's stuff. Well, I should say pre-packing as I just kind of threw it all in to make sure I wasn't bringing too much. I did pull a few items out but I'd rather Bo have a dozen outfits and I wear the same two things the whole time we're there. I've been waiting a long time to spoil this kid and I'm not waiting until we get home to start :)

Last night we went over to our friends Rob and Candace's house for a party. It was a small get together to celebrate their new home and Ryan and I's last hoorah without a babysitter to get home to. The weather was beautiful so we hung out outside and had a fire going just because it looks and smells good. Also, in full Louisiana fashion there was an amazing culinary treat to the evening. Candace's sister came over with some venison sausage and she made this bacon-wrapped loaf with the sausage, some bbq sauce, and chopped green onions in the middle, which she then cooked on the grill for about 40 minutes. Needless to say it was delicious and I will experiment with this idea when I get back.