Our trip to China - Beijing

We've been home for two weeks and I am just now getting up the first blog post about our trip. I'm sorry! I've been a little busy recovering from jet lag, parenting a new toddler, cocooning, going crazy, processing our trip, downloading and sorting pictures, spending time with our kids who we missed SO much and whatever else one might do who just brought home a newly adopted child.

I was planning on blogging while we were in China, but that didn't work out, so I made a FB group and tried to update that daily. But I also want to record it here on this blog for memory's sake. I am going to do 3 blog posts about our trip, one for each city we stayed in. So, without further ado.......Beijing!

We left our house early early Thursday morning and headed to the airport. We left out house at 3:30 to get to the airport by 4:15. Leaving that morning was so hard. I had kissed all the kids goodnight the night before knowing I wouldn't do that again for 2 weeks and I had to hold back tears for each one. Brayden actually woke up to see us off that morning. I found out once we got home that Preston woke up at 2 am, went back to sleep hoping to wake up again before we left, but he didn't wake up until 4 and we were already gone. He said he cried from 4-6 am. So sad!! I wish there was a way to stay home and get Kailin at the same time, I would've done it!

 

Our flight to San Franscisco left DIA at 6 am and then we had about a 3 hour layover in San Francisco before boarding our plane to Beijing. We got a little breakfast and then just walked up and down the concourses until it was time to board. Don't let that exciting sentence fool you - it was boring! Chris' brother Jeremy was flying through San Francisco that same day on his way to Guatemala for a work trip, but we only got to see him for about 10 minutes between when his flight landed and we had to board.

 

Our flight to Beijing was very uneventful and very boring. We tried to sleep a little, but it felt like daytime to our bodies so we weren't super tired. We mostly watched movies, read and played games on our phones. At least we weren't trying to keep any kids entertained!



11 hours later - we're in the same country as Kailin! (and never more far away from our other kids)

We landed in Beijing at 2 in the afternoon on Friday, but to us, it felt like the middle of the night. We were tired, but excited and running on adrenaline and nerves. Once we got through customs and got our baggage, we met our guide, Rocky, who took us to our hotel. He also had some updated pictures of Kailin, so that was really fun to get to see her face, knowing we would be holding her in just 2 days!! We hadn't planned on spending any time in Beijing, but it worked out much better to fly into Beijing than to fly directly to Kailin's province. We also allowed one extra day for travel there because we didn't want to get delayed and possibly miss gotcha day. Bonus: we got 1 day in Beijing to sight see!

Waiting in customs

Waiting in customs

We drove about one hour to our hotel and let me tell you - traffic in China is crazy! There are tons of cars on the road and no one really drives in a lane and if you choose to change lanes, you just do. Cars get within inches of each other and no one freaks out, it's just normal. And horns: they are used to let people know you are there, not to honk at someone if they are bothering you. People use their horns ALL THE TIME! I really wasn't that nervous though, we had good drivers and I'm just glad they didn't expect us to rent a car and drive in it!

Once we got to our hotel, we had about an hour and a half to shower and get ready before going out to dinner and to an acrobatic show. Even though we were tired, I think it was good to not have down time that night as we would have just ended up falling asleep right away and not getting used to China time. I think not going to bed until normal time did help with jet lag. Even though we were up at 3 or 4 am in the morning and couldn't sleep!

Our hotel was super nice - 5 star! It felt safe though, and that's probably why our agency chooses those nicer hotels over saving a few bucks a night but having us in a sketchy place.

In the hotel lobby

In the hotel lobby

The dinner we went to that night was my favorite of the whole trip! Our guide, Rocky, took us to an authentic Chinese place and ordered for us, because really, how could we make any sort of an informed decision and he went to this place all the time! We had our own private room to eat in even!! These spicy pork noodles were amazing! I could have just eaten those for dinner and been good. We also had dumplings and veggies and chicken, so much food and it was all delicious!

see our guide taking a picture of me taking a picture of the food? He thought it was hilarious

the restaurant - I think we were on the 5th floor

 After dinner we went over the acrobatic show. I really wasn't too excited about it, I was really tired and a bed sounded really good at that point. But, I was pleasantly surprised, it was a great show!!! The performers looked like kids, some as young as elementary school and maybe on up to early 20's. They did some incredible gymnastics stunts, it was really entertaining.



the theater where the acrobatic show was

Finally around 9 we got back to the hotel and got to Skype with the kids. It was so good to see them, but bittersweet knowing we would be Skyping a lot for the next couple weeks and wouldn't get to see them in person for a long time.  We fell asleep right after Skyping, but like I said, we were both up by 4 am, wide awake!



Chris at breakfast

The next morning we had to meet our guide in the lobby at 7:45 to check out and get going on our day of sight seeing before catching our flight to Fuzhou later that afternoon. Since we were both up so early, we enjoyed slowly getting ready and heading down to the breakfast buffet right when it opened. Our hotel was 2 km (don't ask me what that is in miles, I still can't convert that!) from Tiananmen Square and Chris and I both thought it'd be cool to see it, but we only had about 45 minutes to walk down there, see it and walk back. After we walked about 15 minutes we thought we would be getting close, but we still didn't see it or any signs for it, so we ended up just walking around this little park and then walking back.

 

 

Once we got back to the hotel and checked out, we started off our day of sightseeing by driving past the water cube from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. It was cool to see. We weren't there very long before we were on our way to the Jade Factory.

 



The jade factory was really cool, it's where they carve and cut the jade and use it for jewelry, sculptures, all sorts of stuff!

A man carving the jade family ball

Outside the jade factory - these lions are everywhere! This is the female lion



The is the male lion

For an measly $60,000 this jade ship can be yours!!!

After the jade factory we drove about an hour through the countryside to the Great Wall. We rode a gondola up to the top and took a sled down, kind of like an alpine slide. We stayed up on the Great Wall for about an hour just walking around, trying to take it all in. It's really incredible to think it was built over 2000 years ago, considering the enormity of it and the lack of technology they would have had. Hiking on the Great Wall felt so surreal, that's when it finally hit me: We're in China! On the Great Wall! Tomorrow we get Kailin! We hiked as much as our legs could stand (it's steep!!) and rode the toboggan down.

T-shirt vendor outside the entrance to the Great Wall - notice the Obama shirt?
It says Oba Mao (in reference to their strict communist leader)

Every so often there was a building, I assume that's where people kept watch from?

Inside one of the buildings

 

 

 

 

me on the toboggan - Chris was breaking the rules by taking my pic! ;)

 

At the bottom were these guys dressed up who stopped us to take a picture. They basically wouldn't let us pass. So we took our pictures and then they begged for money. We weren't about to tip them since they didn't give us a choice - we just claimed we couldn't understand them!

 

 

After the Great Wall we drove to the airport and said goodbye to our guide. Here we are with him.

 


Next stop: Fuzhou!