We have made it! We are finally on the same side of the planet as Ellie! It has been a whirlwind so far, so I apologize for just now updating on our travels. We left our house at about 4:20am Thursday morning, flew from Jacksonville to Chicago, and then flew 13.5 hours to Beijing. The flight to Beijing wasn't terrible, but it was long. We arrived in Beijing at 3:15pm on Friday China time, which was about 23 hours elapsed time of travel for us. A guide picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel. The weather in Beijing is warm/hot, but about the same or as Florida. Tom and I went to the room to unload our things and then found a Chinese restaurant in the hotel. We had Kung pao chicken, sweet and sour shrimp, and dumplings. It was very delicious. After dinner we were able to FaceTime with the boys for a few minutes and then we finally fell asleep around 8pm local time. I was wide awake the next morning at 3:30am due to the time adjustment. We had to be up incredibly early Saturday to catch our flight to Kunming, so I wasn't terribly concerned with trying to sleep longer and adjust quite yet. We decided instead to go ahead and get ready for the day. Our hotel is about a mile from Tiananmen Square, so we took a nice morning walk there. It was early, so the weather was nice. On the way there we walked down a back street, which was fairly quiet and scenic. We walked past the French Embassy, which was impressive. We got to the entrance to the square area and decided we didn't have enough time to go through security and actually enter the square, so we just saw it from across the road. We then walked back on a more busy main road. When we got back to the hotel we ate breakfast. The breakfast buffet had western and Chinese foods. We then met our guide with another adoptive family and started the trip to the Great Wall.
Jacksonville, FL is the largest city by land mass in the continental US. It has nothing on Beijing! 2 hours into our van ride to the Great Wall, we were still in Beijing! We were able to see some of the country side, which was beautiful. We took a ski lift up the mountain to the wall. It was very scenic and pretty scary! Tom and I walked a fair ways on the wall. It has steps and walkways, but parts are very steep. The view is beautiful and of course the wall extends further than we could see. Our guide gave us some history of the wall while on the way there. It was built under three dynasties, each one making it longer and/or taller. She said it was 6,000km or about 3,700 miles! Not all parts of the wall are still maintained by the government and are climb at your own risk. The section we were at though, Mutianyu section, is very well maintained though. Every couple hundred feet or so there was a watchtower, and some of the watchtowers had steps to go on top of it. One of them had a very small cannon. After spending a while on the wall we took a toboggan sled down the mountain. That was very fun! We left the Great Wall and traveled back to the center of Beijing to an acrobat show. The show was similar to what you see acrobats do at the circus in the US. It was pretty impressive. Our guide then took us to a small restaurant famous for Peking noodles. From there we went back to the hotel.
We woke up at 3:30 this morning to get ready to head to Kunming. Ellie lives in Kunming. The Beijing airport is massive and I'm glad our guide had us get there early. The bus ride from the terminal to the plane was almost a half hour. A meal was served on the plane. I'm not sure what it was...but it was pretty decent. We recognized vanilla yogurt, rolls, and a muffin. We added some type of pickled vegetables to some type of porridge. Tom liked it, but the pickled vegetables weren't really my thing. The porridge was pretty good though. We were the only non-Chinese folks on the plane, so we just watched what everyone else was doing, which is how we knew to add the vegetables to the porridge. The flight from Beijing to Kunming was about three hours.
We arrived and Kunming and it was very literally a breath of fresh air. It's much cooler here with a nice breeze and much less pollution than Beijing. Our guide, Susan, met us at the airport and we drove almost an hour to the hotel where she checked us in and took us to get lunch. Susan has met Ellie a few times and says she is so beautiful, always smiling and laughing, has such a good temperament, is very smart, and her nannies are very proud of her and proud that she is being adopted. The honor is ours.
Right now we are a little less than three miles from Ellie. It's a bit surreal after all this time and being so far apart to finally be here. We will meet Ellie at 3pm tomorrow afternoon (3am EST). We are nervous and excited!!
Please pray for all three of us, for calm spirits and especially for Ellie.
The boys seems to be doing well at home, though we miss them a lot. Charlie has been sick since before we left, but after another doctor's visit Saturday morning, it sounds like there is a good plan to get him feeling better soon. Please continue to pray for them as well. Next update: Ellie is ours!
Right after we landed in China
Dumplings
At The Great Wall
Acrobat show
Kunming
0 comments:
Post a Comment