Trying to catch up here before I get too far behind… A word of warning to anyone reading who didn’t read last time, I tend to be overly verbose and probably bore some of you with mundane details. I write this all for my son, so he (and we) can remember every moment of the trip… I just reread Leah’s travel blog prior to heading off for this trip, and I was surprised by how much I had forgotten. It was so wonderful to read them, and remember it all again. So I will do the same for Jack, recording as many details of our trip as I can remember. And also, no, I don’t edit... I spend way too much time writing this to begin with, so its here… typos, mixed up words and all. So here I go…
Thursday, Nov 25th – Friday, Nov 26th
Leaving home to start off for JFK...
Wednesday night we stayed at the Courtyard Marriot near JFK. It was a very nice hotel, but after checking out there overpriced and limited dinner menu, we decided to order pizza. We had a choice between two places… one was cheaper, and one had said on their menu “Food delivered piping hot”. Mental note: Always go for hot, over cheap. We chose the cheaper place, and ended up having to stomach luke-warm pizza, soggy cheesesticks, and some odd bread ball things with fluorescent green seasoning which were supposed to have been garlic knots. I wouldn’t go anywhere near them, but will never forget them. We should have taken a picture.
We woke up ridiculously early on Thursday, in order to make it onto the 5:30am shuttle to the airport. We are not early-risers by any stretch of the imagination, so Adam and I set six alarms… Laugh if you want, but it worked!! We were supposedly going to be subject to the huge holiday traveling rush, but there were only three couples on the shuttle. And when we got to the airport, the place was DEAD. We flew through check-in and security and then spent nearly 3 hours killing time in the JFK airport. We tried to walk as much as we could, but carrying about 20 pounds of paperwork, computers, extra clothes, etc. in our backpacks kind of hindered that. Our flight left on time and was pleasant enough (as much as 16 hours on a plane can be). Cathay Pacific is a superb airline, and they always seemed to be either feeding us or bringing around glasses of water. Adam and I both loved the in-seat entertainment – I think I watched 10 episodes of CSI and two full length movies. Adam watched five movies and some TV. It was a long flight, but it really wasn’t uncomfortable. We had plenty of room to maneuver, and the seats are such that the reclining seat doesn’t extend backwards, so we didn’t have to deal with limited space when the folks in front of us were sleeping. Sleeping was hard, though… exceptionally uncomfortable. We realized, though, after arriving in Hong Kong that we probably should have tried a little harder to sleep more on the plane. We were exhausted when we arrived.
I had completely forgotten how to navigate the Hong Kong airport, so it took a bit of confusion until we realized where we needed to head for our connecting flight. I was lucky to be able to find the great little noodle place Mom, Erin and I loved so much last time… it was a good meal, but our waiter forgot our order and we ended up with a dish called “fried noodles with bean sprouts” instead of with chicken as we’d requested. It doesn’t sound so bad upon reading it, but it had these dark long pieces of ‘something’ that we still don’t know what it was. Was it meat? Veggie? It kind of creeped me out - it was dark, slightly translucent... definitely something wierd and not chicken. Next time, don’t be groggy when the waiter comes by to verify your order.
Our flight to Beijing was smooth, but the airlines seats are super-tight… extremely limited leg room. Definitely not made for tall Americans. :) Didn’t bother Adam and I at all at that point though, we both slept like a rock on that flight and soon we had arrived in Beijing. Navigating the Beijing airport waseasy, and we were ecstatic to see that all three pieces of our luggage had made it. Nothing worse that packing 2 bags full of what you consider complete essentials for this adoption trip, and then having luggage go missing. We stopped to use the bathroom before leaving, and I had my first encounter of the trip with a squatty potty. And yes, I had to pull out my camera and take a picture. (sorry!) The funny thing was, though, was that as I was leaving, I realized that they had several western toilets had I ventured in a few stalls further. Next time, always look for western toilets first.
We were told that our Beijing guide George was going to be picking us up at the airport. But we quickly learned that the gentlemen holding a “CCAI” sign, spoke no English at all and couldn't possibly be our guide. Not a problem at all, though, since we were too tired to carry on a conversation anyways - I just spent the whole ride hoping that this guy was legit and not some scam artist posing as a driver for US adoptive families carrying large sums of cash. Yes, my paranoia was on overdrive after 30 hours of travel and breathed a sigh of relief when we pulled up in front of the Traders Hotel in Beijing. The drive to the hotel was easy… Adam was surprised to see that a freeway in China looks just like a freeway at home. It seems like such an obvious thing, but I remember feeling the same way. It still hasn’t sunk it that we’ve arrived in China. We checked in, exchanged some money, and then setup the computer. We are using ExpressVPN to be able to access blogger and Facebook, since both of those are blocked in China, and its working great. We called our guide to get all the info we needed for meeting up with the group on Saturday…. 8:30am our day will start – were going to be heading to the Great Wall, the Olympic buildings, and an acrobatic show. I’m super excited about the show… this was one thing I missed not seeing last time, and our travel group was supposed to have done this today but somehow it got pushed off a day. We can’t wait!
After the shop, we were off to the Great Wall! We visited the same stretch of wall that Mom, Erin and I did last time. I think I’d forgotten what a tough climb it is… lots of steep stairs, some extremely tall (even for tall folks like us)… I decided to stop when we reached the first main landing, and Adam headed onto the “top”. I figured, once in a lifetime is enough to go all the way to the top, and this time I was going to play it easy (and I don't even think I'd call it 'easy'). Plus, I remembered how tense it is when heading down… your legs are like jelly and again, it’s extremely steep so I end up gripping the hand-rail to make sure I don’t trip… so I wanted to save some stamina for that. I definitely wasn’t the only one who decided the first stop was far enough, so that was comforting. The wall was also extremely crowded, so it added to my anxiety about navigating it. The reward for me at the end was finding a place selling Coke Light (Diet Coke in China). I grabbed one for then, and three for later! Heavenly! 
After the Great Wall, we headed to the Friendship Store/Cloisonné Factory for lunch and some more tourist shopping. (same place we went, Mom & Erin!) Lunch was great… it was served family style, and there was plenty to go around. We ate with a wonderful family who is traveling with three children… you should have seen the older boys eyes light up when they brought out a basket of French fries! I imagine my girls would react exactly the same way! After lunch, we stopped by the Olympic buildings. We got to get some pictures of the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. We had thought we’d be able to go inside, but we were only given 30 minutes time and quickly realized that we had misunderstood. Apparently, some folks from our group made it up to the buildings and found that they had a $10 entrance fee… so we probably would have skipped anyways. Adam and I walked up the walkway until we were about to hit another security checkpoint, and we had just walked past a crowd of people surrounding what we thought was a dead body. Time to take our pics and leave! (the “dead” man was walking around as we were heading back, thank goodness, don’t know why he was collapsed on the ground previously but he was apparently fine). 
Our final stop of the day was a Chinese Acrobat show… which was breathtaking. The theater was rather run-down, but the show more than made up for it. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves (I was trying to upload some short videos I captured, but its estimating 30 minutes each for them to upload, so that's a No Go)… imagine a full hour packed with amazing performances such as these. It was definitely the highlight of my day. 
For dinner, we headed to a nearby Thai restaurant and dined with a fellow BaiChina (a yahoogroup for adoptive families with children with albinism) mom and her mom. Her oldest son is from the same orphanage Jack is from, and she is here to bring home her third son with albinism. It was a lovely evening! Dinner was a super spicy fried rice… it was delish if you could get past the fact that your mouth was on fire. We came back to the room and packed back up again… we head out at 8am to go to Zhengzhou in the Henan Province, where in less than 36 hours, we should be meeting our son!! We're missing the girls like crazy, but know that they are in great hands... love you girls, can't wait to have ALL my kids together when we come home!
