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!
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