China- Part 1

O'Hare airport- ready to go!

Climbing part of the Great Wall

Rickshaw ride thru a traditional neighborhood

Waitress at North Korean restaurant

And all the published works of North Korean's dictators on display

The entrance to the Forbidden City

The Bird's Nest dome from the Olympics

The pollution was bad in Jinan

Picture from the kids back home- Lake WI 

On July 1, Nate and I got an early morning drive to the GR airport from my brother Tim.  Saying goodbye to the kids the night before was hard.  I had quite a few doubts leading up to this trip, did God really have all of this under control?  But, God calmed my fears.  By the time we left for the airport I was at peace about leaving our kids for 16 days and bringing Lexi into our family.  I knew it was going to be challenging, but not impossible.

We had a 5 hour layover in O' Hare before our flight to Beijing.  The flight was 12 hours and it was brutal.  We were in coach and had very little leg room.  Nate lost feeling in his legs a couple times and neither of us slept much.  We were so excited to land in Beijing but also exhausted, we had been traveling for 24 hours.  We stayed at the Jianguo hotel.  The next day we met up with the other Bethany families and did some sightseeing.  Our guide, Tom was very knowledgeable and we learned much about China. We started at a cloisonne factory.  It is copper enamelware and this intricate, beautiful and unbreakable.  And expensive.  We then went to part of the Great Wall.  The weather was beautiful and hot.  Nate and I climbed one side of the mountain.  Nate and Craig climbed the other side while Beth and I cooled off.  The sheer amount of history in China is amazing.  Beijing is very modern and we didn't see many evidences of "old China."  China is an interesting mix of capitalism and communism.  We had a Chinese lunch, but much of it was fried.  That was surprising.  We then toured a jade artisan store.  Jade is beautiful and very expensive.  No jade souvenirs for the kids!  We walked thru part of the Olympic square and saw the bird's nest stadium and the cube- where the swimming races took place.

On July 4 our group went to Tiananmen Square- it is huge!  Mao's mausoleum in also on the square and there was a long line of people waiting to get in and walk past his body, kind of creepy.  We walked thru the Forbidden City, where the emperors used to live.  The Forbidden City is massive but there were probably 200,000 tourists pushing us along in a sea of humanity.  We tried to see the emperor's throne, but it was like a mosh pit with everyone jockeying to get a picture.  People who had travelled from outside Beijing were very excited to see white people and took pictures of us and with us.  Somewhere our pictures were up on Wechat and QQ, the Chinese version of facebook. The public bathrooms were also an experience.  They were squatty potty's and you bring your own toilet paper.  And there is no waiting in lines, women just push to whichever stall opens up.  I had to throw an elbow at an older lady who tried to push in front of me, just kidding- kind of.   Next we took a rickshaw ride thru an old Chinese neighborhood, there are only 100 of these neighborhoods left in Beijing.  We ate lunch at the home of a local family and again were surprised by the number of fried dishes we were served.  In the afternoon we went to a tea house and participated in a tea ceremony.  We sampled 5 kinds of tea, oolong ginseng was my favorite.  The tea ceremony is very artistic.  Next we went to an acrobatic show.  There were a couple amazing stunts, but overall the show wasn't very professional.  And some of the stunts we had seen at the Wisconsin Dells, ha!  For dinner, Nate and I went in search of a Korean restaurant and we found a North Korean restaurant!  It was a fascinating experience.  The waitresses were Chinese, wore beautiful hanboks and did not speak English.  The written works of North Korea's dictators were on display and North Korean propaganda TV was playing in the background.  Nate joked that just being in that restaurant would jeopardize his security clearance.

On July 5 we slept in and walked to Rinan Park.  It is interesting to see all the families with only 1-2 children and usually grandparents are with them.  We learned that China has changed the one child policy.  If one parent is an only child, then the couple may have two children.  That evening we took a bullet train to Jinan.  Traveling by bullet train is awesome! There is comfortable seating, it's fast and you can walk around. We arrived in Jinan and met our guide, Jane who would help with Lexi's adoption the next day.  We learned Jinan has 8 million people and some of the worst pollution we've ever seen.  We stayed at a very fancy hotel, The Hyatt Regency.  That night we tried to prepare for the big day ahead- meeting Lexi and adopting her!