Trip to China
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Friday, March 28, 2008 2:34 PM Ni hao ya’ll…we have arrived in Beijing safe and sound and pretty exhausted. The trip over was hard and long so we are very happy to be here. We met up with many people in our group last night at the airport. We really have a great group of people who are adopting children of all ages from any different provinces. I can’t wait to meet their children and hear about the different places they have been. Our first trip as a group was last night to the 24-hour store for bottled water and snacks. Dan and I of course got the water, a local beer and cherry tomato flavored Lays…yummy! This morning began our first big day in Beijing and what a day it was. I have not yet wrapped my brain around being in China, what we saw today and what will be happening to us in 3 days. Our day began with meeting in the Germany Food Festival restaurant for our breakfast. We ate eggs (well cooked), Chinese noodles, coffee and tea, and breakfast meat. I (Erin) was a bit more adventurous and ate some fried tomato and cheese, a green vegetable of some type, dim sum, and banana bread. The food was very good and Dan doesn’t seem to be as worried about starving as he once was. We then hopped on the bus with our wonderful guide Elsie and our tour guide (can’t recall his name, but he was excellent). Our first stop was a Hu Tong tour. Hu Tongs are the traditional housing in Beijing where each house shares a back courtyard with other families. We rode around in ric shaws. Our driver wanted to race everyone else and often came close to crashing! It was great to see a train of 15 ric shaws cruising through the very narrow streets. After seeing some beautiful sights such as the local river, the drum tower (used to let Beijing residents know what time it was in ancient days) and a few parks, our Hu Tong guide Harry took us to a Kindergarten to watch the children play. We walked in to a game of what seemed to be the Chinese version of “duck, duck, goose”. The kids are so cute and were thrilled to be watched while playing. After all of that excitement it was time for lunch. We were taken down one of the narrow Hu Tong streets to a home of a local resident where she and her family prepared lunch for our whole group. We ate lots of vegetables, peanuts, meatballs, dumplings and bread. It was very good. Following our lunch, we literally raced back to the bus in the ric shaws and headed off to the Temple of Heaven. Our wonderful guide gave us a lot of history on these beautiful buildings. The Temple is on over 600 acres of land and was used by the emperors during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It was completed in 1420. The Emperor Yongle who, created the temple also moved the capital of China from Nanjing (where we will meet Nicholas) to Beijing. He was the 3rd emperor in the Ming Dynasty. Yeah…I’m a geek and took notes.

A huge thrill for me was standing on the center stone of the temple. I learned on the travel channel about this amazing place and they stated that the emperors all stood on this platform to be close to Heaven…I knew I wanted to stand on it someday and I DID! Beth…do you wanna know what else I did? I used a squatty potty twice! Not as bad as I imagined but thank goodness someone told me to bring tissues everywhere with me. The hand sanitizer has also come in handy! After the temple, we came back to the hotel. The next trip is to an Acrobat Show but Dan and I are hanging back to dry off from the rain and catch a cat nap before we meet up with the group tonight to go to Wangfujing Street, the most famous street in Beijing. After 6:00 they have their evening market where food vendors set up in addition to all the shopping. I can’t wait to eat…look out Andrew Zimmern (host of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel). We want to thank each of you who has posted on our guestbook and called to give us your wishes. We won’t have time to respond to all of the posts but please know we are appreciative and love reading each of the messages. We are so blessed to have each of you supporting us, those we know and love and those we don’t know who are interested in our story. Until tomorrow…zai jian!

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