I feel like I should be dramatic while writing this and say "Where did we last leave the main characters of our story? Oh yes, about to board Cathay Pacific Flight 390 from Hong Kong to Beijing." But I won't. I'll just say we checked in to our flight, our luggage did NOT weigh too much, and I was the only blonde in the airport in our general vicinity. That's okay though, blonde hair is awesome.
After an uneventful security screening and on-time boarding (what?), we settled into our seats to enjoy a much shorter flight. Ironically, in the past flying for more than two or so hours usually gets me a little nervous. This flight was about three and a half--and
flew by! (HA!) It could have been the jet lag, it could have been the amazing amenities on the plane itself, or it could have been our previous sixteen hour flight the day before that put it into perspective. Yeah, it was probably that.
Since it was morning, and we were all kinds of messed up, I decided to go for a second breakfast. Neither of us remember what Derek chose for breakfast--probably something healthy, light, and Western, but I was feeling so good that I decided to full-on immerse myself in the Asian culture and choose their Asian breakfast option. After all, all of the books and blogs and facebook groups told me this is most likely what my son has been eating for breakfast his whole life, so why shouldn't I give it a try? When I told the flight attendant my choice, she looked at me very strangely. "You want...the congee?"
Yes please, the chicken congee. "It is...Asian? You know this?"
Yes ma'am, thank you" I said with a smile. Friends, this is what it looked like. Congee is basically watery, boiled down, rice porridge that may have bits of egg and chicken (or pork, or can be plain). It looked...as appetizing as that picture shows. I did have a few bites, and truly it was not bad. Derek couldn't even watch me eat it or look at the tray until the flight attendant took it away. Honestly though, this was a fantastic way to pass an hour of a flight: How many times can you gross out your husband just by eating your breakfast? I will admit I have never made this since being home, and Jet doesn't seem to miss it. Maybe he does, I don't know, but he hasn't told me.
The Beijing airport was just like any other airport you've probably been in, except cleaner and in our opinion, more organized. In fact, all of the airports in China were similarly structured and had the absolute cleanest public restrooms I have ever seen. (This is very important to me.) Once we landed, we boarded a transport train to take us from our gate to wherever our luggage was. This is an actual photo, taken by Derek at about his eye level. I also would have taken a picture, but I had a woman actually leaning on me. I don't believe for support; it may have just been that crowded or I seemed approachable. (FYI, that's not true. If you look up personal space issues in the dictionary you'll probably see my picture.)
Once we got our luggage, we headed off to find someone from our agency who we were told would pick us up and drive us to our hotel. Since we did not take a photo of the people all waiting at the gate for pick ups, let me paint this picture for you. Before I do that, I just want to say there have been actual studies done by reputable statisticians that note that to each race, other races look the same. I'm sorry if that offends you, but I do believe there's some truth to that and have discussed it with my non-Caucasian friends who also agree. Plus, the color of good fortune or good luck in China is red. Now that I've cleared those two things up, Derek and I turned the corner with all of our luggage and see about a hundred people who to us look very similar, all waving some sort of red or white with red on it sign. Some of the signs were very professional with the passengers' names (we're assuming, we don't read or speak Mandarin) and others were handwritten.
In order to find our agency rep, we had to walk past all of these people waving signs and staring at us, because for obvious reasons, we stuck out. This is where Derek was actually starting to get nervous. Here we are, with absolutely no knowledge of the language, and no way to contact anyone easily ( as our phones had yet to start working again after turning them back on). We finally, finally found someone holding a piece of paper with CCAI written on it with a Sharpie marker holding a small red pennant type flag also saying CCAI. Hooray! We found our rep.
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| Derek, probably praying we would end up at hotel. |
Except, this was not our rep. This gentleman spoke absolutely no English. This was, I think I can now say at that point, Derek's worst fear being realized. The man confirmed somehow that we were who we said we were, and handed us his cell phone. Apparently, our actual agency rep was with two other families who arrived a few days before us and they were taking some time sightseeing. He assured us that this man would get us a cab, the fare would be paid, and we would end up at our hotel. This was, by very definition, blind faith.
What did we do? We went with it! What else could we do? In retrospect, we are very thankful we were with an agency who took such good care of us while we were in country because while we were there and since being home have heard horror stories of families being taken advantage of. This was, yet another example of the small ways God was reassuring us that we would be taken care of. The cab ride was interesting. Since we were in a big city we could almost pretend we were in the States, but the architecture, signs, and even the cars and pedestrians made it clear we weren't in Kansas anymore.
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| This was the best I could do leaving the airport. |
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| Apartments |
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| Not sure why we took this, but we did... |
Our time in Beijing was only about twenty four hours. We checked into our hotel, ordered room service, did a little bit of walking, had dinner, and went to bed. We did zero sightseeing in Beijing except for walking around the area of the hotel.
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| Sunworld Dynasty |
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| Romantic |
In case you were curious, we stayed at the
Sunworld Dynasty Hotel in Beijing. All of the hotels CCAI puts their families up in are at least 4 star, but the majority were 5 star. We had truly made it in life, clearly. Fun fact: for every hotel we stayed in, all of the bathrooms had clear glass windows open to the room with giant soaking tubs and gigantic showers. This is generally something that you see at like...all inclusive resorts in Cabo or Jamaica. This was unexpected here. We did not order nor did we expect the honeymoon suite at every hotel we stayed at, but apparently it was just standard. Had we been feeling up to it, we were within walking distance to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, but truly just wanted to relax. We knew the next few weeks would be busy with travel and meeting our son, and our main priority for being there wasn't for sightseeing.
After a gourmet meal of room service chicken nuggets and fries (neither of us were feeling super great yet at that point because of no sleep and not having a regular meal schedule--we are very particular about that--we did venture off to do some exploring around the area. We also had received another call from our Beijing rep (who was stuck in traffic) and he advised us to find a bank to change over a not small but not large amount of our USD to RMB, so at that point I headed back to sleep and Derek searched out a bank. He located one around the corner and down a ways but of course it closed around 6 p.m. and it was 6:30 p.m. at that point. We decided to eat dinner at the buffet and then call it a night. The inside of the hotel was absolutely beautiful by the way. Everything in China--even if it was a "chain" was ornate and unique to each location.
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| Buffet from above |
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| Indoor courtyard |
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| Lobby |
Sunday morning we woke up feeling pretty refreshed, and again excited to get this show on the road. I would just like to say the people who tell you that Beijing is dirty and smoggy? We did not experience that at all. Beautiful, clear blue sky both days and sunshine. It really felt like walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago. We did some exploring around the area and found it to not be very crowded at all. Whether this was because it was still early (9ish a.m.) or a Sunday we don't know. We found out there was a (state-approved) church a little bit of a walk from the hotel but did not want to get too close in case of offending anyone there. However, the architecture was beautiful so I still snapped a quick photo. We did see many larger stores, with sports paraphernalia AND an Apple store, very exciting. On the lower levels of these stores you might be able to see tiny little shops that sold specifically to tourists, some of them very insistently. Considering we were Americans we were very clearly tourists, and more than once had a hard time shaking them off. (The shopper in me did want to stop, because there were many pretty things like scarves, jewelry, carvings, etc., but I knew we wanted to hold out to make sure we got authentic items.)
We did finally find the bank Derek had discovered the night before. Hopefully I didn't break any laws by taking a photo, but it was a very interesting experience. Once again, the language barrier was an issue and the people working at this particular bank either spoke very little English or none at all, so there was a lot of gesturing and writing. Ideally, our guide would have been with us but that wasn't a possibility Sunday morning either (since he was making sure our transportation back to the Beijing airport was lined up, etc...I don't want anyone thinking he wasn't doing his job! There were a lot of behind the scenes things the guides took care of for the families so that we had as stress free experience as possible and could spend the weeks in country focusing on our children.) Also, the exchange rate is significantly different, so the USD we changed over seemed like a small amount but both of us were nervous walking back to the hotel carrying such a huge amount of RMB.
We made it, safely, and were able to check out of our hotel room and finally meet the other two families who were traveling with us. Both families had previously adopted from China and had brought their daughters with them, which I'm sure was a very special experience for all of them. The one family was also adopting a little boy like us, and the other was adopting a twelve-year old girl about to age out of the system. As we were walking up to meet then, our faces must have been very transparent, because (I can't remember who it was--Jennifer or Rebecca maybe you'll remember) one of the moms took one look at us and said "first time?" and we said yes...and they said "first child?" And again, we said yes. Clearly, we must not have looked as confident as we were feeling but we were so thankful to be traveling with these families who had not only adopted from China before, but also had used the same agency and were believers. What a relief for us! Shortly after introductions, and a quick prayer, it was off to the airport again to fly a much shorter trip to Zhengzhou, where we would all meet our children the next day!
Before I end this incredibly long description of our 24 hour whirlwind in Beijing, I wanted to also say Derek and I do have one regret about not touring anything in Beijing. You see, Jet was being cared for in a private foster home called Morning Star, located in Beijing. We were under the impression we would not be able to visit him or the facility since his "home" city and provincial orphanage was Pingdingshan, Zhengzhou. However, it wasn't until about a month or so ago that we discovered we could have toured the facility and met his precious Ayi who cared and loved him as her own son. If you are interested in Morning Star or would like to support their foundation, I would encourage you to visit their website
here and check it out. Not only does your financial support go toward sponsoring the 10-12 babies in need of lifesaving heart surgery, medication, and care, you can also support family preservation by providing lifesaving heart surgery that parents in China simply cannot afford (and subsequently would be face with very hard decisions, including abandoning their child.) Please, please check it out. Without this organization, and this is not an exaggeration, we truly do not believe our son would be alive today.
Thanks for sticking with us so far. I promise, the fun stuff is coming soon!
I feel like I should be dramatic while writing this and say "Where did we last leave the main characters of our story? Oh yes, about to board Cathay Pacific Flight 390 from Hong Kong to Beijing." But I won't. I'll just say we checked in to our flight, our luggage did NOT weigh too much, and I was the only blonde in the airport in our general vicinity. That's okay though, blonde hair is awesome.
Since it was morning, and we were all kinds of messed up, I decided to go for a second breakfast. Neither of us remember what Derek chose for breakfast--probably something healthy, light, and Western, but I was feeling so good that I decided to full-on immerse myself in the Asian culture and choose their Asian breakfast option. After all, all of the books and blogs and facebook groups told me this is most likely what my son has been eating for breakfast his whole life, so why shouldn't I give it a try? When I told the flight attendant my choice, she looked at me very strangely. "You want...the congee?" Yes please, the chicken congee. "It is...Asian? You know this?" Yes ma'am, thank you" I said with a smile. Friends, this is what it looked like. Congee is basically watery, boiled down, rice porridge that may have bits of egg and chicken (or pork, or can be plain). It looked...as appetizing as that picture shows. I did have a few bites, and truly it was not bad. Derek couldn't even watch me eat it or look at the tray until the flight attendant took it away. Honestly though, this was a fantastic way to pass an hour of a flight: How many times can you gross out your husband just by eating your breakfast? I will admit I have never made this since being home, and Jet doesn't seem to miss it. Maybe he does, I don't know, but he hasn't told me.
The Beijing airport was just like any other airport you've probably been in, except cleaner and in our opinion, more organized. In fact, all of the airports in China were similarly structured and had the absolute cleanest public restrooms I have ever seen. (This is very important to me.) Once we landed, we boarded a transport train to take us from our gate to wherever our luggage was. This is an actual photo, taken by Derek at about his eye level. I also would have taken a picture, but I had a woman actually leaning on me. I don't believe for support; it may have just been that crowded or I seemed approachable. (FYI, that's not true. If you look up personal space issues in the dictionary you'll probably see my picture.)
After a gourmet meal of room service chicken nuggets and fries (neither of us were feeling super great yet at that point because of no sleep and not having a regular meal schedule--we are very particular about that--we did venture off to do some exploring around the area. We also had received another call from our Beijing rep (who was stuck in traffic) and he advised us to find a bank to change over a not small but not large amount of our USD to RMB, so at that point I headed back to sleep and Derek searched out a bank. He located one around the corner and down a ways but of course it closed around 6 p.m. and it was 6:30 p.m. at that point. We decided to eat dinner at the buffet and then call it a night. The inside of the hotel was absolutely beautiful by the way. Everything in China--even if it was a "chain" was ornate and unique to each location.
Sunday morning we woke up feeling pretty refreshed, and again excited to get this show on the road. I would just like to say the people who tell you that Beijing is dirty and smoggy? We did not experience that at all. Beautiful, clear blue sky both days and sunshine. It really felt like walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago. We did some exploring around the area and found it to not be very crowded at all. Whether this was because it was still early (9ish a.m.) or a Sunday we don't know. We found out there was a (state-approved) church a little bit of a walk from the hotel but did not want to get too close in case of offending anyone there. However, the architecture was beautiful so I still snapped a quick photo. We did see many larger stores, with sports paraphernalia AND an Apple store, very exciting. On the lower levels of these stores you might be able to see tiny little shops that sold specifically to tourists, some of them very insistently. Considering we were Americans we were very clearly tourists, and more than once had a hard time shaking them off. (The shopper in me did want to stop, because there were many pretty things like scarves, jewelry, carvings, etc., but I knew we wanted to hold out to make sure we got authentic items.) 
We did finally find the bank Derek had discovered the night before. Hopefully I didn't break any laws by taking a photo, but it was a very interesting experience. Once again, the language barrier was an issue and the people working at this particular bank either spoke very little English or none at all, so there was a lot of gesturing and writing. Ideally, our guide would have been with us but that wasn't a possibility Sunday morning either (since he was making sure our transportation back to the Beijing airport was lined up, etc...I don't want anyone thinking he wasn't doing his job! There were a lot of behind the scenes things the guides took care of for the families so that we had as stress free experience as possible and could spend the weeks in country focusing on our children.) Also, the exchange rate is significantly different, so the USD we changed over seemed like a small amount but both of us were nervous walking back to the hotel carrying such a huge amount of RMB. 