Thanks for the encouraging emails and prayers from back home! It means a lot! We are really enjoying China! It is not at all what I expected. Everywhere you look there are massive high rise buildings under construction adorned in scaffolding. They are in the process of building 64 new hotels for the Olympic Games. None of us can imagine what impact that will have on travel throughout the city! It is crowded here already and people are everywhere! The traffic reminds me of New York City but in many respects it is far worse as there are several bicycles, and buses all merging into each other! The streets seem to flow in a circular pattern and cars driving in 6 different directions meet up at several intersections. It is a bit strange but we have seen very few children here. The families that were here a few years ago adopting say that it is changed dramatically from what they remember. I thought we would see a lot of smog and perhaps have difficulty breathing, but to be honest it is not bad at all! High rise apartment buildings line the streets everywhere in Beijing and it is really strange not seeing any houses anywhere.
Today we visited the very impressive Tiananmen Square and I was really struck by the admiration and respect the local Chinese have for their history. People were lined up for hours just to make a visit inside the palace where Chairman Mao's body is preserved. After that, we ventured into the Forbidden City where Tracy gave us an extensive history lesson on the Ming and Qing dynasties and the significance of the colors and the importance of the Meridian Gates. Tracy is very knowledgeable and really has taught us a great deal about the Chinese culture.
Our group doubled in size today as many of the families adopting special needs children have joined us! What a wonderful group of people here! We will split up from them on Sunday when we each move on to the respective provinces where our children are residing, but we will all meet up again next Friday at the White Swan hotel in Guangzhou. Everyone is having a blast and we are all handling the street vendors without any problems.
Our interesting adventure for the day happened this morning when we were standing in the hotel lobby waiting for our group to assemble when we look up to find a group of soldiers marching towards us with machine guns drawn! Turns out they were only here to change the money in the ATM machine but it sends a shiver down your spine to think about having a gun pointed at you from 10 feet away! I had to quickly grab Emily as she was turning cartwheels in close proximity to them! YIKES!!
This evening we went to a Chinese Acrobatic show! It was fabulous! My body hurts just watching them bend the way they do! Emily and Zoe have a new friend who joined us today and that is Tim and Deb's little girl Katharine! We still attract a lot of attention and people are very curious about the girls!
Diane and I walked to the grocery store down the block and this store would put our Giant Eagle to shame! I am not kidding when I tell you over 100 people worked in this grocery store! Every aisle had workers busy stocking the shelves and pointing out items they thought we might need! :) The store had a pharmacy and we estimated at least 40 workers were behind the counters in that section alone. After that we went into KFC to bring home chicken to Zoe, Emily, and Rudy. It is an interesting experience to be the minority for once! They had to pull out a picture menu and point to what we wanted and the quantity. They show us a calculator in order to tell us what we owe in Yuans.
I bet you can't guess what our group had for dinner tonight? Answer: Pizza again! This is the coolest group to travel with and we all like junk food! So far we have had pizza Hut and Amigos Pizza 2x, KFC, and McDonalds! We don't eat this much American food at home! Dinner tomorrow night will be Mexican food!
We received updates on our babies today from Tracy. Abigail is said to be a very happy baby who smiles often and doesn't show any distress with strangers! I will be able to let you know if that holds true as we will receive our babies on Sunday. In fact, the next post you read from Abigail, Meika, and Ava will be after we have the girls! So please keep them in your prayers that this transition isn't too traumatic for them!
I better get to bed as we are heading off to climb The Great Wall and visit the Summer Palace in the morning Don't worry, we are finally having Chinese Food tomorrow as we have an agency lunch!
God Bless!
