Thanks so much for visiting us during our journey, Charles, Terri, Dalen and Annalei!
March 14 - 15, 2006
WOW!! We can not believe we are in Beijing! After all the months of waiting, worrying, crying and praying - we have finally begun the final leg of our journey to bring Annalei home. Before we continue, let's rewind 24 hrs.
Right now it's 5 am Wed. March 15 Indiana time (6 pm Beijing time). Roughly 24 hrs ago Dalen and Annalei's papa Dow was getting ready to take us to the Indy Airport. Mama and Papa Eaton stayed the night at our house and will care for Dalen. We made our 7:45 am flight to Newark with no issues. The flight was thankfully uneventful. Once at Newark International we met up with Chris and Anne-Marie from New York. They are another Bethany adoption couple who will be adopting a baby girl from the same orphanage as us. At 12:15 pm we boarded our plane (1) and headed for Beijing. Our flight path took us up along the east coast, over the New England states, thru eastern Canada, over the west central edge of Greenland (which by the way is not green at all - looked like a big iceberg to me, but here is something that was really cool - we sat on the right side of the plane, I happened to glance out the window to see the most beautiful full moon just over our wing. It was awesome. I tried to take pictures, but do not know if they turned out. But here's the cool thing - I looked across the plane to the left side and I could see the full sun. So it was dark on one side of the plane and light on the other. OK, you may not think its cool, but several of us on the plane did!), almost directly over the (2) North Pole (no, we did not see Santa), over the ocean, western Russia and finally China. And to think, all that only took 13 1/2 hrs! What a flight. It really was not that bad. We hit some severe turbulence over Canada, right after they served dinner. Our drinks were spilled everywhere, but after a few anxious moments, it was relatively smooth sailing the rest of the way. We were not able to sleep real well on the plane, but we did rest some. The approach to Beijing was a little bumpy. After a long day of traveling, not a lot to eat and being thoroughly exhausted, I, Chad, was able to take a souvenir doggy bag off the plane with me - a first on a commercial flight, I may add, and hopefully the last! Getting through security, customs, baggage claim was a relatively simple process, complicated at that time only by my state of health. After leaving customs, we met up with Joy, our guide for the Beijing leg of our trip. There were seven Bethany couples that met up with us at the airport. The Chicago flight was delayed by about a half hour, so this gave me time to go sit and recoup a little before the bus ride. Once we were all together, we made a 40 minute bus ride to the Jianguo Garden Hotel in Beijing. Traffic was heavy but flowed relatively smooth - nothing like I expected (they certainly are not afraid to use their horns though, and at intersections I have yet to learn the rules - it seems to be a free for all). The Jianguo Garden Hotel (3) is very nice, very accommodating. We had a little trouble with the air conditioning so we called house keeping. Their solution was to turn it off, so I found a window that opened. The weather is nice - mid 60's, so we should sleep very comfortably with the window cracked tonight. Tomorrow we're off to do some shopping, Friday we will see Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, Saturday we'll see the great Wall and Sunday we're off to get Annalei.
We'll update you more tomorrow. See you all soon, Chad and Terri.
