Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven

Today was a rainy day but it only made the driving that much more intersting!

Let's try some pictures of the food from the first day:

So this was the chicken, the rice noodel with beef, and the fried rice.

Uploading pictures don't work the way I thought. Let's see some more:

Here is a picture from Summer Palace:

Hmmm... Maybe I will just make posts of photos and then posts of words since this is a massive pain.

After the Summer Palace, we ate lunch somewhere near the Temple of Heaven. It was good but not great. We all got dessert and Justin got a sweet potato ice cream bar covered in chocolate. He liked it or so he says.

The Temple of Heaven was huge! So much intricately carved granite everwhere. There are all these symbolic things about where the emperor would walk and where the "heavenly emperor" would walk, that was just a few inches above the earth emperor.

We saw a show called "The Legend of Kungfu" later and it was pretty good. There were these little kids that were doing handsprings onto their heads!

This must be China's response to the world cry for more handicapped access in China:

I've never seen a handicapped urinal before now. China's bathrooms never cease to amuse. Too bad I can't capture the smell for you...

We were going to check out "Snack Street" tonight but everyone petered out. Here is a nice parting shot for tonight:

The rain finally stopped and we got some rare blue skies for once! This is the view from our hotel room in which the boys see a "Giant Wok" on top of one of those buildings.

First day in Beijing

So our first day was a bit groggy since only Michelle slept after breakfast for a few hours. The breakfast buffet at the hotel (Novatel Peace Hotel) was pretty good, with american as well as chinese fare. I am about to go there again before our tour of Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven with our tour guide Jerry. We are supposed to meet another family today.

Justin and I both continued to feel the plane moving all day. We found shopping street, which was just a 8-story mall essentially. That was a short trip but got us out into the surrounding area. We got our panda phone and our AT&T iPhones simply don't work in China like I was told they would!! My work AT&T Nokia phone still works perfectly for some reason. I was able to bring a wireless router so at least I can connect to all my iPhone apps in the room since the hotel only has wired internet.

Justin, Matt and I used the small indoor pool. It had a skylight above it but really seemed to be the first 1000SPF pool ever. It was sort of hard to find, even with someone helping us find it through a labyrinth of doors.

For lunch, we stopped by the hotel buffet again because everyone just wanted to eat and sleep. It was going to be $25 per person yikes!! So I went next door to a place that had "Guanxi and Cantonese" and I was like YES! Spring Onion Pancakes!! We got the best "bun" food with pork, fried rice, rice noodle with beef, and super fantastic kung pao like chicken. All for $15 for everyone!! The kids were like "Why don't we open a restaurant that does this back home?" They finally understand just how good the food is here. The spring onion pancake was better in Nanning. But we will be back. I got to use my Chinese Food translator to tell them that it was to go. It has a "Conversation" mode to talk Chinese at the food places. Leave it to me to only have a Chinese translator on my phone that relates to food!! It is called China Menu and it has a picture of a panda on it for $4.99 in the app store.

We slept from around 4PM to 4AM this morning. The pictures from our first day are uploading as I type this so it will have to be in the next post.

We are in China!

We had a fabulous quiet smooth 11hour flight last night on Air China. We waited in the wrong line at LAX for China Airlines for an hour. We didn't figure it out until we were THE NEXT IN LINE!! Luckily we had a 5 hour layover and we walked right up to the Air China counter with no wait.

How do you make an 11 hour flight seem faster? Tell people that it is supposed to take 12 hours! That plane was booking and we got in an hour early. I always get a kick about going up over Alaska too. We ate two full meals on that plane, both delicious with rice...mmmm.

I started taking pictures and I need to figure out the best way to upload them and get them on here... I'm finally getting excited to meet An Qi. There is so much stuff to do in the weeks, days, hours before the trip it all gets overwhelming. Now that we are here, we get to be tourists for a few days as we look forward to meeting her. Holt got us some last-minute party gift requests from her for her friends that we were able to grab in Austin, so that worked out.

On our way...

Only a few hours until we get on the jumbo jet en route to China!

Two posters now...

OK, so pay attention to the "posted by" line our dear two followers since Michelle has been posting up until now (yucky paperwork phase) and I will be posting more as we travel.

OK, now it seems real

So we just got the TA yesterday and holy crap there is only a few weeks left to do all the things we need to do. I'm super busy at work and at home and I don't compartmentalize well. When the going gets tough, the multitaskless give up and plop down on the couch. Hopefully we can pull it all together before we leave!

HAPPY 13th BIRTHDAY AN QI!

Happy Birthday An qi and Many More! We really wish we could all be together to celebrate your step into your teen years, but hopefully soon we will all meet. Waiting has been pretty hard, especially since all that stands between us and travel is a small slip of paper from China that says "Travel Approval" you may now come to complete your adoption! We have been fortunate to receive an update in May on An qi and was even able to see a video with her in it. We were able to see her with her foster mom (who seems wonderful) and her younger foster brother (evident they are close). An qi will eventually have an "American" name, but we are waiting until we meet her and we will all chose a name together. An qi chose to be adopted, how many young girls would take on all these unknowns for a chance at a family. She is such a brave, strong, smart girl and we feel so fortunate to have her as part of our family. We have also learned that she loves basketball, running and ping pong. Matt (her younger brother) has been brushing up on his moves so he is ready to play ball when she comes home.