Days 1-4

Day 1 – Wednesday, November 18

Well, we made it to the airport on time and made it to Chicago in one piece – SCORE! Very glad Poppy was willing to take us at 4am. I managed to bash my head on the overhead compartment while disembarking… I immediately started laughing & then a tall guy made fun of me- he said ‘only us tall people are supposed to do that.’ I agreed. I am not used to watching my head. There are an abundance of military service men & women (particularly Navy) at O’Hare. Reading the story of O’Hare the war hero= it all makes me miss my Granddaddy very much. While we breakfasted at Chili’s- I watched a man walk over to a table of four soldiers, He thanked them for serving their (our) country, for everything they do, & he bought their meal. I got quite teary-eyed at that (actually a little now, just thinking about it), but am very thankful to have witnessed the display. We should never, ever forget what our military men and women do for us all- down to the smallest day to day sacrifices that we all take for granted. To all of you who serve (and your families, who give up so much) – thank you. You have my gratitude.

Oh, and O’Hare is the coolest airport… they have these really neat automatic toilet seat covers!!!! The plastic slides around and POW- clean seat! HA! They also have automatic hand sanitizers as you exit the restroom. O’Hare – A+ for cleanliness.


Day 2 – I think – Thursday, November 19

Ok, so the plane is BIG. A 777 – it had two seats, five seats in the middle, then two more seats on each row. Wow. Business class looked neat, the seats reclined and had a lot more room. I hear 1st class has massage chairs, but we weren’t even allowed a glimpse. Flight was LONG, and Beijing is cold, with some snow on ground. The good Lord really tested me on this flight. I have issues with personal boundaries. I don’t like people I don’t know in my space, much less touching me. I acknowledge that this is my issue, and that other people don’t necessarily have this problem, and I’ve been trying to get better about it. Also, I’d mentally prepared myself. Culturally, it is not strange to Asian people to be—what I would call all up in each other’s space. So, of course this Chinese guy was next to me on the plane. Caveat—on the other side of him was AN EMPTY SEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUT, he was somehow touching me – if not sleeping on me- pretty much the entire 14 hour flight! I’ve never been so happy to get off an airplane in my life. Between him and the guy who was standing in front of Jason who might as well have been in his lap – I didn’t sleep more than 15 minutes. But, they did have good food, and there was entertainment. They had nifty little TV screens where you could watch the airplane’s progress or watch movies. It was nice to actually watch a movie- I can’t remember the last movie I watched without interruption- or heck even at all! I watched Up (twice), GI Joe (twice) and 2 hours worth of Disney channel sitcoms (at least three times)… also read some of the Kindle while listening to music (plane’s satellite radio) and played a bit of video games. I seriously can’t imagine if we had taken Matt on that flight though, he would have lost his mind and driven everyone crazy- being confined like that.

Getting to China was weird. I went to the potty as soon as we got off the plane- MISTAKE! Should have gone on the plane. It was one of the ‘squatting’ potties… common here in China for some odd reason. It consists of a porcelain hole in the ground. Literally. There is no sitting. I have never before in my life been jealous of a man’s ability to stand and pee. I can’t even fathom if I’d had to go #2. I did vow after that – I would be sticking to hotel bathrooms, so I’m rationing my liquids while we are out during the day. Ah, strategery.

Going through customs & immigration & the ‘health check’ was a little weird. They have these things that look like metal detectors that you walk through that check your temperature and people are staring at you (I assume looking for signs of illness). It was strangely quiet as you stand in line to go through each of these three stations. Also, so many of the workers have masks on, it’s weird.

Our stroller never showed up on the carousel… but if we had to not get something, I’m glad that was it. We found our CCAI guide Sindy- who is absolutely adorable and super nice. She got us up to speed on the plans, and tossed us on the bus. She had to go back in the airport to retrieve some more families.

The ride to the hotel should have been 45 minutes, but turned into nearly 2 hours. Traffic is insane and scary. Really scary, I can’t imagine driving here. Thank you, Mr bus driver for getting us all through that. Beijing looks neat at night with all the lights, buildings, and signs.

So, we finally got to the hotel… YAY. It is a very nice hotel, and smells Chinese to me. Heh. Jason managed to pop the circuit in our room, and we hadn't even been in the room for 5 minutes! Thank goodness he had seen a tiny flashlight, and I had read on the card how to call the front desk in the lobby. It was pitch dark and we had to call the hotel desk. I ended up sitting in the hallway holding the door open while we waited for help. Turns out, you can plug a regular adapter in to this one particular plug. We grabbed some food from the restaurant and that was about it. We were exhausted, so we crashed -- just after 9pm. =)

Day 3 – Friday, November 20, 2009

Jason woke up every two hours, and finally got up about about 4am. He looked at the computer a bit and then paced around and explored the hotel for a while. He said it was all dark, they had most of the lights off- very strange- and our hotel appears to be connected to a bunch of shopping and food if you keep walking around. The hotel is quite pretty, with a gorgeous fountain show casing the 12 animals of the zodiac. The staff is also quite nice. Breakfast buffet rocked- especially when you are hungry.

At 9am we were off to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Odd to think that in the not so distant history you would have been killed for entering the grounds of the Forbidden City without permission. On the walk from the bus there were the sounds of beautiful, absolutely lovely song-birds everywhere! It was astounding, and coming from the park we were walking beside. Well, look over and the birds are in cages in the trees… no wonder you can hear them so well!!!! That was quite funny, but weird, and maybe even a bit sad. Mostly funny though- like, really?! The street vendors attacked us as soon as we got off the bus- ‘buy my panda hat, buy some gloves’… If I hadn’t had cold-weather gear with me, I’d have been happy to buy it. It was really cold. Like- bitter, biting cold. The wind was Canada-style cold. I LOVED IT! I love cold. =) It reminded me of our ski trip to Canada. The Forbidden City was both beautiful and fascinating- especially the Imperial Gardens, with play places built for their children with rocks brought in from each of the provinces. Matt would have been really, really hard to keep off those rocks.

Lao Shi warned us of this, but I was still surprised when it happened. Chinese people stop me and ask to take a picture with me – because of the blonde hair. She said many Chinese have never seen a blonde in person before. I’m thankful we didn’t bring Matt with us- we would have been stopped every 5 feet with his white-blonde hair. I felt like everyone was looking at me though, and I did a couple of times catch the words ‘bai tou’, or ‘bai tou fa’ – white head, white hair. The Chinese guards in their outfits are fascinating – they look so foreign and handsome and severe… especially the ones with bayonets. The picture of Mao is GIGANTIC.

Tiananmen Square is large, well protected, and excruciatingly clean. There are street vendors, but much fewer of them. There are beautiful pillars- 56 of them that represent the 56 different ethnic groups that make up the different minorities within China. It is wide, and there isn’t much in the middle. Supposedly, the largest city center in the world. They are working on a museum on one side that will give history and information on all the ethnic groups. At the end is Mao’s mausoleum. We walked past, but did not go in because the line to get in was over 2.5 hours long. Then we went down stairs, through tunnels, up stairs, cross street, down stairs, tunnel, up stairs- etc, etc, etc to get back to the bus that really seemed to be just right across the street. It was weird to walk through the tunnels that go under the street (good idea though) and see the beggars and vendors and soldiers all milling together.

Apparently you drive wherever you want, whenever you want in Beijing. Our bus driver is good at it. The bus pulled up on the sidewalk to let us out for lunch. We ate lunch in an underground restaurant that was pretty good. I didn’t eat much- the sauces are very strong, but very Chinese. Also, I’m paranoid about what I’m eating because of the seafood allergy. Thank goodness for sticky white rice!

We went through a silk factory, which was really pretty interesting. I totally want a silk blanket now, I think I will look for one in GuangZhou. We had some extra time, so we got to drive to the Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium. That was pretty darn cool! Also, the buildings shaped like a dragon were so cool! I was glad we got to take that little detour.

On we went to the acrobatic show and the Beijing Theater. Jason was not excited, things like that don’t interest him too much, though he was excited to think they would do some wushu. The performance was interesting- especially when Jason got picked to go up on the stage!!!! HA! It was hilarious! It was part of the show where they put someone into a gigantic ceramic flower pot and a tiny girl spins the pot around on her legs. It was so funny that he was picked to participate. I’ll post a picture when I get it- the guy next to us who had a great camera that didn’t flash was able to get a picture for me!!! Tooooooo funny. The wushu part of the performance was also great… the monkey style guy was amazing and a little boy did Frog style, which was really cool- I’d never seen it before.

So, off to dinner we went. We had Peking roast duck in a very authentic, local place. It was good, but duck is not really my thing. It is a little fatty for me. The sauces were all very strong too, so I had a little rice and that was about it. I figured I would get something back at the hotel. But, when we got back I was too tired to worry about it, I just went to sleep instead. There’s always breakfast.

Day 4 – Saturday, November 21, 2009

So, we got on the bus to head to the Great Wall… we were on the bus for a long time. Our bus driver is the best. He drives where he wants, when he wants. I think this is the first time I’ve seen a bus do a U-Turn- he does them all the time. So, we drove and drove- the traffic was very bad and congested, and there were several accidents. Finally, Sindy let us know that there was a very bad accident, and they had gotten notice that they had closed the road to the Great Wall. So, by that time it was nearly lunchtime anyway. We went to the Jade factory as planned. That was pretty cool. They use a tiny dremel looking tool to carve the jade under running water. Some of the carvings were just amazing in their detail. Then we went to lunch- where they gave us small bottles of unidentifiable alcohol that no one drank… so we took a couple to bring home- heh heh. Li lao shi (Nai Nai) & Jiang lao shi (Ye Ye) will get a kick out of them if nothing else. And, on to the Great Wall we went, since the road was now open. Thankfully, it was not quite as cold as yesterday and the wind wasn’t really blowing at all- so it was quite a pleasant temperature for this type of undertaking. Other than 5 year old Katy- I went the highest on the wall out of the women. To be fair, I’m pretty sure most of the others had done this before, and I think Nancy would have totally gone farther than me if she wasn’t six months pregnant! I think we would have gone a little farther to where it ended but we ran out of time. We did make it to the store at the top, where we opted not to buy t-shirts that said I climbed the Great Wall of China. The wall is pretty darn amazing. I wouldn’t have invaded China if I had to climb that to do so!! The steps were terribly, awfully uneven. Some were only about an inch high- while others came up to my knee. There was no rhyme or reason or rhythm to it either. Also, one side of the seemingly never-ending steps was still covered in snow and ice, so it was hard to navigate up and down. After having gone both up and down- I’m voting that down was more treacherous. It was scary! Thank goodness they’d put in a handrail at some point in time or I would have been scooting down some of those steps on my butt! We then drove back into Beijing- seeing some really interesting roadside scenes along the way. We skipped the tea ceremony due to lack of time and went for the HuTong tour instead. HuTong’s are like small square village housing that is very, very old. We rode a rickshaw (which was neat, I didn’t think I’d like it) and our driver was highly entertained that the MeiGuoRen (Americans) spoke Mandarin. We went to the house of the gentleman who owned the HuTong and got to listen to a lot of interesting history. We drove around some more and saw Beijing’s version of Beale Street- which was pretty neat. I was frozen by this time! I’d gotten sweaty climbing the darn wall and then I’d gotten cold on the bus. When the sun went down it got really cold really quickly. I ate dinner with all my gear on and still never got warm. The food here is killing me. You can only eat Chinese food so many times in a row- ha ha. Also, because of the seafood allergy, I’m extremely careful of what I’m eating. So, I’m ending up eating only about a palm size amount of food per meal. Maybe I’ll lose a few pounds, eh?

We’ re now packing for the trip to ZhengZhou in the morning. I can’t wait to go. Beijing has been great, and we’ve gotten to do some amazing things… but the entire time we have been here all I can think is- I want to go get my baby girl. So, we’re more than ready for the trip tomorrow. Then the next day we finally get to see her!

Ok, I’m off to re-pack and weigh bags!

~Robyn (&Jason)

ps, here is our flickr page of photos, we just dumped them here, not organized or tagged yet, :)

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