Journey of Faith:Our Little Guy From China

We met Caleb last night about 4pm. We were heading up the elevator and I just had this feeling everything was going to happen so quickly and it did. We got out of the elevator and I saw him! He ran to us and said Mama and Baba and wanted to show us what he had in his bag. He showed us the photo book that we sent him. He sat mostly in my lap and Tim took a few photos, but we did not get a lot. We just enjoyed our time with him and kept forgetting to take photos.  We did what we needed to at the civil affairs office and headed back to the hotel.  He did really good to that point.  Then Jenny our guide brought us to our room and we talked about some things that needed to be prepared for today.  When she needed to leave he got really upset.  He cried for and wanted to leave.  We took his coat off and he would put it back on.  We would take his boots off and he would put them back on.  It was heart wrenching.  He was confused and sad. He finally fell asleep about 7:30pm and slept until 6am.  That was a good nights sleep.  Through out the night he woke up a few times and smiled at Tim and I.  He awoke at 6 am and he just looked around and we stayed lazy and Skyped with a few family and friends.  He was very happy.  Today we have done paperwork and stayed at the hotel to bond with him.  He has been very happy today.  We played hide and seek, he loves the blow dryer.  He likes cartoons.  He has been tickling Tim in the belly and gets a big kick out of it.  We are heading off for our second round of paperwork and I will write more later.

We arrived in Xi'an at 2:50 pm yesterday.  We were picked up by Jenny our guide for our trip while we are here.  She knows good english.  The ride was about an hour to Xi'an from the arirport.  The airport is in the countryside.  There are 8 million people here (and I thought this was going to be a small town!)  As we traveled many narrow streets it was so surreal again to think we are here.  What I saw on our way here was more of what I thought China looked like--small streets, small vendors along the streets, like alleys. 

We did not get a chance to do much this evening--we will send more photos later.  Today we meet Caleb!  We meet him at 4:00pm.  We will meet with Jenny at 2:00pm to exchange our US dollars and then at 3:45pm we will head to the "office" where they will make sure we are the right parents and he is the right child.

I will post more later.  Pray for us as we meet Caleb.

Love,
Shelly

This is going to be a quick post and I will post more later.  We did an all day tour yesterday to the Great Wall Badaling and the Ming Tombs.  Also included was a trip to a Jade factory which included a traditional Chinese lunch. Then we got to go to the Beijing Zhong Yan Wan Kang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.  Where they told Tim and I (and squeezed our bellies) that we needed to loose weight to be healthier :).  Well that should be enough to get us motivated huh?

The Great Wall was an awesome sight.  Unbelievable!!  It was very windy, but we made it to the top!  It was quite a bit of work to get there, but if we took a few breaks we could keep going.  For those that get to the top, the Chinese say we are a Heros.  WE ARE HEROS!

We are leaving for Xi'an today--on the plane at 12:30pm and there by 2:30pm.  We will get ourselves set up there and find out when we meet Caleb.

I will post more later.

Love you,
Shelly

We ventured out a little yesterday (it's already after midnight, Friday, the 17th). We got up for the day, logged onto all of our email accounts and such. In doing so I fried our converter. It sparked up my arm, and smelled burnt. At first we did not know what appliance it was, our new portable dvd player, Tim's work laptop or mine. It blew all the power to our room. A hotel service lady came up and could not fix it then a maintenance guy came up and did fix it. Whew!


Finally we got out of our room and went to have breakfast, American breakfast. :) (sorry Eric we are not adventurous!) We went to talk with the tour company within the hotel to set up our tour for today. We are going to the Great Wall Badaling and the Ming Tombs. Tim loves to ask questions so we were probably there an hour. He made them laugh so much. He would ask questions and they would not understand and then they would all giggle behind the desk. We got a kick out of them laughing at us. Hee hee.

We walked around our hotel, went to the Silk Market, where we only bought some kids DVD's that we can play for Caleb that are in Chinese. Guiyou Department Store, walked down the main road for what seemed like forever just taking in all the sights and sounds.  Again, traffic here is incredible.  There is always traffic.  It is 12:30am and the main road is just outside our room.  The cars zooming by and honking is again, incredible.  We cannot imagine what it was like here for the Olympics.

We came back to the hotel to put some goods in the room and then ventured down to the subway to go to Tienamen Square.  It was an adventure.  We were stared at a lot.  The policeman the security people here wear the long dark green coats and fur hats.  It is very formal and there are a lot of police on duty.  We spent about 4 hours getting there walking around and talking to some Chinese people that knew English. 

The first lady came up to us and knew we were looking at how to get back on the subway.  She asked if she could help us.  She knew a lot!  We took it all in, but knew there was another motive.  When we said we needed to get going she said that she volunteered at the Xi'an University with art students and she would like us to come and visit their gallery (just inside the Forbidden City gates).  We did and loved the art!  We knew we were going to get suckered into buying something though.  We bought two scroll art pieces.  The student that created them was there.  If we were to believe what was being told to us, this was like a donation to the student to help them study abroad and make more out of an art career.  I have to say we learned a lot in this conversation.  We learned what some of their characters mean.  We did not buy anymore but will be looking for a few items while in China because of this interesting adventure.

We finally got on our way and crossed the street (which means go under the street in a tunnel) and went to stand on Tienamen Square.  I had learned and remembered about Tienaman Square and Chairman Mao from History in school.  It was neat to just be standing there looking at his photo across the street.

We got back about 5 pm rested a little and then headed out to find food.  We ate at the Pizza Hut in the hotel.  Wow, that was an interesting menu.  They have all sorts of Chinese cuisine on the menu.  I felt like having pizza so that is what we got.  I could not keep my eyes open so we headed back to the room and fell asleep, hence why I am awake now!

We will get up this morning and go downstairs to hop on a mini bus to go tour the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs.  We will be gone from 7:50am to 6:30pm for that, so I will not be posting.  I may not be posting until we get to Xi'an.

We leave for the airport to Xi'an tomorrow at 10:15am.  Our flight leaves at 12:30pm and arrives at 2:30pm.  Okay, I am going back to bed.  Here are some photos....