Beijing tours

today we toured several locations in Beijing with Michele, our native tour guide, and Russle and Julie, another couple adopting a little girl. Russel and Julie are from Utah and have four biological children (3 boys and one girl). they decided to adopt a girl so their 11yo daughter would have a baby sister. their daughter actually lives just outside of Beijing, but they have to wait until Monday to go get her and have to travel to the city of her finding place (about a 1 hour flight). gotta love rules huh?

anyway, we toured T Square first (don't want to flag the censor) and then went into the Forbidden City. pretty cool place considering the buildings there are older than the US itself. most are about 500 years old. it was VERY crowded. some of the Chinese people from outside of the cities were very interested to see Amy. One gentleman asked Amy to stop and take a picture with his son. very cute if not a bit weird.

the attached picture is from the garden at the Forbidden City. the tree we are sitting under is call the Couples Tree. as you might be able to see, the branches are slighty intertwined. it is consider good luck for couples to take their picture under it. needless to say, it was quite a fight to get our turn under it for a picture.

after the city we toured the oldest part of Beijing and got to see how some local families live. very small but lovely living quarters.

we toured a silk factory and saw how they make various silk items from beginning to end. it really wasn't the factory we toured, but more like a display set up for tourists to buy stuff. it was pricey there and we are pretty sure we can get stuff cheaper elsewhere.

finally, we went to see a Chinese acrobatic show. the performers were mostly teenagers and very skilled at techniques of balance and jumping. it was very impressive to see.

tomorrow, the Great Wall and the Olympic village.

China is far.

wow, that was a long plane ride. i fought several urges to hurt some people or tear the seats apart and made it without incident. Jason, your bags are safe as well. for those that don't know, we went all carry on for a 2.5 week trip to China. i am sure we will check a bag of everything we buy here for the way back though.

i need to say thanks to David for helping me log onto this site. we had to find away around the China firewall and it seems to have worked for now.

we have a big day of tours with our personal tour guide set up today. should be lots of fun. should be a bit taxing as i didn't get a lot of sleep. i will try to keep you posted.

countdown to Natalie = 3 days.

Official timeline

ok, so we now have our official timeline for our days in China. as you know, we leave on Wednesday, 7/28. we arrive in Beijing on 7/29. the first couple of days will be for us to get use to the time change and to tour Beijing (looking forward to seeing this beautiful place). side note: got the new HD camcorder today. awesome.

on Sunday, 8/1, we will fly to Zhengzhou. this is the capitol city of her province. then on Monday, 8/2, we will take a bus to the registration office TO RECEIVE OUR CHILD! since they are about 12 hours ahead, when you wake up Monday morning, you will know we are parents. we stick around here the next few days to get to know Natalie and get some paperwork completed. hopefully we will immediately be good parents and not FREAK OUT (i am betting on the freak out part on my end).

on Friday we leave for Guangzhou. this is in southern China and relatively close to Hong Kong. this is the final leg of our time in China. we will be spending time each day at the US Consulate working making everything final so that Natalie will be a US citizen when she gets to the US.

Finally, we fly out on Friday 8/13 and get into Louisville on Saturday morning. We will gladly let our family and friends at the airport meet her before we leave for Glendale and hibernate for at least a week.

it is almost time!

Flights

we finally have tickets in hand to leave on 7/28. we leave from Louisville at 6:15 am. that means we have to be there at least by 5 am. which means we leave home at 4 am or so. any takers on transportation to the airport?

it is getting real folks. like i said, we leave next Wednesday and return on Saturday, 8/14. that is a little over two weeks in a country where i will be the tallest man around for many city blocks. that is unless Yao Ming or Wang Zhi Zhi happen to be in town. maybe i can get a basketball contract out of this. my jump shot is much improved.

or flights travel through Chicago and San Francisco both ways i believe. we will be in Beijing for our first couple of days. we will have time to do some touring then before we actually go get Natalie on the third day.

sorry Brian, but we won't be stopping over in Japan. at one point in time in the finagling we did have a connecting flight in Tokyo, but the layover would not have been long enough for you to even think about coming to see us. we would have loved to stay and visit for a day, but you saw where i mentioned how expensive the flights were already.

finally, is it weird that i have some trepidation about our return flight? notice the date. we arrive in the US on Saturday 8/14. that means our flight actually takes off on Friday the 13th. luckily i never cared for those movies. also, Dan Marino wore number 13.

$

holy CRAP flights are expensive. anyone have extra money lying around?

update

those of you who are following the blog will be the first outside immediate family to know the following news. we got our consulate confirmation. this means we know exactly what days we need to be in China. flight days may change a bit, but we should leave on July, 28. this is a week later than the agency was hoping for, but a week late doesn't surprise us. we actually see it as a small relief since we need the preparation time.

the roller coaster ride continues. unlike most rides though, the fun is just getting started.

T I M E

you know, time is a bizarre thing. you can spend what seems like forever waiting on something, yet be totally unready for that thing to happen. a long time can quickly turn into a short time. "when will this ever happen" can turn into "oh my God this is really happening." i could go on, but i am sure you are annoyed already, so i will explain (although i expect most of you know exactly where i am going, figuratively and literally).

roughly 7 years ago Amy and i decided it was time to make the leap that so many people talk about with the whole gotta have a kid thing. yeah, that didn't go quite as planned. it took us several years to decide we were more suited for adoption than procreation. then we decided that China was right for us. there were a lot of factors that went into the decision, not the least of which was...time (you see how i am running with the same theme here).

international adoptions through china were supposed to take roughly 13 months when we started. i am going to pause for a minute and laugh at that myself...yeah, i said 13 months. 3.5 years later and we finally see the light. that light is young miss Dang Xue Er of Luoyang, Henan, China.

so yeah, we spend 3.5 years dreaming, hoping, wishing, or whatever way you want to describe it, for a little girl. there was a LOT of official stuff that happened in between all that, but i am sure most of you know that paperwork doesn't exactly make time fly by. i will add here that Amy is the one responsible for 99% of the paper moving. i think that was mostly because she didn't trust me to do any of it (i am aware that none of you blame her for that). anyway, i'll move on. we really started to think this might never happen. side note, the Olympics were quite rough seeing as how we saw all kinds of Chinese girls running around. the wait was frustrating to say the least and depressing to be more accurate.

back to the theme. what is the chronological paradox i spoke about earlier? since you asked so nicely, i will explain. we waited for such a long time that once we got the news of Natalie's (that is what we are going to call her until she is old enough to tell us she hates it) readiness to join our family we just expected more waiting. we went around telling people that we had to wait a month for this, a few weeks for that, and another months for who knows what. we told people it would take 3 months or so before we got to travel to China to dramatically increase the size of our family. were we wrong. just under 2 months later, we will be heading out.

of course, it is awesome. how could we not be excited? i will tell you how. we are scared! not so much scared really, but think of it this way, when you have been driving along at 45 for so long, 100 seems pretty fast and a bit out of control.

those of you that might be interested in how things progress can follow this blog. i will try not to be too boring and i will try to give updates as much as possible. the plan is to provide post on the blog updating our progress in China. there will also be plenty of shots of Natalie (yeah, that is the hook). i am aware that we won't have much time and may have little access to the internets (just ask my brother), but this may be the best way to let those that care know what craziness we have gotten ourselves so happily into.

thanks for reading.