Zoebugflyawayhome

Hi all,
I am so very sorry for taking so long to blog - I really have been trying, but we keep having technical issues - I typed a big long blog and then lost it - then we got some pictures fixed so they would fit in the e-mail and then lost the connection and all of this is happening while we are still trying to adjust throught jet lag and very long days of site seeing - so before we fall apart, we have just decided to sleep and start fresh in the morning! So we starting fresh this morning and hoping that things will go better with a little sleep under our belt!!

So I don't even remember what our last post was like - I think I got you to the point that we had arrived in Beijing!! Yeah!!! After a night of crashed out sleep, we were up early to begin our travel day with my friend from high school (Jeff Cheap, for those of you that know him!) well actually it was with his business partner, who is native to Beijing. We started out at 8 am and headed about an hour and half outstide of Beijing to the Great Wall of China - it was so beautiful. We took something like a ski lift up to the wall and then we began to climb and I mean climb.

Some places were easy to walk on and others felt like we were hiking Mt. Everest - it was so steep at some places, I was literally climbing up with my hands and feet! Those spots were a lot more scary coming back down!!! :0D But the amazing views were worth every bit of it!! STUNNING to say the least!! I wish we could get all the pics to come across so you could see them all!! When we get back we will put them on Facebook, but for now it is blocked in China! :0D Just a reminder of how blessed we are in the US to have the freedoms that we do! :0D This trip is a definite reminder of all that we taked for granted!!!

When we were done viewing on the wall we got to take an alpine slide down, it was so much fun - Cali got video - once again once we are home we will post it so you can see it!! After the wall, we went to lunch at a tradtional tourist restaurant - which means they have a contract with the governmnet to be able to serve foreigners! Anyway, the food was yummy, but too much! Calixto was very brave and tried some bread that looked like a dough ball, but it was steamed bread - tasted just like a dinner roll that was a little sweet, but it sure looked funny!! Very proud of my timidly adventurous son! :0D

After lunch, we went to this amazing factory -that is what they call it, but it is a number of small room where these people are doing all this work by hand to make the most beautiful piece of art!! They start out as a piece of copper that the men hammer in to certain forms, vases, plates, ornaments, jewlery, on and on & then once it has a shape, a pattern is traced onto them - then the women painstakingly make tiny pieces of copper into shapes to fit the pattern and then tiny piece by tiny piece they glue the little pieces to the form to make the pattern stand up off it, once it is all glued on, the next step is to add the enamel paint by an eye dropper into each of the little compartments. Our guide said that only the women do this job because of their patience! :0D Then it has to be fired, not in a kiln, but hand fired, then this process is repeated 6 times and then it is sanded with 3 different stones. Some of them they stop after the second stone to give
it a little rougher texture, but others are sanded until it is so smooth and shiny!! This is a practice that is common only to Beijing! It is amazing to see in person!!! Soo beautiful and expensive!! Wishing we had some disposable income! We did buy our yearly family christmas ornament -we will post a pic of it later!

After all that, we headed back into the older part of Beijing, and took a rickshaw tour and had tea at a woman's home. This was a very humbling tour - seeing so many people and their living conditions, it was the area where our guide grew up! Everyone in this district has to use a public toilet, the homes are too small to have one. Basically, there is a courtyard with a number of rooms surrounding it and a family will usually occupy two rooms - sometimes the other rooms are occupied by other related families and sometimes not! There is a communal shower room and we are still not sure about the kitchen, but it seemed to be communal also. Very narrow alleyways and everyone is riding bikes and standing outside their shops or sleeping in their rickshaws! Like I said very humbling, but it was good to get an idea of another part of Zoe's heritage.

After that we went shopping, but it was not a lot of fun - we were so tired and emotional, we just wanted to leave, definitely not in a mood to go through the haggle process! After that, our guide took us to meet my friend Jeff to eat at a Hot Pot restaurant. Your party is in a private room with a table that has a pot of boiling - looks like soup and then they bring you different things to cook in the pot - really thin shaved beef, pork, all kinds of veggies, noodles, etc. It was VERY good and fun everyone is just digging out the thing they want to eat with their chopsticks. Once again I was very proud of Calixto - he did a great job!!! I was told it is a very traditional and popular way to eat in Beijing - We thought it would make a great restaurant in the states!!!

It was fun to have a mini high school reunion in China! :0D After that very full day, we were all exhausted!! Tried to blog and send pics, but just became a comical joke because nothing was working right! :0D One last thing, I came to the hotel to find a message that my friend Shannon
who has been trying to get to China to get her little Georgia, finally got clearance, so we will be able to meet in person in Guangzhou and give each other a BIG HUG - she has been such a sweet internet friend as we have walked through this adoption process together - so getting to meet in person with our sweet babies is a very precious gift!!!

Day 2 Beijing
Another busy day today, we got to meet the other families that we are traveling with! There are 15 families in our group, but only 10 are doing the Beijing portion together. We are from all over the states, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee,Minesota, California, Texas all here to meet our children! OVERWHELMING how God builds families - you just see his hand orchestrating things. Unbelievable! The couple from Florida is traveling with us the whole time, our children are from the same province - they are adopting a little boy! Turns out they live in the same town as where our church has a sister church and they had actually visited it! SMALL world!!!! Have a feeling we will be very connected after receiving our kids together!!!

We are all getting close quick, something about sweating together in a crowd of 60,000 people, trying to stay togEther, see the sites, navigate squatty potties and try interesing foods together, is building a bond - not to mention that we are all related in the faith! It is kind of like a family reunion where you are being introduced to cousins that you didn't know, but you have an immediate bond with!! Really fun!!! We went to some important sites today - We started out at Tinanmin square and then went to the Forbidden City (where the emperor's lived and work for 500 years) and then to lunch and next the Pearl Market, where we learned about how pearls are harvested and how to tell the fake from the real - very interesting and our husbands were encouraged to buy us lots of pearls! :0D, It was a lot of fun - the guys were into it all at first and giving each other a hard time about how much the other guy should spend, and when it was all said and done, they were all quiet and not thrilled with how much thinner their wallets were! :0D It was funny to watch!! After that we went to the Emperor's summer palace, yes, I think I could be an Empress! HA!! The Summer palace was beautiful!!! HUGE lake, we got to take a boat ride in a dragon boat and then walk all over - I am telling ya, If I don't drop some pounds just from walking around in a permenant sauna, then there is just no hope! It was a beautiful place and there is just so much history, the fast paced that we are going at is just too quick to see it all!!! We are seeing alot, but still missing so much! Would love to return one day and go slowly!!!

After that, it started to rain, so they took us to a Tea House - it is owned by the government! It was an interesting experience, they made a number of teas and then we tried them - we are so not tee drinkers, so the only thing we were interested in is a little thing called "The pee pee boy" It is this little device that you poor hot water into, if the water is hot enough he will pee, if not he won't - that is how you tell if your water is hot enough to make your tea or not! FUNNY!! But you couldn't get him unless your bought some tea, so no pee pee boy for us! :0D After that, we went to eat dinner together and then headed back to the hotel for us all to crash - this jet lag is a funny thing - one minute you are doing great and the next you are about to pass out, you can literally begin to feel your head spin, you are so exhausted that you think you will pass out and sleep for 12 hours our more, but after about 7 hours you are wide awake somewhere between 4 and 5 am you just have to get up and do stuff!! Then you do it all again the next day!

Please pray that we get on track today, so we can be at our very best to meet our sweet Zoe tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow will be the long awaited day! Do you believe it, ya'll? I have had a couple of tearful moments the last 2 days, when in a small moment (looking at the countryside or listening to our guide talk to us) that the enormity of it all hits me and the faithfulness of God becomes so crystal clear - I stand in AWE of him and his great love for me and my family, in such initmate and personal ways!! If I let myself, I would be a puddle at the moment - can't say I will be able to do that the minute I see Zoe's face - I am pretty sure I will be the puddle on the floor and someone is going to have to pick me up.

The minute we landed in China, Cali looked at me and said "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled it a tree of life!" That is the verse I have clung too and after many years of having our hope deferred, our longing will be placed in our arms tomorrow - too wonderful to express and her name Zoe Faith QingZhu which means" Abundant LIFE of Faith, Beautiful Pearl!" Can't wait to see that tree grow up! Ok, now I am a puddle, somebody is going to have to pick me up!

love to all!!!
Will try to post tonight after church, jade factory, Beijing Duck dinner and
the great wall again! :0D