We are in Beijing, China!!

February 16, 2013~6:30am

We arrived in Beijing on February 14^th. The flight to get here was so long. It makes you realize just how far from home we are. We left Omaha on February 13^th at 8am and arrived in Beijing on February 14^th at 3pm. Beijing is 14 hours ahead of Omaha, so it feels like a time warp. We are slowly getting used to the time change. The first day we were here our escort, Lydia and driver, Mr. Hu picked us up and took us to our hotel. Lydia recommended a restaurant called The Roasted Duck for supper and it was within walking distance from our hotel. We went there for supper our first night. This place was huge and we were the only caucasian people in the restaurant. This is a weird feeling; being in the minority by a lot. But definitely something I'm glad we are experiencing. It's interesting to put yourself in those situations and to have those emotions of uncomfortableness, a little frightened, and trying not to offend anyone. We did a lot of observing the people around us in order to watch and learn how they did things. We communicated with our waitress by pointing and gesturing. We definitely got our point across, but we clearly didn't order near as much food as what the locals are used to because she kept trying to get us to get more. :) We ended up ordering the peking duck with pancake. The peking duck is their specialty and they bring the whole cooked duck to your table and carve it for you. The pancake was more like a crepe as we know it. What we learned was to put pieces of the duck meat in the pancake, put a little soy sauce and green onion on top and rolled it up. It was absolutely delicious! We also tried a local Chinese beer with supper. A bottle of beer is about 20 ounces, so we all had a small glass. It was good, a lighter colored beer but the taste was stronger than what you would get in the US. After supper that first night we crashed into bed. We were all so exhausted!! But unfortunately, the time change woke us up at 3:30am the next morning! I was able to get some sleep after that, but at 3:30am my body was definitely saying it's time to get up.

We're in China!!

Mom and Matt enjoying the Peking Duck

On February 15^th we had breakfast in our hotel. It has a large breakfast buffet with dishes from all over the world. We had quite the assortment of food from waffles and yogurt to congee and dumplings. Congee is something we all tried since this is currently a staple in Ava's diet. It was actually delicious!! It is like a creamy rice soup with lots of veggies (or I think whatever they have leftover in the kitchen). We're going to have to figure out how to make this for her. Shortly after that we met the rest of our crew and escort and headed to the Great Wall. The Great Wall is incredible! It stretches over 4000 miles and is all made from hand. The wall consists of towers every couple hundred feet with SO many stairs in between. At the base where we started, was a little village that was also fun to explore. It seemed like you're in a castle.

Breakfast with congee in the bowl

                                                   Inside one of the towers at the Great Wall

Next we all had lunch together and Lydia ordered for us. She ordered us lots of different foods to try and we ate it all family style (meaning we all shared the dishes). After lunch we went to a jade factory where they told us a little bit about jade and we saw workers carving the jade pieces. Lydia told us about a tradition in China where a jade bracelet is passed down in the family from mom to daughter. Matt bought me a beautiful jade bracelet while at the factory. The bracelet is made out of jadeite which will continue to get darker green over the years.

We spent the afternoon taking a ricksha ride through an old hudong in downtown Beijing. This was quite the experience. Lydia explained some the cultural and traditional characteristics of the houses and we actually got to go in someones house to see what it was like. They are very simple houses with a courtyard in the middle. A very large, extended family often lives together in one house.

Last night we went to have Korean BBQ with some of our new friends. She is originally from Korea so we got lessons from an expert :) The restaurant brings you out raw meet and you are able to cook it on the grill built into your table. After that we explored the night market. The night market stretched for about a block and was all food vendors. They sold anything from fruit to fried snakes, scorpions, and spiders on a stick!!! This was definitely an experience!!! Our friend Jeff was determined to try something so he got fried pumpkin on a stick. The pumpkin (or whatever it was~it certainly didn't taste like pumpkin) was already fried when he ordered it and then they dunked it in frying oil again. However the oil didn't even appear hot so this process mainly just soaked up more oil. He made us all try some, but I could only eat a bite. The taste was ok, it was the oil that grossed me out!! We had so much fun though just walking around and exploring the market.

Today we are headed to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. We are also meeting the Holt staff for lunch. Ready for another culture rich day!

 I am loving being here, but I am so ready to get to Ava!! Like Matt says, we have to wait until Monday to get her anyway we might as well enjoy it ~ which I am. But I also kind of feel like someone is playing a game with us in that we are so close to her, but we still can't touch her yet. We are getting close. 2 more days and we will have our beautiful girl once and for all!!