Ni Hao (hello) from China! I can’t believe we are really here. The food, the SIGHTS, the people, everything is amazing. We are having the time of our lives.

I’ll start from the beginning. Our flight from DFW was running quite late. We were supposed to leave at 8:30 and at that time, the plane hadn’t even arrived. I was about to lose it. I thought for sure we would end up missing our connecting flight because of the delay. Then the announcer came on and told everyone to line up immediately so we could all get loaded on and take off. The plane landed, unloaded, we got on and we were out of there in a total of 10 minutes of it landing. No joke. I had never seen that before.

We made the connection with no problem. Then the flight to Guangzhou. Only one word sums it up: painful. It was a 15 hour flight. Thankfully there were several other adopting couples on the flight so we all compared notes, show off our pictures, and play games. Barely any sleep was had, but not by choice. Then we had to board another plane to Beijing. The total amount of hours from the time we got to DFW until we landed in Beijing was 28. I weep a little every time I think of the flight home with a toddler.

So, after being up for about 42 hours straight (and only 4 hours of sleep the night before that) I was too exhausted to post yesterday. There was just no way. All three of us crashed and sure enough woke up around 2 a.m. this morning.

On to the good stuff. The sight seeing today was phenomenal. The itinerary had changed slightly, so today we saw the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace, and Temple of Heaven. I would not be able to accurately describe these ancient sights, but we stood in amazement as we gazed at their beauty.

Lunch today was, well, interesting. I had committed myself to eating only vegetables but since they had a fried, battered fish I thought it would be fine. I went to cut the fish and first off, the skin was still on it (so were the fins and the tail!). I tried to look past that and eat only the meat, but when an eyeball popped out at me, I had to draw the line. I still gag a little when I think of it. Anyone that knows me is probably shocked since I’m a huge sushi fan. But no, that really creeped me out. However, I ate with no difficulty a raw worm at the silk factory and grossed out everyone, even the tour guide. It actually tasted quite good.
Tomorrow is the Great Wall and Ming Tombs. Only 3 more days until Brooklyn! I hope that I will be able to post pictures soon. The computer here in the hotel has an extremely slow connection and keeps disconnecting while I load the pictures. Hopefully tomorrow you can see some of the amazing pictures.