On The Road Again

Yesterday (Saturday) we met up with the other adoptive families from our agency and we all toured together.  Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall.  I'll spare you all the details about each as you can look them up yourself online.  Forbidden City and the Great Wall were most interesting to me but I'm a sucker for historic relics.  The part of the great wall we went to was a rather steep climb.  We went about half-way up the mountain before we decided we'd had enough.  I've included a pic of Heather and Lora as we started up the wall.  Lora was quite the celebrity once again, mostly people wanting pics of her, their pic with her, or a pic of their own child with Lora.  I don't get it, but whatever.

Today (Sunday) we got up early and headed to the airport.  We flew to the capital city of Joshua's province and met another guide.  We were at our hotel and settled in by lunchtime.  For lunch we went to the "Western Buffet".  I think the only part of it that is "Western" is the fact that it's a buffet.  I enjoyed it thoroughly but I think Heather is getting antsy for something more familiar.  The balance of today was a free day so we walked down the street to a local supermarket.   It was like a grocery store on the first floor and like a Walmart on the second floor.  The grocery store reminded me of a Fiesta, only Chinese.  You can get any animal part, a wide variety of spices and produce, and other grocery type items all under one roof.  We helped ourselves to some bottled water, a few pounds of candy, and some Prawn Fries (like a potato chip but made of shrimp, I think).

The city we're in now is much smaller than Beijing, only 10 million people.  In Beijing nearly every sign or important bit of information is written in Chinese with english subtitles.  The english subtitles are frequently misspelled or employ poor grammar but you can get the idea.  Here, the english subtitles have all but disappeared.  If/when there is something in english it's even more misspelled and improper.  Also in Beijing it wasn't too difficult to find someone that spoke english.  Not the case here.

Tomorrow we meet Joshua for the first time!!  All the sight-seeing and newness of being in China has kinda distracted me from what our primary purpose is for being here.  I have to keep reminding myself that we're soon going to be a family of four.  Our appointment is at 3:00 pm tomorrow (1:00 am for most of you).  I'm nervous, scared, and excited all at once.  We can barely function in China on our own, not sure what kinda mess we'll be once you add in a toddler that's just been taken from the only home he's ever known.  Looking forward to it nonetheless and trusting that God will see us through it all.  If you want to pray for something, you might pray that we make it through our first few days without any collateral damage.