The Trip (One)

All the kids were up the morning I left for China, leaving Jack was terrible!! Leaving the other kids was hard, but Jack was especially hard....maybe because he's the youngest!

Ron dropped us off at Hopkins. We did fairly well getting our 4 suitcases and a stroller into the United counter. We were *totally* clueless for check-in. You do it with your passports. A lady had to help us and was annoyed....sorry to make her actually work! While we were checking-in another family was also there checking in. Darrin and Bernice (yay!) Thankfully they picked us out. The stroller with no baby was probably the dead give away :)

Darrin got us through O'Hare with no problems....thankfully!!! That would have taken us forever on our own! We got some lunch and then waited to get on our flight to Beijing.

Once in Beijing we met up with most of the other families. Getting through security was interesting, but we were with a group....so it went fine.

We found Zhou very easily (or he found us!) got us on a bus and took us to the Holiday Inn in Beijing. Sally and I walked to a McDonald's for dinner that night. They have a picture menu to order from. We actually didn't need to use it because the girl understood English. It seems that the younger people know English (like the 20ish year olds) and they want to use it!

I don't really remember what days we did things I know we went to a Jade Factory. We went to a silk factory, we went to an embroidery factory.

We hiked a section of the Great Wall. That was killer. No other word. The steps are all different sizes, so it makes climbing it hard. You do not "walk" the wall. You CLIMB the wall. Maybe in other places you walk it. We kept complaining and Zhou would point to the other mountain and say "we could be doing THAT section."  Point taken!!! I watched him and saw he was skipping steps as he walked, so I did the same thing, it made it easier. Chinese teens on the wall asked to take their picture with some of us....a pretty common thing to happen to Americans in China, just kind of weird.

Sally did not climb the wall with us. Zhou told her to meet us at the bus....a challenge since there was no way for her to easily get to the parking lot where the bus was (and no English speaking people.) She tells the story better, but long story short.....she hitched a ride on a Chinese tour bus!!!!  Not really sure how it happened, but she didn't get kidnapped and made it to the bus. Apparently a Chinese tour guide took pity on the blonde American. I did not let her out of my sight after that!!!!!!

I think the next day we visited Tianamen Square and some temple. The square pretty much looks like the pictures. And we also went to see the Olympic plaza one day. Mainly we just felt Zhou was trying to kill us all before he gave us the babies....if you could survive Zhou you got the babies :)

Actually I think it was probably to help with jetlag. Or something. It was like sightseeing torture. We walked a ton....Sally is an *amazing* trouper!!!!

So that was Beijing. Then we all split up. Sally and I headed South to Changsha with Roger and Chris Hill. I'll write about that next time!!!!