Day 1

We are here!  We finally made it to China.  Our two flights here were the longest 14 hours that I have ever spent.  But praise the Lord, we made it safely and with all our luggage!  Today we had a free day to rest and recuperate.  Ronny is bound and determined to get us lost in Beijing.  Since our guide was touring with two other families who are not on the same schedule as we are, she was not around to help us.  So, Ronny planned our day.  I took my first taxi ever and we went to see the Beijing Olympic Buildings.  It was just as majestic as we remember seeing on TV 3 years ago.  We toured the Bird's Nest, the Olympic Aquatics Center and walked around the massive Olympic area they built for the 2008 Olympics.  Inside the bird's nest they were having some sort of winter festival.  There was so much to do inside.  They had snow hills, a life sized ice maze, ropes course, and bumper boats on ice.  We decided not to spend the money to do all of it because we are planning to go back and take Joseph.

After spending the morning sight seeing, we came back to the hotel and ate lunch.  Most restaurants serve their food family style so we ordered four different dishes.  We like 3 out of the 4.  Not bad!  My favorites were what we would call Pot Stickers in America and a beef and noodle dish that tasted a lot like roast beef.

We are staying at the Poly Plaza.  It is a nice hotel but as expected it is very hot in our room.  We have turned the air off and opened the windows.  It is in the 30’s outside but we are still hot because the outside air doesn't circulate much into our room.  The hotels here have all the amenities that we have at home.  Ours has a computer, flat screen TV, a hair dryer and a mini-fridge.  The beds are super hard.  Every hotel that I have stayed at in the US has had hard beds, but they do not compare to the ones in China.  

If every day that we are here is like today, we are going to have a great time!  Today was great.  So far the worst part of the trip was the flight.  We are meeting with our Guide, Veronica, (who we love!) tonight to discuss the details of Gotcha Day tomorrow.  I can't wait to meet Joseph and make him part of our family.  

Mom's room is across the hall.  We can leave our doors open and talk to each other.