( Letter written from China 8/8/8)
Thank you all for praying for us. We are safely in China! Praise the Lord. I must say we are so proud of Seven, she is the best traveling baby ever. She slept the whole way to DC, Then our 13 hour flight to Beijing was turned into a15 hour flight after we had to wait on the runway for 2 hours so they could re-fuel the plane and check for fuel leaks (yes, that should have been checked before we boarded, but oh well). Seven, without any concept of time proceeded to make friends with everyone around us and enjoyed jumping up and down in the seat. As we flew she enjoyed walking up and down the aisles and quickly caught the eye of a 4 1/4 year old bilingual Chinese boy named Caleb who followed her around everywhere. I think she's just been speaking Mandarin this whole time and we didn't know it:).
While our wonderful daughter made flying a delight, it was still comical that the only TV screen we could see was at the front of the plane and I had to lean to my right just to see a 1/4 of the screen, (no personalized tv screens on Air China). But, everyone was so nice and 7's boyfriend's dad was very helpful to give us tips about getting around in Beijing and also gave us directions to a church we can go to on Sunday.
After 8 hours of sleep for 7 and one for me it was so exciting to finally touch ground in China. It looked like we were flying into a gentle morning fog, only it was 3:30 in the afternoon. It only took 2 hours to get through immigration and collect our luggage. The international airport is nice, and modern. I, of course, had to pee as soon as we landed so I went into the restroom and found a beautiful sparkling porcelain toilette set into the floor of the bathroom for me to hover over. I've been in enough 3rd world countries that I was not too surprised and went on, just appreciating that there was running water. Unbeknownst to me I must have walked into the one local stall, as all of the other stalls contained true sit-down toilets:) Learning lesson number one.
It was so comforting to be welcomed by our American tour guides and we had a private taxi to our hotel room. Seven enjoyed being able to sit with Mommy in the car and got to look out the window at all of the tour buses.
Our hotel is great, we walked into a beautiful lobby with a giant crystal chandelier and tall palm trees. glass elevators took us all the way to our 11th floor room. We were disappointed to see that they had reserved us a room with two twin beds rather than one king and a baby crib, however, they were most accomodating and quickly transferred us into a giant executive suite with a large King size bed a sofa, lounge chair and computer desk. The room is twice the size of the first. We were warned, however, that we would have to stay on the "unlucky" 4th floor. (Unlike in the US which is the 13th floor). We were willing to sacrifice:)
So we quickly unloaded our stuff and headed down to one of the hotel restaurants to enjoy some true Asian cuisine. I must say, so far I like Chinese food. We even had what tasted like Gelato for dessert, mmm. After a bath we all quickly crashed into bed, even Seven, who didn't seem to notice that she was in a different crib. She has stayed very much on schedule as she slept a total of 14 hours in a 24 hour period,(typical for her), putting her awake at 3:30 am this morning. So we'll have to work on that.
We are supposed to meet our travel agent today to get our tickets to see gymnastics on the 10th, and we are still looking for the finals ticket to come available. But either way, we will have fun and I will try to keep you all posted on our adventures.
Sorry for the lengthy text, I will try to send pictures soon.
God Bless, Kristen
No comments:
Post a Comment