Day two - Beijing

Ok, so for me, this is fun to think back to what it was like in another country. For you, maybe not so much - oh well, bare with me!

Just as a side note, we are snowed in in Colorado - which is a huge difference from what it was like in China - very hot and humid!

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Day two - Beijing

My mom and I woke up at 4:00 am. So much for waiting for the wake up call. Still on United States time - but still very tired. I also think we were nervous for what the day had in store.

We packed and watched downtown Beijing come to life. It was incredible to see the bikes, cars, busses and people start coming out. It became very busy in just a short amount of time.

After a while, we decided to go downstairs and get some breakfast. It wasn't bad, was pretty American - did I mention I don't really like Chinese food?

Anyway, we met another family there and had breakfast with them.

And then we waited and waited.

Finally we left the hotel and ventured out into China. I was nervous, scared, excited and missed my kids at home.

Our first stop was the Forbidden City. It was beautiful but very busy. My mom has a really bad back so she had a really hard time walking through it.

This is a picture of a lot of young Chinese children walking through the Forbidden City. They were all dressed in military clothing and were being led by young men dressed the same.

After the Forbidden City we got to see the Great Wall. It truely was beautiful. I can see why the Chinese people and the country are so proud of this. It is amazing how big it is and that it was built without any of today's machines.

The picture below shows how commercial even the Great Wall has become. There was a place you could dress up in traditional Chinese clothing from long ago and have your picture taken with it in the background. Here are some young Chinese children having their pictures taken in these clothes.

After the Great Wall, we went to the airport. There were three families and we were all going to a different province. My mom and I were supposed to be the last to leave. Our guide waited with us until we had to go to the gate. At that point we were all on our own.

For those of you who have only traveled in the United States, going into the Beijing airport is an incredible experience that cannot be described with words alone. We desended into the basement of the airport, literally into a sea of people. There were no seats for my mom, but finally a young man was nice enough to get up so she could sit.

Finally one flight left and we were both able to sit together.

We waited and waited for our flight to be called. Not on a loud speaker like those in the US - they were calling them on a blow horn - in Chinese - like I thought I could understand what they were saying...

Anyway, a very nice person sitting next to us looked at our tickets and told us in broken English we were in the right place, just to sit and wait.

After about two hours, there was another call on the blow horn, and people were MAD! Not American mad where they talk to each other about bad service, etc. I mean screaming, yelling, shaking their fists mad.

I looked at my mom and the young girl next to me. (She was truely our angel sent from God. She was born in China, moved to New York and studying abroad in China.) She said the flight was going to be delayed about an hour. Ok - that was fine. We would be ok. It was about 10:00 pm, still time to get to the hotel and rest before we got Kaycee in the morning.

1 hour later - Another announcement - people were screaming again, and a group of about 7 men were marching up the stairs shaking their fists. They were going to get the plane going.

"The flight has been cancelled. We will be staying in a hotel tonight."

My heart dropped. What about getting Kaycee in the morning? What would happen? Would our guide in Fuzhou know that it was cancelled?

Our guardian angel called our guide in Fuzhou. What a life saver.

We traveled to the hotel - after more screaming and yelling from the passengers and the airlines - and tried to get some sleep. It was about 1:00am, we would have a 5:00 am wake up call.

We had had about 10 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. Had it been that long? I wondered where our luggage was. I guess it really didn't matter, as I had all of my paperwork with me, but all of the gifts for everyone was in my luggage.

I prayed that night for Kaycee. She was just hours (I hoped) from being our daughter and having her life as she had known it ripped away.

And we slept - a little...