What A Day We Had

What an incredible day we had. It is currently 8:15 pm Tuesday July 19th here in Beijing. Anthony is in bed and will be a sleep in seconds. Traci is reorganizing and packing things up for our flight out to Lanzhou, tomorrow morning. (Traci just whispered to me that Anthony just fell asleep. No lie, Anthony literly fell a sleep with in seconds of getting put to bed.) I am trying to collect my thoughts and stay awake my self.

The morning started off with a fantastic breakfast buffet down stairs. We had great food and were loaded up for the busy day a head of us. Our entire Great Wall China Adoption group was picked up by a large touring bus and taken to our first destination of the day. Tienanmen Square. That was a very interesting place. The video clips that we see on television now and then really don't give a great representation of the area, it's total size and the structures associated with it. Very interesting to say the least.

We walked from their to the Forbidden City. Now I am forbidden to tell you all anything about it because well..its...forbidden. Moving on. Ok, I will spill the beans. The Forbidden City is just dang amazing. The enormous size is hard to imagine. We kept on going through these outer courtyards and each time you pass through one you think “yep this is it wow amazing” to find out that you are still passing through outer court yards. The buildings were stunning as was the courtyards. As I looked at all that was before me it was so hard to fathom the resources and the labor force that it would have taken to build it up. And so very long ago. Before we had the machinery and the tools that we have today. Just stunning. It all was just stunning.

After the Forbidden City tour our bus picked us up and took us on a good 45 minute ride to our place for lunch. Oh, Lord did we eat and eat and eat. They kept bringing out the food. And it was so good. All of it. Chicken, fish, beef, pork dumplings, and soup are just a few of the many things that were set in front of us. Anthony was so tired at this time, he did not eat so well. Traci and I ate so good it is hard to describe.

The restaurant was part of what they call a friendships store and a Cloisonnes' manufacturing shop. We did some shopping there and were off to the Great Wall.

The Great Wall was..uh..great. To visit be able to see the Great Wall was unbelievable. To climb the dang thing with a three year old was impossible. The climb involved taking steps (that would not pass code by todays standards) and the incline was so steep that it is hard to imagine. Anthony only made it up to the second guard station. He wanted to go father but his legs would not take him. In fact, I ended lifting him up at least 50% of the way. His mind was willing but his body could not take it. Now you might be thinking Anthony is only three what would you expect. I can tell you that he went further than many adults did. The wall was fascinating and a very tough thing to conquer.

I have to digress here for a moment and talk about the weather today. To say it was hot would be the understatement of the year. It was ridiculously hot. 95+ and the humidity was at least 90% or so. We did a great deal of walking and climbing today. It was physically quite demanding. We all held up well though.

And talking about being held. Little Anthony was the main attraction and everyone wanted to hold him and get their picture taken with him. It was totally unbelievable. Especially at the Great Wall we were continually approached by very kind people fascinated by a cute little blond hair boy. They would come up and tell us that “little boy beautiful” and would either speak in broken English they wanted a picture of him or with him. The group of people we are with were all amazed how many times we were approached and how well Anthony handled it. If I only charged some money for each request. Bummer I should have thought about that earlier.

Tomorrow is our big day. We fly out early morning from Beijing and about 2.5 – 3 hours later we will land in the province of Gansu. We will then take an hour long bus ride to our hotel and get checked in. At 3:00 pm we will get Amanda. We are so very excited. There is a lot for us to do once we get her. We have paper work to do for the Chinese government, photos to take for her passport and the list gos on and on. Things are really going to get busy for us here. It is all good.

We send all of you our greetings. Please pray for our travel today and for Amanda's assimilation to us today. I will try to post pictures of Amanda to the blog as soon as I can. I don't know what the internet access will be there at the other hotel.

God Bless,

Anthony