Hutong Lane

Hutong Lane (Hutong is also a general term for the older historic residential areas of China) was a really cool experience. We arrived, paired up in rickshaws, and rode the small neighborhood streets.

Some interesting things about the Hutong communities:

• In these communities there are many old homes, and the communities are very tight-knit. They will often set out little chairs in front of their front doors after the work day and sit together to drink tea or play mahjong.
• Each of the homes, once you enter the front door, have rooms centered around a central courtyard. 
• Larger families (or multiple families) will often live together in one home
• There are not bathrooms typically in these homes, and so the families of these communities share a public restroom. This is just their way of life that they are used to. The younger generations though are tending to move into apartments so that they can have their own space and bathrooms.

We visited a home from the Ting Dynasty that has been home for a family for generations - over 200 years. The home was made up of three small rooms and a courtyard, all set behind this door. Because this home was in the old Hutong area of Beijing, this modest home is worth somewhere between 8-9 million dollars.

More from Hutong Lane...

Forever Love on the Great Wall

One of the other really cool traditions in China is to leave a lock on the great wall, and throw over the key, as a symbol of forever love.

We had Lainey's name engraved on a lock by a woman at the wall and thought this was so beautiful (for future reference for Lainey, it's after the 2nd tower and the 8th window on the left as you go up towards the 3rd tower). 

We love you forever sweet girl!

More of the Great Wall... :)

The Jade Bracelet

There is a long rich jade culture in China, and a part of that is that the women traditionally wear a jade bracelet in the same way women in the west wear wedding bands, and then pass down their bracelet to their daughter or daughter in law for their wedding day. We visited a very large jade factory today, where we were able to see the ornate jade cravings being created. We decided to buy a jade bracelet for Lainey, which I will wear until it is time to give it to her when she is married.

Wearing it now, it is so beautiful to feel like I am now a part of this beautiful Chinese mother tradition, and will have this gift for her wedding day when the time comes. 

Lunch at the jade factory with most of the families from our Holt group. Meals in China are traditionally served like this - family style. :)

A very ornate ship made from one piece of jade.

In this photo I am with our guide Lydia (Low Fung). Her jade bracelet was given to her on her wedding day by her mother, and she will pass it down to her oldest daughter when she is married.

Random Observations from Night One

Random Observations

• I am very very tired. So if I write anything on the blog that is all scrambled or poorly written, there's my excuse. :)
• The staring has started! We heard this would happen, but it's pretty strange to feel a little on display here. We started getting stares the minute we left the airport. As we drove our small bus from the hotel to the airport, people passing by would crane their necks to look into this bus full of white folks! At one point, a grown man on another bus waved at BJ and BJ waved back - the man jumped up with excitement to tell his friend what just happened. At our first dinner out in Beijing we caught two people sneaking photos of us (they tried not to be obvious, really they did). BJ said the table of teenage girls behind us were also imitating the way he was using his chop sticks and cracking up at us (his method was stabbing his food with one chop stick, and pinching with the other). We were laughing at ourselves too, we're pretty bad at it and will probably order our food based on what's easiest to eat with chopsticks! Hoping to better perfect our skills before the end. :)
• Our Beijing Holt guide (Lydia) is awesome and so sweet! I love hearing her perspective on things. She also tells us where to eat, and more importantly were NOT to eat. She is awesome! :)
• The beds here are about the same as sleeping on the floor, which is part of the reason why we're awake so early.  Hoping to maybe get another comforter to use underneath us tonight! :)
• The babies are so so cute and I want to scoop them all up and kiss their cheeks. but I won't. Because that would be weird. :)
• Today is a sunny day in Beijing, but we don't see blue sky or the sun. There are a few people wearing masks to protect themselves from the pollution, which we've heard is about the equivalent to second-hand smoke. It's a little like being in a bowling alley (that allows smoking) all day. My eyes are suffering a bit, but I'm hoping they adjust soon.

The view from our hotel window.

Flight Log

Written on the flight to Beijing - May 15, 2014, 9:35am (9:35pm in the U.S.)

It was a bumpy start indeed to our journey to China… but we are finally on our way! My super sweet Dad was up with us well before sunrise to drive us to the airport, about a 30 minute drive from our house.  We unloaded and said goodbye… and then the crazy began.

We didn’t expect the check-in line alone in Cincinnati to be 2 hours long… which left us not much time to make our flight to Chicago.  After getting through that mess (barely), we RAN to our gate after making it through security, and a few minutes later were boarding. We left the gate only to circle… and circle… and return back to where we started. The plane, it was determined, had failed a critical de-icing check, and so we would need to deboard the plane and figure something else out for ourselves. Thankfully, as we waited, United was able to locate an empty plane about to fly to Chicago anyway, so they took on all of our passengers and we were soon on our way.

Once finally in Chicago, we settled in a bit, got some food, and had a really cool opportunity to Facetime with the director of Canaan’s preschool so we could watch his end of the year program that we were missing. It was so cool to still be a part of this special event for him, and we even got to say hi and wave hello to our precious big boy. 

Not long after that we lined up along with a enormous mass of other people heading to Beijing, to get our papers checked (passports and visas) and get on the plane. We finally made it to the front of the line, only to find that there was some sort of problem with our ticket and we were pulled out of line. Because our first trip from Cincinnati to Chicago had trouble, there was evidently a lot of confusion because we were bumped off of our FULL flight to China by United (even though we made it to Chicago 4 hours before our Beijing flight was to leave).

After about 10 minutes of stressful waiting  (and pulling out the very true “we’re adopting our BABY, we HAVE to get on that plane” card), we somehow managed to get back in the manifest and we were good to go. Holy-whew!

The flight so far, despite my aching bad knees, the long flight itself hasn’t been too bad at all! We each have our own little tvs loaded up with tons of movies and tv shows. I was able to sleep about an hour, and at this point we have just about 5 ½ hours to go. We had no idea that our flight path would take us over Greenland – that was pretty cool as well!  Pretty sure we’re flying over Russia at the moment.

Update: We've landed safe! We're excited to get some sleep and see the Great Wall tomorrow! :)

Countdown Updated

Gotta say, it was pretty fun updating our countdown to "Gotcha Day" (the day we meet Lainey) today! Yesterday we were sure we were traveling in June, and today we're getting flights arranged for next week!

Let's GO!!!

We had some pretty fantastic news at 12:30am last night! We have Travel Approval (TA)! We woke up to the call a bit groggy, but it didn't take long for our adrenaline to kick in! I think BJ maybe ended up getting 3 hours of sleep, and I had about 4 1/2. But we're thrilled to wake up to such awesome surprising news!

Now we are just waiting on our court appointment (which we will hopefully get today). May travel is most likely and that's what we're shooting for!  If you asked me yesterday, I would have said we had somewhere around a 2% chance of traveling in May. But God has a way of making miracles and answering our prayers even when we don't expect Him to! And showing once again what great love he has for our little girl - paving the way for her over and over again.

We're already rolling making some preliminary flight plans, and finally starting on the long post-TA to-do list! We are so thrilled to be this close to our little girl!

We leave in ONE week!!!! 

My little girl has been an orphan since she was two days old.

In just over a week she will have
a Mommy
a Daddy
two brothers
a home
and a FAMILY
forever.

My heart is so full and so happy!