Inner Mongolia Bound

Today we didn't have anything scheduled until our flight out of town at 4:20pm. We had the whole morning to ourselves. We got up a little later - I think we're starting to get more used to the time - about 7:00am. We hung around the room and took our time getting ready and headed for our last breakfast in Beijing. Lydia had at least 7 or 8 dumplings plus some wanton soup, rice, and other of her favorite Chinese breakfast dishes. We met another American family in the breakfast buffet. They were on vacation there in Beijing because the dad was stationed in Korea with the army. They ate breakfast with us and we talked about what we had seen and what they were going to be seeing. They had just arrived the night before and they were really excited to go see the Great Wall. It was fun talking to some other people who can converse easily with you. :)
Since we didn't have anything planned for the morning, we decided to pack everything up, so we would know exactly how much time we had. We finished packing around 9:00am and decided to head to the Temple of Heaven. It was about 1.5 km away from our hotel. It took us about 30 minutes to walk there. Lydia did not enjoy the walk there. She wanted to just be there. Once we got there, we enjoyed walking all around the park and going into some of the buildings that are a part of the Temple of Heaven.
The Temple of Heaven was built around the same time as the Forbidden City - in the early 1400's. It is so amazing to think that the places we went today were around before Columbus! Anyway, the Temple of Heaven is a huge garden that is walled in along with many buildings for different prayers and sacrifices that the emperor would have made on a yearly basis. One of the times the emperor would come to this location was in the spring to ask the ancestors/gods to bless their crops. There were other parts where the emperor would give thanks for the good things that happened throughout the year. There were different buildings for each prayer and for each sacrifice. There was also a palace where the emperor would stay for at least three days before the ceremonies. The entire place was HUGE. We went to a few of the places, but there were many more things would could have seen. I remembered something of this place from when I was in China in college.
Since we needed to be ready for our pickup for the airport, we only were able to spend about 2 hours there. At the end we were on the northeast side of the gardens, but we needed to be on either the south or the east. We high tailed it to the East exit and practically ran home. We had to be ready for our 1/1:30pm pick up. We were back, brought our suitcases down, and ate our lunch of specialty breads from the bakery next door, with time to spare.
Our guide took us to the airport and got us checked in. Since we had a child with us, they let us go in a special shorter line! We were able to check 4 of our suitcases which made for an easier time getting to our gate. We got to our gate and sat there for about an hour and a half before it was time for our flight to board. Lydia and I were in a different place than Brian. We knew the flight was super short, so we didn't bother asking someone to move. Lydia was excited because we were in zone 1 for boarding. Little did we know that the zones in China are really not important. As soon as they announced that they were going to start boarding for Hohhot, everyone on the plane ran to form a line. We were toward the last people to get on. I guess now that we know what will happen, we will have to try it out again in China!
The flight to Hohhot (which by the way is spelled differently each time I see it) was uneventful and short. It seemed like we were on the runway waiting for our turn for as long as it took us to fly there. I was surprised that we weren't taking the bullet train, but we found out there aren't any bullet trains to from Beijing to Hohhot. And with our over abundance of luggage, I was glad not to have to lug that on and off the train.
We arrived in Hohhot and were greeted at the airport by our guide Aggie. She's the same guide my cousins had and she remembered them when I showed her their picture. She's been great so far in getting us set up. She pointed out some restaurants on the way to the hotel so we would know where to eat and made sure we were settled before leaving.
We were all tired and hungry, so we decided to go to the closest restaurant to the hotel. We had, you guessed it, noodles. I told Brian tonight that I have had way too many carbs. I'm dying for a salad, but since we can't eat raw veggies here in China, noodles it is.
Tomorrow is the day we get MeiMei. We're still waiting to hear the time. They are taking the train here, so we have to find out tomorrow when the train will arrive. We know it won't be too early in the morning. I'm hoping we will all be able to sleep in and rest up because I know that tomorrow will be exciting, but probably tiring too.
Lydia really wanted to blog tonight, but she fell asleep again. Hopefully tomorrow. since we don't have anything set for the morning, she can write a blog post. She's been taking pictures and she want to show those to you all too. By the way, Gracie...she thinks she might be getting almost as good as you at taking pictures!!! :)

Everything is so ornate and beautiful. 

Lydia trying to kiss the dragon!

This juniper tree is over 500 years old. When the pilgrims were landing, this tree was already old. It's so crazy to think about that!

The attention to detail is amazing.

A "Great" Day

This morning we got to set out a little later than yesterday. I would have loved to sleep in a little, but someone (who will remain nameless, but it wasn't Brian) woke up about 3am and kept talking and making noise. We did get her to go back to sleep for a little bit, but by 6am we were all woken up again. We got up and had breakfast in the hotel. Again, Lydia was in heaven because they have rice for breakfast and dumplings too. Unfortunately they had the dumplings mismarked, so she ended up with seaweed dumplings. You would think with her love of seaweed that she would have loved those too. But, I guess when you have your heart set on pork dumplings, seaweed just doesn't do it. She has also renewed her love of Chinese yogurt. It's usually plain sweetened yogurt, but it's thinner than in the states. They serve it with a straw so you can drink it. She's had that for breakfast the past few days too. When we first brought Lydia home, she drank yogurt (which we thinned out with milk) every morning. This may become a thing again when we get home. Although I won't let her put nearly as much sugar in it as they do in China!
After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and met our guide, Cindy, to head to the Great Wall of China. It took about 2 hours to drive to the section of wall where we went. The drive was nice - partly through Beijing city and then through the countryside of Beijing too. It was interesting to see the smaller towns along the way. We passed by a huge car factory that makes cars that we'd never heard of. Apparently, Jeep works with a Chinese company and their venture together is a car company that they only have in China. I'm not sure what it's called, because they just had the symbol on the building.
All the way to the Great Wall, Lydia was sure she was going to spot it first. Every time we saw a big bridge, we told her that was it and that we saw it first. When we finally saw it, she was the last to spot it. She had been a little restless in the car, so we let her listen to an audio book and she was so focused on that, she didn't remember to look!
When we arrived at the Great Wall Mutianyu section, we had 3 options. The Great Wall is on the top of the mountain, so we had to get up the mountain before we could even begin walking on the wall. We could either walk up the 1000+ steps, we could ride an enclosed gondola, or we could take a ski lift to the top and ride an alpine slide to the bottom. I was worried that Lydia wouldn't want to take the slide down (because that's what I've been wanting to do), but that was her first choice. :) Yeah!!!
We took the chair lift up to the top of the mountain and climbed across about 5 or 6 sections of the Great Wall. One of the things that I was struck by the first time I was at the Great Wall was how NOT flat it was! I was reminded of this fact again today when we walked on the Wall up and down and around the mountain. It is so crazy as you'll be able to see from some of the pictures. There are really steep steps some places but other places, it's just a really steep incline. There's a marathon held along a section of the Great Wall, including where we were today, each year. I can't imagine running along the Wall. It was hard enough walking!
We walked along the Wall, took pictures and learned some history from our guide. The Great Wall was begun to be built over 2200 years ago and we're still walking on it today! All the history in it is amazing. Also, just in case (like Lydia) you think that you can see the Great Wall from space, you can't. Even though it is amazingly long, it's only about 15 feet wide, so if you can't see your street from outer space, you won't be able to see the Great Wall. We also found out that the first and the last dynasties of China were the Chin and the Ching. Although the characters in Chinese are completely different, they sound almost exactly alike in English. I've gotten them mixed up before, but for today, it's making sense to me.
The best part of taking the long trek out to this section of the Great Wall, was the alpine slide. Lydia wasn't sure about going by herself, but they had a bigger sled and they let us go down together. She was pretty good about getting going, but the lady in front of us was going sooooo slow. Lydia ran into her once, because the rules stated: No Pictures, and No Stopping. Lydia took that literally and the person in front of us got rear ended. I explained to her that even though you aren't supposed to stop, you also aren't supposed to hit someone from behind.
On our way home, we let Lydia play games on the tablet and listen to an audio book because we don't want a repeat of last night! We knew that getting home at 4pm, we would have to do something to keep Lydia occupied or she would end up falling asleep right then and there. We asked our guide and she said that Tienanmen Square was just a little ways down the street from our hotel. After getting some Coke to try to get a little caffeine in our system, we headed down to the square. Our guide suggested going to see the flag ceremony at sunset. We weren't able to go into the square because it was already closed for the day, but we walked the entire length of the square and ended up in front of the Forbidden City to watch to flag ceremony. A group of soldiers came out of the Forbidden City and crossed the street, lowered the flag and brought it back across the street. There were TONS of people there watching. I'm pretty sure Lydia comes by her lack of personal space awareness because of her birth culture. We were pretty close to a lot of people. I guess when there are 21 million people in one city, you have to squish together!
We headed back toward our hotel and dinner. Brian had noticed a sign for Pizza Hut when we were out last night, so we decided to try to order some pizza for supper. The manager spoke English, so ordering was easy. The pan crust tastes pretty much like the pizza at home. We got pepperoni, but I guess either I didn't order it with sauce or they don't make it with sauce. It still tasted good to me. :) We got some Pepsi to drink, since we can't drink the water here. The Pepsi cost about half of what the pizza cost...which was expensive for food in China. Yesterday, the noodles we ate for lunch cost about $5 for all of us, and tonight, we spent about $20. Still not bad, but quite expensive for China. While we were waiting for the pizza to come, Lydia was just about falling asleep. While we waited for the check, she did fall asleep. She wasn't very happy when we woke her up. We told her she could write on the blog when we got home, so she was determined to stay awake.

Lydia's version of the day:
First we had breakfast and then we left the hotel...

That's as far as Lydia got before she fell asleep. Her head literally hit the pillow and she was out. Pray that she stays asleep all night long! We could all use some uninterrupted sleep tonight. Tomorrow afternoon we fly to Inner Mongolia. :)

Lydia loves taking pictures!

Trying to be a serious guard on the Wall

Check out the ups and downs of the Wall

A picture on the slide before we saw the "No Pictures" rule

It only cost 20 RMB to have our picture taken with these guys! They are very inventive in their ways to make money! 

In front of the Forbidden City

After sunset in Tienanmen Square 

A Visit to Tangshen

The drive to Tangshen can be about 3 hours long, so we had to get up at 6am. I was afraid I wouldn't wake up, so we had a wake up call scheduled and I also set the alarm on my phone. I was already half awake when the phone rang, so I guess no need to worry!
We got up and got ready and went downstairs to the buffet for breakfast. It was Lydia's dream come true...noodles, dumplings, and rice for breakfast! They also had more "Western" breakfast foods like eggs, bacon (labeled baconic), hash browns, and juice. I opted for the regular breakfast, but Lydia had all Chinese food.
After breakfast, we finished getting ready and met our guide in the lobby of our hotel. We headed into the Beijing rush hour traffic. It is pretty crazy. I'm not sure how they tell when it's their turn to go, especially the people on bikes and mopeds, but we didn't see any crashes, so there must be some rhyme or reason to how they decide to go. One thing we noticed while driving through town was a coat like blanket that they put over the front of them and their moped to keep themselves warm. Almost everyone had them. It was in the 40s (I think) so they were feeling cold. For many people the only personal transportation they own is their bike or moped, so they have to drive them rain or shine.
We fought our way through the city center and eventually got to the place where there wasn't too much traffic.  We drove for about 2 hours along a highway that went through more rural areas.
We arrived in Tangshen a little after 10am and made our way to the Tangshen orphanage.

Here's Lydia's version of that visit:
For breakfast I ate rice,dumplings, yogurt, noodles, and apple juice. In the orphanage I got a giant hippo stuffed animal and an apple made from giant beads! I met my orphanage directer and she told me the kids made the apple. She showed us a mural on one of the walls with pictures of the me when I was a baby. Then she took us to some kids from the orphanage and I give each kid one handful of Jelly Bellies. She also took me to the room I slept in when I was there.

Erica fell asleep and Lydia is done now so I (Brian):
It was nice to be able to see the orphanage again.  I recognized a couple of people from before.  Unfortunately we did not get to see either of the nannies we met last time that worked with Lydia.  One had the day off and the other has retired.  Most of the children were not there because they were at school.  We only saw the ones with severe special needs.   There are currently around 100 children in the orphanage.  I always wondered why we had not found many who were adopted from her orphanage.  I found out why today.  They said only 20 have been adopted from that orphanage and Lydia was the first.  I could tell it was very emotional for some of the workers last time to see her go, and that must have been the reason.  After visiting, giving out gifts, and taking photos for about an hour we left the orphanage and went to Lydia's finding spot.  We were unable to do that last time so it was nice to be able to see it this time.  After a bit of searching we ended up at a noodle restaurant right next to the orphanage.  On the way home we stopped at the earthquake manorial and museum.  We had stopped there last time on our way back to Beijing.  I have a lot of good memories of that place.  Last time as we were leaving the area was the first time we saw Lydia smile when she was not with her nanny.  It was also the first place Lydia allowed Erica to not carry her and walk herself.  We then drive back to the hotel, ate and typed our blog post.  I'm sure Erica will touch this up (which means completely redo) this tomorrow.  We all need a good nights sleep,

Here is a couple of photos from today (11/16/18):

We’re Here...and More than a Little Tired

Well, we arrived in China last night. Our plane was delayed almost 3 hours in Detroit, so we got to enjoy the Detroit airport for a few hours more than we thought we would! The plane ride was looooong, but pretty uneventful. We didn’t sleep much, even Lydia, but that’s kind of what we wanted. To get over the jet lag, it’s suggested to sleep little on the plane, so you’re tired when you get to China. Well, there was no problem with being tired! As the plane was landing, Lydia could barely keep her eyes open. We played BINGO on the touchscreen and that woke her up a little. We got off the plane and headed to pick up our luggage. Before we got our luggage, we had to scan our fingerprints into the "system". I guess we better not commit any crimes while we're here! We got our enormous amount of luggage, sent it through an x-ray machine that no one was looking at and went out to find our guide outside the terminal. She was all ready for us and had a minivan to take us to our hotel.
We got to the hotel at about 10pm and got checked in. We tried to blog last night, but we couldn't get the internet to work. They gave us an expired password, we figured out, so we had to go to sleep. Lydia told us she wasn't tired, but she was out pretty much as soon as her head hit the pillow. I'm glad she is a good sleeper now! Brian and I had a little more trouble falling asleep, but we slept through the night, waking up about every hour or two. I'm hoping that we can sleep a little more tonight. I'd like to fall asleep right now, but I know if I do that, I won't sleep as long as I need to.
We're going to go get some supper and then Lydia wants to write about her time in Tangshan.

Lydia trying out the sleeping mask on the plane

On our way...Almost!

We got up this morning about 4am to make it to the Chicago airport for our 9am flight. On the way there, I saw a post from someone on Facebook who was going to be on our Detroit to Beijing flight. They were already on their way and had found out the our Beijing flight was going to be late.

So here we are at the Detroit airport...We almost could have driven here in the time we've been waiting. The plane is finally here and they say that we are going to start boarding soon - for an "on time" departure of 5:35pm - only 3 hours later than our flight was schedule for.

We've been sitting in the terminal trying to fill the time. We got all our books downloaded to our Kindles and tablets, ate Chik-Fil-A, and met a bunch of other families that are headed to China to adopt too!

Just about to board...more when we get to CHINA!!!

On Our Way Soon!

I know that a lot of you have been asking about when we are heading to China and the answer is...
Wednesday!!!!
We're flying out of Chicago and heading to Detroit where we will get on a plane bound for Beijing. We have a busy first few days after we arrive. Here's a basic itinerary of what we'll be doing:

Wednesday, November 14 - Fly to China
Thursday, November 15 - Arrive in Beijing, China
Friday, November 16 - Visit Tangshan - Lydia's hometown
Saturday, November 17 - Tour Beijing - the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, etc.
Sunday, November 18 - Fly to Huhhot, Inner Mongolia

Huhhot is the provincial capital of Inner Mongolia, MeiMei's birth province. Because of the paperwork that needs to be processed, that is where we will meet MeiMei.

Monday, November 19 - Meet MeiMei
Tuesday-Wednesday, November 20-21 - Paperwork processing
Thursday, November 22 (Thanksgiving) - Visit Baotou - MeiMei's hometown and fly to Guangzhou
Friday - Wednesday, November 23-28 - Appointments and paperwork in Guangzhou, including at the US consulate.
Thursday, November 29 - Fly from Guangzhou to Beijing to Detroit to Chicago where we arrive around 9pm and then hopefully we'll get home and get to bed soon after that!!!

Please pray for smooth travels, good health, and quick jet lag recovery for the three of us traveling. Lydia is so excited, but she has such a difficult time dealing with life when she's tired. Pray that she will be able to adjust her body quickly to the huge time difference. I really don't think I can deal with her being emotional and then try to deal with MeiMei's emotions when we meet her. Also pray for all the transitions that will be taking place throughout the trip and coming home. MeiMei will be leaving all that she has known for the first 5 years of her life to move halfway across the world with a family that mostly looks, feels, sounds, and smells different than what she is used to. Pray that she would pick up English quickly and that we'll be able to communicate with her when she needs something.

Thanks for all the love and support from all of you. We will blog each night as we are able. I know that a lot of you will be looking for posts every morning. We'll try not to let you down. :)

Pictures added for cuteness!

Finally, A Sister

Well, it's only been five years since my last blog. I'm not so good at keeping things updated here. We used this blog the first time so everyone could follow our journey to Lydia. We're using it now so that everyone can follow our journey to our next Peterson Princess!

Surprise...For those of you who have not heard, we are about two months away from traveling to China to adopt a "MeiMei" (Little Sister). We've been in the process since November of 2017 and we're so excited. Lydia couldn't stop saying, "I can't believe I'm having a sister" for about a month after we told her. She is still excited, but is torn because she has heard from all her friends that little sisters can be very annoying. :) Brian and I are excited and busy at the same time. The paperwork keeps us on our toes.
For those of you who have done this before, or who are in it now, we are waiting for our I-800 approval. That is approval from the US government for our daughter's immigration. We need a few more things from the US and China before we can book our travel. Our agency thinks that the week after Thanksgiving is a good estimate for travel time.

We wanted to let you all know what was going on and give you a little glimpse at our MeiMei. I'll try to blog a little more in the next two months, and for sure, when we get to China.