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Louanne’s Random Thoughts so far

We have been up since 5 am and our bags are packed, so I decided to blog as we wait for the clock to tick-tock us closer to Nadia.

    o The Chinese move FAST. Walking, working, you name it, they move with quick efficency.
    o The Chinese get on and off planes faster than anything you have ever seen.
    o Turn signals mean nothing in China.
    o I have no idea how pedestrians and bicylists don’t get run over all the time.
    o Our guide told us this information would save our life, “If you have to cross a street, get behind a Chinese person. When they move you move, when they stop you stop.” He’s not joking.
    o No matter how swank your hotel looks, DON’T drink the tap water. And keep your eyes and mouth shut in the shower.
    o For waiting families behind us, I am going to do separate posts on the hotels we stayed at and my thoughts on each.
    o Spending Yuan (Chinese money) is like monopoly money, it doesn’t seem real.
    o A crying American woman can be quite an entertaining sight for the normally reserved Chinese people.
    o I had the van ride of my life yesterday, when I had to leave our tour early. Let’s just say the hour long ride back to the hotel did not take nearly an hour. If you’ve seen the arcade game Crazy Cab, that’s what I got to experience in real life. Then the total charge was like $15 US. Plus I gave the guy a big tip and it still didn’t cost what a short ride would cost in America.
    o Be prepared to get PUSHED in China. Going to the restroom in the Forbidden City yesterday was an adventure in itself. There were a couple of western toilets, but the “fight” to get to them was overwhelming. The people in China aren’t rude, it’s just a different culture. So I started pushing back and got to the restroom.
    o You just can’t believe the amount of skyscraper apartments in Beijing. As far as your eye can see more cranes are up putting up more buildings. And the apartments aren’t cheap. $300 US per square foot and people here have to get loans from the bank for a 30 year note for an apartment. Our guide says that a new word has been created in Beijing “apartment slaves” because people work their whole life to pay these apartments off.
    o There are so beautiful gardens and parks that we passed by and they even have the expressway entrances and exits done up beautifully. I am not sure if it’s always that way or if it’s for the Olympics.
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Message from Louanne

Hello everyone. I am about to go to sleep and just wanted to let everyone know that your comments, emails and prayers have meant the world to me. They have lifted my spirits and filled my heart. I just think that the anticipation of this whole event caught up to me in one fell swoop. But tomorrow we meet Nadia and the tears will be of joy for this little cutie that God has blessed us with.

I plan on writing more soon all the little random thoughts I have had about China, but I must sleep now to catch our flight to Jiangxi in the morning. Love you all, Louanne

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The Most Beautiful Sight in China

The luggage has returned from the Land of the Lost

Huzzah! Our luggage is in our room. That’s the most beautiful sight in China so far. After we finish burning our other clothes, we’ll post more later. Oh, and FYI…just in case the pictures I’ll be posting over the next couple of weeks look wonky occasionally…China (or at least our specific hotel) appears to block all of the images from flickr.com. I can still upload them, but I can’t view what I upload. So, I’m hopeful that everyone outside China will still be able to see them correctly. Otherwise I’ll have to work out an alternative and do everything manually.

Mike

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Hobos in China

Well, we got to Beijing about 24 hours ago (after about 30 hrs of traveling), and believe it or not our bags were lost before we even left the U.S.A. That’s right, our luggage didn’t even make it to LAX before being lost! That’s after meticulously splitting everything between both bags just in case one of them got lost. So, we have a laptop, three cameras, two cell phones that don’t work here, a bunch of medicine, AND some dried apples, pretzels and Wonder Bars. I also had a pair of shorts and an extra pair of socks in my carry-on…so my feet feel fine, but the rest of us isn’t doing so well. I’m hoping those Wonder Bars have a name that isn’t exaggerated.

Louanne had some difficulties…feeling a bit afraid and having a rough time, with lots of crying and all. It seems the 51 months of waiting for the baby finally caught up to her. But, we got a cell phone (Panda Phone) in China that we can use while we are here so that we can call the States for WAY cheaper than the $2.29/minute that AT&T Wireless wants to charge us, and I used it to call Kaye Jordan so that Louanne could talk to her. She is a wonderful woman from our church…who also happens to be in charge of the Childrens’ programs and is the pastor’s wife. That conversation helped Louanne quite a bit.

Shortly after that we went back to the airport here in Beijing with our guide Michael, who talked to the people there for us. I had already spent who knows how many dollars calling two airlines in the U.S., trying to locate our bags and get them here…getting conflicting statements every time and solving nothing. After talking to them for us today, Michael told us that they have located our bags in Guangzhou and that they should be in Beijing this evening. Michael has to go back to the airport tonight to pick up another family, so he said he will get them for us then. After he told us that, Louanne grabbed his face and kissed him on the cheek. From the resulting smiles and blushes I’m guessing that moment might be one of his more memorable from this group’s trip. The talk with Kaye and the good news about our luggage bolstered Louanne’s spirits quite a lot. Chatting with the two other adopting couples that we picked up from the airport seemed to help her a lot as well.

Finally, because of all that has happened thus far, we missed the tour we were supposed to take today, but we are also scheduled to see the Chinese Acrobats in a few hours, so we just might be able to go to that…in our stylish and yet unkempt hobo clothes. I’ve heard that three-day, unwashed clothes are the New Black, so maybe we’ll actually enjoy wearing them there. Or, we may just skip that, too. The Tiananmen Square and Great Wall tour is planned for tomorrow, so we might just be satisfied with that. After all, we aren’t in China for sightseeing, but to get Nadia. Nothing else really matters much to us right now.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, and more importantly for your prayers. We know that God is with us and everything will work out for the best. These are just some silly stories that we’ll be able to tell Nadia about later.

Mike

P.S. We’d have posted sooner, but the Internet in our room wasn’t working until now. I used to complain about having no Internet access, but then I met a man with no computer. O the trials that we have to bear! 😉