Sunday, June 30 - Pandas, market, and travel to Guilin

I'm posting this on Monday morning here in China, but really it's from Sunday.  We got to our new hotel so late last night that we all just went right to bed.  Yesterday (Sunday) morning we had breakfast, checked out of our hotel, and our group went on the bus to the panda reserve.  It was about an hour and 20 minutes from Chengdu.  We saw a lot of pandas, and a lot of them up really close!  It wasn't quite like a zoo because the pandas have a lot more room to roam around, but they do have food and water provided for them, as well as air conditioned enclosures that they can go into because they like cooler weather.  Even though the reserve is a ways up into the mountains where it's a little cooler, the pandas still prefer it even cooler than it gets in the summer there.  It was cloudy and humid, and Ezekiel used his monocular a lot and was able to see most of the pandas.  We all had a lot of fun seeing the pandas!

Next we had lunch and then spent quite awhile in a really large market.  There were a lot of people there, but it wasn't a tourist area, so our group was the only group of Americans that we saw.  There were lots of neat stores and we bought some things and had fun walking around.  We've had a lot of Chinese people coming up to us asking to have their picture taken with us, especially lately when we've been in the less "touristy" areas where they don't see Americans as much.  Ironically, the Chinese people all want to have their picture taken with Ezekiel, and of course they don't realize that he's actually Chinese.  They love his hair.  Sometimes he gets upset when people try to lift up his hat, but he's usually okay with people taking his picture - I think he likes the attention.  Unfortunately, some of the Chinese people try to indicate to us that they want a picture of our family but not with TongJie in the picture, but we tell them that he's part of our family and usually put him in the picture anyway.

We went to the airport and had an evening flight from Chengdu to Guilin.  Our flight got in after 9:30, and it was after 11:00 by the time we'd all gotten our baggage, walked to the new bus, and drove the approx. one hour to our new hotel.  Ezekiel slept through the flight and everything.  The rest of us stayed awake, but crashed into bed as soon as we got here.  We were able to sleep in a little this morning and not be too rushed, so we're looking forward to another day of adventures!

Pictures of a panda that we saw at the reserve, and us standing by a horse statue at the market.

Saturday, June 29 - Bullet train to Chengdu

After breakfast, we walked to the Vanguard store (sort of like Walmart) because TongJie and Ezekiel really wanted to go there again before we left Xian.  Ezekiel later said that Vanguard was his favorite thing about Xian, ha ha!  We got some snacks and the boys each picked out a flip sequin shirt and then wore their new shirts proudly for the rest of the day.  We were on the bullet train for a lot of the day today.  It was about 4 hours on the bullet train from Xian to Chengdu.  We are staying in a really neat Tibetan hotel here, but unfortunately we'll only be here tonight and then we're checking out tomorrow morning.  Shortly after arriving at our hotel, our group walked to a hot pot restaurant nearby.  We have a new guide, Ray, in Chengdu (Tony stayed in Xian) and also still have Sarah with us.  The hot pot restaurant was really fun.  I took pictures with the camera, but we didn't take any with the tablet so I can't post them to the blog right now.  There were four different tables, and 6 or 7 people sat around each table with a boiling hot pot of soup broth in the middle.  The pots were divided into spicy and non-spicy sections.  The spicy sections were red with hot peppers and other spices.  There was raw meat and vegetables on the tables and you would add them to the boiling broth to cook, then everybody ladled some into their bowls after it was cooked.  It was really good, but very spicy, and I even mixed some of the spicy and non-spicy together so it wasn't even full strength!  Ray sat at our table and that was nice because he showed us how to do everything.  TongJie liked the non-spicy soup and tried some of the shrimp, crab, meatballs, and tofu.  He was mostly enthralled with adding things to the "stew," as he kept calling it, and watching everything bubble around.  Ezekiel did not even want to try any of the soup, but filled up on fried rice instead.  The boys fell asleep right away after getting back to our room and into bed.  Tomorrow we get to see the pandas!

We didn't take many pictures with our tablet today I guess, but here are pictures of Ezekiel and TongJie in their new flip sequin shirts from Ezekiel's new favorite store.  There is a life-sized yak (not a real one) in the lobby of our hotel but we haven't even taken a picture of that yet.

More pictures from June 28

1. On the Xian city wall

2. An impression of TongJie in a huge version of one of those pin impression things

Friday, June 28 - Wild Goose Pagoda and Xian City Wall

TongJie slept in until 7:00 this morning, but the rest of us were awake earlier.  I'm glad he was able to get a good night's sleep because he's been getting worn out by the end of our days.  We had some time between breakfast and meeting up with our group at 10:00, but it was raining and the boys really just wanted to play with their cars in our hotel room so that's what we did.  We were supposed to see the ancient Xi'an city wall this morning, but apparently they close it when it's raining a lot because it gets slippery, so our schedule changed a little.  We instead went to the Wild Goose Pagoda this morning, which we were going to do tomorrow morning, so we just ended up with a fuller day today because we still went to the city wall but it was in the afternoon instead, after it stopped raining.  The Wild Goose Pagoda was pretty amazing architecturally but I think the boys thought it was kind of boring.  Our guide, Tony, said that a pagoda is like a Buddhist library, used for storing historical documents and teaching.  There were a lot of other buildings that we saw with the pagoda as well and they were all really beautiful.  After the pagoda, we walked a long ways through a sort of downtown area that had a lot of shops and restaurants around the edges of a huge central area with lots of neat statues, fountains, trees, and food trucks.  We even saw a taco truck.  As we were walking, we stopped at a grocery store and let the boys pick out a snack.  Peppa Pig seems to be really popular in China, we keep seeing Peppa Pig everything all over the place, so they each chose Peppa Pig fruit snacks.  We had lunch with our group at a dumpling restaurant with the most dumplings of different varieties that I have ever seen.  They kept bringing more and more dumplings to our table and they were really good!  TongJie liked the shrimp dumplings the best, Ezekiel liked the pork and vegetable dumplings, and I liked the mushroom ones and also the pork and vegetable dumplings, but they were all excellent!  I don't remember which were Jeff's favorite and I can't ask him because he's not here right now.  We also had soup with tiny dumplings in it that the boys liked a lot as well.  Our whole family sat at the "kids' table" for lunch - they are a fun group to hang out with!

After lunch, we stopped at a huge market but we didn't walk very far into it because we only had 30 minutes to spend there and there were shops everywhere with just the kind of trinkety things that TongJie and Ezekiel love to look at!  TongJie bought a coin and Ezekiel bought a pocket watch with a horse on it - they are both very proud of their purchases.  Ezekiel has been using his watch to announce to everyone what time it is every few minutes.  We also bought a few other small things.

After the market, it had stopped raining so we went to the ancient city wall of Xian.  Xian is an interesting city because it has so much ancient history but it has also become very modern.  In the ancient times Xian was actually the capital city of China before it moved to Beijing, and it has a city wall that surrounds the old part of the city.  The wall is about 8 miles around and it is flat on top.  They have bikes that people can rent to ride around the wall, but unfortunately only adult-sized bikes so our family did not participate in riding the bikes.  TongJie was pretty disappointed because he really wanted to ride a bike.  Our family and another young man from our group were the only ones (besides our guides) who didn't ride bikes, so we walked together along one stretch of the wall and took pictures.  The sun had come out by then and it was really pretty.  It was interesting to see all of the ancient architecture on the inside of the wall with a backdrop of modern skyscrapers on the outside.  Sarah got an Uber to take us back to our hotel earlier than everyone else so we didn't have to wait around for the bike riders, which was nice.  The boys were ready to be back in our hotel room by then!  Jeff went to a concert this evening (called the "Tang Dynasty Music and Dance Show") with some others from our group, so the boys and I had a quiet evening in our room.  They aren't back from the concert yet so I don't know what it was like.  Today was another long day, but I'm kind of glad we had the schedule change and that we won't be going to the pagoda tomorrow morning.  TongJie and Ezekiel really want to go to the Vanguard department store again, so we'll be able to do that in the morning before we leave to take the bullet train to Chengdu in the afternoon.

Pictures are of the Wild Goose Pagoda this morning with some of our friends from our group, Travis and Kendra, and also at the market with TongJie and Ezekiel showing off their new purchases.   

More terracotta warriors (pictures)

Thursday, June 27 - The Terracotta Warriors

We took a walk in Xi'an near our hotel after breakfast this morning.  It is much cooler here than in Beijing and was grey and drizzling this morning.  TongJie said that it reminded him of Seattle.  We found a department store called Vanguard and bought some books and let the boys pick out a snack for the bus ride today.  We met up with our group at 10:00 and went on the bus to see the Terracotta Warriors, about an hour outside of Xian.  It was nice that it wasn't so hot, and also we were mostly indoors in the museum.  It was crowded, but nothing like yesterday at the Forbidden City and Tianenmen Square.  I took a different bag today and forgot to transfer Ezekiel's monocular into it, but today would have been a good day for him to use it since it wasn't so bright.  He didn't seem to be too bothered about not seeing things today, and was excited to see all the terracotta horses (his favorite!), and seemed to think everything must be a horse, or part of a horse that had yet to be put together.  The Emporer Qin had the terracotta army sculpted from red clay around 2,000 years ago to guard his tomb after he died.  It was discovered in the 1970s by a farmer digging a well and since then, thousands of soldier and horse statues have been unearthed.  I didn't realize how much excavation is still being done at the site even today, and it was interesting to see many pieces still in the process of being put together like life-sized puzzles.  Another interesting thing I did not realize was how close to the edge of the whole thing was the well that was being dug - if the well would have been just a few meters in a different direction, the entire army of terracotta soldiers might still be underground and completely undiscovered!  We went to a small factory of sorts that makes replicas of the terracotta army out of the same red clay and in various sizes.  We let the boys each choose a small one as a souveneir.  TongJie chose a warrior and Ezekiel chose a horse, they're really neat!  It was hard to explain to Ezekiel about the terracotta warriors - he kept getting confused and thinking they were real people who had died.  The replica souveneirs added another layer of confusion for him - if these were replicas, he thought they should be replicas of a real person (or horse), so he kept asking me if the terracotta warriors were "real."

We had a very late lunch (or early dinner?) with our group before heading back to the hotel.  This hotel has a swimming pool, so as soon as we got back to our room the boys wanted to go swimming.  A few of the other families had the same idea, and TongJie and Ezekiel had a good time in the pool, and then crashed and were sound asleep within minutes of brushing their teeth when we got back to our room.

It has been a lot of fun getting to know the other families in our group, and even though our boys are the youngest by far, they are having a great time hanging out with they others, and everybody has been super kind and friendly to our boys.  I think TongJie especially really feels like he fits in with the group and a lot of times has been choosing to be with the other kids instead of with me and Jeff all the time, which is quite something if you know TongJie.  I don't know if we were quite prepared for how long each day was going to be on this trip - every day so far has been packed with sightseeing and touristy things, which has been really interesting but probably a little above the attention span of our boys.  They would prefer to have a little more down time to just play with their cars and stuffed animals in our hotel room, walk to parks, and swim in the pool, but overall they are taking these long days in stride very, very well.  So far, at least . . . we'll see how we are all doing by the end of our trip!

Wednesday, June 26 - Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City

We all slept pretty well last night, and a good thing because today was a long day!  We had breakfast, packed up our stuff, checked out of our hotel, and were on the bus with our travel group at 8:30 to head to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  I've seen pictures of Tiananmen Square before, as well as the Forbidden City, but I had no idea how huge it was in real life!  It was amazing to see the buildings up close and to stand in the square and see how vast everything was.  The Forbidden City was built in the span of only 14 years, which is also crazy to imagine.  It was very crowded today, but our guides said that sometimes it's even a lot more crowded.  It wasn't quite as hot, but still pretty hot to be walking around with hardly any shade.  It was a little stressful for me because of all the people.  I felt like I constantly had to be on high alert to make sure we didn't lose sight of one of our kids.  We had two guides again today, Cindy and Sarah, and that was really helpful because Cindy was leading the tour and explaining all of the history while Sarah was making sure everyone was with the group and bringing up the rear (usually us!).  We all had an ear piece so we could hear Cindy as she was talking.  Tiananmen Square is right outside of the Forbidden City so we went directly from the square into the "city."  It is called the Forbidden City because in the ancient times, only the Emporer and his family and slaves were allowed to go inside the city walls and it was forbidden to everyone else.  TongJie and Ezekiel have been doing great so far on our trip, but Ezekiel got frustrated a few times today because there were a lot of details he couldn't see.  We brought his monocular and he used that a few times, but when it's too bright even his monocular is pretty useless.  Everything is paved with light colored cobblestones and in that big open area it was just really bright.  Luckily the buildings are gigantic, so he could at least see those!  By the time we got through the Forbidden City, we were all pretty tired.  

We took the bus to the train station and got on a bullet train to head to Xi'an.  Cindy had told the group that we would get to the train station and have time for lunch before getting on the train, and she even said there was a McDonald's there, so TongJie and Ezekiel were really looking forward to McDonald's for lunch.  As it turned out though, we had to wait a long time for our bus and didn't get to the train station with enough time to spare, so nobody even got to have lunch at all.  Luckily we had brought a lot of snacks and we were able to buy some more snacks on the train, but the boys were disappointed (and hungry!) but they were troopers on the train anyway.  It was about 4.5 hours to Xi'an on the bullet train.  Cindy stayed in Beijing, but Sarah came with us on the train, and when we arrived at the station we met our new guide, Tony.  So we will have Tony and Sarah for the next several days.  Sarah will be with our family for the rest of our trip because she will go with us to TongJie's province for the last couple of days.  This is our third time having Sarah for a guide - she was with us when we got TongJie in 2012 and again for Ezekiel in 2015 and we really like her!  

We all had dinner together before heading to our hotel.  Everyone was really hungry and the food was good and a lot of it was very spicy.  Ezekiel fell asleep during dinner and slept through the 30 minute bus ride to our hotel and all the way till we got up to our room around 9:00.  We had him go to the bathroom and then laid him on the bed and he went right back to sleep.  TongJie was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow as well.  It was a long day!  Jeff said that the sight seeing this morning has been his favorite so far, but I liked the Great Wall yesterday better.  Tomorrow we get to see the Terracotta Warriors and I'm really looking forward to that.  It's cooler in Xian and it was rainy this evening.  The cooler weather was very nice after being so hot in Beijing.

More photos of The Great Wall (Tuesday, June 25)

A few more photos of the Great Wall . . . 

Fw: Tuesday, June 25 - The Great Wall!!

I posted this yesterday, but my parents said it wasn't showing up on our blog, so I'm trying to re-post it, this time without as many pictures and hopefully that will work.  If the other post ever shows up, there will be two identical posts of the Great Wall except this one will have only one photo.

We woke up early again this morning and ate breakfast and went for a walk near our hotel before meeting our group at 8:30 and heading to The Great Wall.  TongJie and Ezekiel have been excited for months about seeing the Great Wall of China.  It was about an hour and a half bus ride - Beijing is a huge city, so it takes a long time just to get out of the city, and the Great Wall is in the mountains so it's outside of the city.  The section of the wall that we went to, surprisingly, was not very busy at all, so that was really nice.  It was very hot again today, and going on the Wall requires a lot of steep climbing, so we weren't sure how far we'd get.  The steps are quite steep, and also the heights of the steps are uneven - some are low, shallow steps, and some are tall (and hard for short little legs!) but the boys did a great job climbing up many, many steps and we stopped at a few different fortresses along the way and saw some amazing views.  When it was time to go back down, we had not fully anticipated the difficulty Ezekiel was going to have but we quickly realized he was going to need a lot of help because of his lack of depth perception.  Although going up was okay for him because he could see the front of the steps as we were approaching them, he was almost paralyzed with caution as we started down the steps, even holding onto my hand.  We figured out a way to make it work though.  On the way up, he had sort of invented a number system for the steps to categorize them based on height: "1" was the lowest steps, "2" was medium (like a regular stair step that we are used to), and "3" was the high steps, plus there were even a few "4" level steps that were giant steps even for an adult.  So, going down, we simply used his number system and I told him what each step was before he stepped down.  It worked pretty well and we made it with lots of time to spare before the 12:30 meeting time - even enough time to get popsicles at the gift shop next to the parking lot!

Next we went to a jade factory and then had lunch.  On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the site of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, which will also house the 2022 Winter Olympics.  We could have done without stopping at the Olympic Stadium - we didn't go in or anything, but just walked around outside in the gigantic parking lot with almost no shade so people could take pictures, but it was so hot and we were already tired!  By the time we got back to our hotel, it was 5:00 and the boys were worn out.  There was an optional actobat show that TongJie and Jeff had planned on going to, but it started at 5:30 so the people who were going didn't even get off the bus at the hotel - they just went directly to the show.  Because we were all so tired, TongJie decided that he didn't want to go to the show after all, so we all just went back to our hotel room which I think ended up being a good choice.  I wish they would have gotten to see it, but I'm glad that TongJie was able to get to bed at a decent time and not overdo it wearing himself out.  The Great Wall was most definitely the highlight of today and I'm glad we got to go there early in the day and that it was not crowded at all - we got lots of great pictures!  We remembered to take our tablet today, so we got some pictures on the tablet so they're easy to put on our blog.

Monday, June 24

Monday, June 24

Not only was today our first full day in China, but it is also Ezekiel's "Family Day" - he joined our family on this day in 2015, exactly 4 years ago.  How fun that we happen to be in China to celebrate this special day!  

Our flight arrived in Beijing around 4:00 pm yesterday.  Another family in our group was on the same flight but we didn't realize it until after we went through customs and baggage claim and met up with our guide.  We got to our hotel after 6:00, got settled and we were all asleep by 8:00.  We were up early this morning but we had all slept pretty well through the night.  The boys were so excited about the breakfast buffet at our hotel!  They loved having noodles and spring rolls (and bacon!) for breakfast.  We had time to walk around some of the streets near our hotel and scope things out before meeting up with our group at 8:30.  There were six families today, but a seventh family will be joining our group tomorrow.  So far, all of the other kids are teenage girls, except for one older brother in college, so our boys are the youngest by far, but the older kids are all really nice and TongJie and Ezekiel have been having fun hanging out with them.  We went to the Temple of Heaven this morning - it was a LOT of walking in the hot sun and I thought it might be a little boring for the boys, but at the end of today, TongJie said that the Temple of Heaven was his favorite thing we did today.  Ezekiel did really well even though it was hot and bright.  We brought umbrellas, so having an umbrella helped, and part of the time we got to be in the shade.  It is actually a very large park, so the temple buildings (built for "the god of heaven" in ancient times) are only part of what we saw, and we also got to spend some time in the shady park area with juniper and cypress trees, most of which are very old.  We spent around 2 and a half hours at the Temple of Heaven, and then went to a silk factory and learned how silk is made, which was pretty interesting.  China is famous for its silk so it was fun to learn about how they make it and see some of the machines and stuff, and we also bought some things there.  Then we had lunch, which was served family style with a bunch of different dishes in the middle of the table for everyone to try.  Our guide, Cindy, whom we've had as a guide both times we were in China before, had the adults sit at a table together, and the kids sit at another table together.  Jeff and I were a little worried about how TongJie and Ezekiel would do sitting with the teenage girls (mostly worried that our boys would be annoying) but all the girls have been really nice and helpful to them, and TongJie and Ezekiel really liked feeling like part of the group.  TongJie told me that he was talking to one of the girls about golf, ha ha!  He'll talk to anybody about golf if they'll listen, but apparently this girl has played golf so she actually was a willing participant in the conversation.

After lunch, we went to an old traditional part of the city and took a tour on rickshaws.  The streets are so narrow in some places that there aren't many cars, but a lot of bicycles, mopeds, and rickshaws.  The area that we saw was kind of a touristy area so there were rickshaws specifically for taking people around on tours, but there are still many hutong areas of Beijing where people live that aren't touristy.  The ricksaw ride was fun.  Two people that could go on each rickshaw, so Ezekiel and I went together, and TongJie and Jeff went together.  Later, Ezekiel said that the rickshaw ride was his favorite part of today.

We got back to our hotel at 4:30, so it was a long day of being tourists, especially for an 8 year old and a 5 year old, but we're looking forward to the Great Wall tomorrow!  We celebrated Ezekiel's family day by going to Dairy Queen and walking around some of the streets near our hotel.  We're all pretty tired and the boys both fell asleep as soon as we had them take showers and got their teeth brused and into bed.

We've been taking lots of pictures, but right now I don't have a way to get them off of the cameras, so I'll just have to attach some pictures that we've taken with our tablet.  One is of the boys standing on the balcony of our hotel room, and the others are just pictures of them in our hotel.  China blocks a lot of websites, and one of them is Blogger, so in order to post to our blog, we have to send the post as an email.  It worked the two other times we were in China, so hopefully it will work this time as well!  We'll try to post some more exciting pictures in the days to come.

A Visit to China!

Hi everyone!  Once again, it's been a long time since we've been on the ol' blog!  My last update was around Christmastime of 2017.  Since then, TongJie has had his bone graft surgery (March 2018), where bone from his hip was grafted into the gap in his gumline, and he recently got braces on his top teeth late this winter.  He just finished 2nd grade, which is hard to believe!  He loves writing and math and is really getting quite impressive at math in particular.  He finished out the school year studying animals at school and he chose the bald eagle to focus on for his end of the year project.  I couldn't resist making him a bald eagle tie to wear for his presentation.

Equally hard to believe, Ezekiel just finished pre-kindergarten and will be starting kindergarten in the fall!  Ezekiel loves school and can't wait to be a kindergartner.  He is still working on being a dual-media reader: reading in both braille and print.  He is an amazing reader for his age, especially considering his visual impairment.  He can read large print quite well, and is slowly improving at reading braille.  I also took an online braille class over the winter and I'm trying to learn it along with him so I'll be able to keep up with what he's doing.  He is using a CCTV (a very large-screened video magnifier) at home over the summer and loves to use it for reading books in print. 

TongJie likes to read to Ezekiel, which is always sweet to see, and Ezekiel loves being read to.

Jeff and I just finished out our school years of teaching as well.  Our family's big news right now is that we're going to China!  We are going to be participating in a "Heritage Tour," which is a guided tour specifically for families with children who are adopted from China.  We will be traveling with a group of other families and we're looking forward to seeing the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors, and the Dujiangyan Panda Base among lots of other things.  We will be ending our trip by visiting the Zhejiang Province, where TongJie is from, and spending time in the city he is from (Wenzhou City), visiting his orphanage, and spending our last day in Hangzhou, which is the capital city of the province.  Our plan is to return again to China in a few years to spend some time in Ezekiel's province and hopefully visit his orphanage as well.  It would have been too long of a trip to try to do everything this time around, and we think Ezekiel will be able to get more out of a visit to his province when he's a little older.

I'm writing up this quick blog post late at night on the eve of our big trip so that's all for now.  We leave tomorrow and will arrive in Beijing on Sunday afternoon China time.  I plan to update our blog as much as possible during our trip so anyone who wants to follow along can see what we're up to.  That's all for now, and next time I post something we should be in Beijing!