Day 2 in China

It is 8pm here on Wednesday night and I'm about to go to bed. Today, we had a yummy breakfast at our hotel in Beijing at 9am which consisted of omelets, pastries, meats, fried noodles (of course), and coffee. After breakfast, we packed up our rooms and then had devo in our team leader Frank's room to prepare and pray for our travels and our days with the kids. Tomorrow we finally get to meet the kids and really start our journey. After our devo, we checked out of the hotel and got on the bus to head to the airport. Traffic was crazy and smog was really bad. I can't imagine living here - the air is so dirty - it cannot be healthy to breath this stuff in. We finally got to the airport around noon and checked our luggage in. Kara had her passport and then she didn't and we were all a little nervous about what happened to it - but she ended up finding it in her front pocket of her purse. So that was a relief. We got our luggage checked and started to head to security and Lily informed us to go on ahead and she had to catch up with us after cause the driver apparently had called her and needed to come back to drop off some documents. So we went on without her and fortunately, the signs were in Chinese and English so it was pretty easy to find where we needed to go. My belt set off the alarm in security and I had to get frisked and wanded - luckily it was a woman. Sammie got stopped because of something in her backpack (see photo attached of her at the security desk) - we're still not totally sure why but they took everything out of her bag, searched and ended up with her tiny bible in hand having a discussion in Chinese. It seemed like the bible was the item in question although we never really knew since we had no translator with us at the time and none of us speak Chinese. After some back and forth and them trying to ask Sammie questions to which of course, she could not answer - they finally decided to let her go and give her the bible back. They did flip through it a bit. Some of us thought maybe they were flipping through to make sure it wasn't in Chinese - it's ok to bring in a personal bible but not ok to hand them out to folks here. So maybe that was why but we aren't totally sure. We're just glad we got through. On our way to our gate, we came across a little store and got some Dove candy bars and some of the girls got ice cream. We got to our gate just as it was about to board and two guys stopped us and asked where we were from cause they heard us talking and recognized the accents. One of the guys was from Miami and the other from London, England. They are here on business and were super nice. The one from Miami had the "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" scripture tattooed on his neck. He asked what we came here for and we told them we were visiting orphans and they asked if we were Christians and they were really excited when we said we were. They said they are too - to which I replied - I thought so since I noticed your scripture tattoo. They asked about the VO website and we wrote it down for them. They were super nice. Just as we decided we had better get on the plane, we saw Lily. She made it. We all got on the plane and headed to Chifeng. I had an empty seat next to me and a Chinese guy near the window next to that. He tried to talk to me in Chinese several times and seemed like he really wanted to tell me something but I had no clue and just had to keep shrugging my shoulders. I wish I knew what he was trying to say. It was a rough plane ride. Not a super small plane but kind of rocky on the takeoff and landing. Not sure if was windy or what the reason was but it was doing that dropping and back and forth thing and I was feeling like I was going to be sick and so was Bella. Not fun. The last 30 minutes was not fun - very nauseous. I was thrilled when we landed and I managed to not throw up. And also very happy when we got in our van and traveled only 20 minutes to the hotel - all flat smooth roads and no traffic. It is mountainous here - Lily said Chifeng means Red Mountain so that makes sense. It is considered a smaller city for China so we were expecting to be in the country - wrong. It is 5 million people who live here - and that's considered a small town. My goodness - I can't believe that!!! It's spread out a bit more than Beijing and though there are tall buildings - there aren't AS many as Beijing. There is one cool building near our hotel that has a mini Eiffel tower on top of it and it lights up different colors at night. See the photo attached. Our hotel is really nice here - I took some pictures of the lobby and our room. Although we ended up switching rooms about 20 minutes later cause that whole side of the building had the sun beating in and was really hot. Lily suggested we all change cause the AC doesn't work here this time of year. Luckily we hadn't unpacked our stuff yet. I had been busy trying to get the internet to work and it wasn't working. Finally got it working now after Frank and some hotel staff tried for over an hour. Thanks to Frank for somehow getting it to work. 

We had such a big breakfast this morning, we decided we didn't even want lunch which was a good choice. We went to dinner at 5 and were just barely starting to get hungry. We walked about 1 mile to a restaurant near the hotel. Lily said a few years ago when the team came and she did this trip with VO, there were no restaurants within walking distance. And now there are at least 10. So we are going to try a different one each night which will be fun. The place we tried tonight was neat - we had our own private room upstairs and it was really cute. The table had a spinning glass lazy susan type thing in the middle - which worked great for sharing food (see photo). Lily ordered a bunch of stuff for us to try again. We each got rice and then tried fried eggplant, pig skin (I didn't try that - no thanks), beef, pork (yay), spicy chicken, some kind of root, and cabbage. And of course, Coca-Cola:) 

After we ate, we walked back to the hotel and like I said - spent the next hour trying to get our internet to work. I will be going to bed soon. We'll have a full day tomorrow. We have breakfast about 8, devo at 8:30 and the orphanage director is coming here to the hotel to meet us and take us to the orphanage at 9am. We get to spend all day with the kids. We will have to leave for lunch so the kids can nap - we'll go eat someplace and come back once nap time is over. I think we stay until about 4:30 or 5 and then head back to the hotel or dinner. 

Oh, I took a picture of my new laptop bag on wheels that I got at the crazy market yesterday - I got to use it for travel today and it worked well. Although, I have to say - the rubber handle on it smells horrible. I'm not kidding - it smells like gasoline. I have wiped it down with baby wipes like 10 times and even wrapped one around it for a few hours and it still reaks. I don't know why it smells so bad but I hope it wears off eventually. When we were in the van - it started to smell up the whole van. It's kind of smelly here so we'll just say it's my little souvenir of the smell of China. ha ha

I have taken a few pictures so far but knowing me, I'll surely take the most of the kids. In Costa Rica, I took 600 pictures. Most were photos of the kids. So I will pick out a few of my favorites each day and upload them with a blog update. 

Thanks everyone who has been reading my blogs/notes and commenting. I can't get on facebook to comment back or update my status but I do get to read your comments in my email inbox so that's been really nice. 

Thanks so much for all your prayers - we feel the favor of the Lord all over this trip! He is good!!! 

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