Saturday, September 1,2012

(trying to post a pic, but not sure where it will end up, but it's a gift from our agency.. Hand painted shirts with their Chinese names on it! :D)


!!! What a day but a very good fun day!!!
It's not fully hit me yet that we leave tomorrow to go get Ella!!!! Ahhh!!!!! But it is sinking in slowly... ;)

We didn't get a ton of sleep last night... We crashed at 8, and were both wide eyed at mid night... We think our mistake was going to sleep at 8, and not forcing ourselves to stay awake but oh well!!! :)

We did get more sleep, got up and ate breakfast, then met Winnie, our tour guide for Beijing, in the lobby. We went to Forbidden City and then the Great Wall. Oh my! What a place! It's absolutely AMAZING!!!!! We were with another couple who is adopting a little 2 yr old boy, and Julie and I kept saying, another door way? ;) The gold on the roof tops, intricate paintings, amazing!!!

We then went and ate a yummy lunch... We had a few different things... Sweet and sour chicken, some veggie plate, they were all cooked, beef soup with tomato and potatoes in it, and another chicken dish, I think Kung Po? I prob didn't spell it right.. And rice with the egg and something else in it..

While eating lunch we ran into the family that we met while waiting for the plane to bring us to Beijing. They are adopting a little girl, and a few days before leaving they got a call that their little girl is in the hospital, they said they could come now and risk staying a little extra late, or wait 3 weeks. They decided to come now, they didn't want ti wait! Cant blame them! The little girl needs to be off IV for a bit before they will let her go. She just got a virus and wasn't drinking... She had a fever as well. So we asked them when we saw them if they had any news, and since they were at the Great Wall and unable to check email they didn't know... But they were told that they still might be able to see her tomorrow in her hospital room!!! Please pray for Lauren that she will be healed and be released so she can come home!!! Pray for Charity and Bradd that if they can't bring her home right away that they will feel at peace.

Tim and Julie are leaving early tomorrow morning and will be getting their son that afternoon!

We leave at 10, and fly out at 11:50, and will get Ella later in the afternoon!!! :)

Oh, so after lunch we went to the great Wall. Can I just say I'm TOTALLY out of shape!!!! :) holy cannoli, I thought our driveway in Iowa was steep!!! Those of you who know what I'm talking about, take that times 2 in some spots AND take in consideration steep steps and not so steep steps all uneven too!!! ;) I'm not sure how far we climbed, but we ALMOST got to the point where Winnie said everyone turns around here. We were just shy of it, but I was DONE!!! Had shaky legs going down!!! :) It had started to rain so we left at a good time! It gets really slippery when wet! :)

Tonight's dinner was absolutely AMAZING!!!!!
We had roasted duck, black leeks, some type of tofu dish, sweet and sour chicken, Kung Po chicken, sizzling beef (it was a teeny bit of spicy) Chinese version of mashed potatoes with blueberry sauce on top, yes you read that right. It was realllllly good!!! Oh and pork dumplings! A super yummy daisy tea with the daisy flowers in the pot! :)

I took a few pics off of Curts phone of the food, he may try to post... I'll have lots of pictures to post when we get home!!!

I have no clue what our agenda is tomorrow, other than we fly out at 11:50 and get Ella! I don't know any other times! :)

Doing pretty good with the time difference, really tired now, but that's bc of the walking we did. It's very humid out... Winnie said its not normally this hot this time of year.

Outside there is smog... A LOT....

So, gonna try to stay up til 9 or 10 and hopefully get a full nights sleep! :)

Please pray that Ella won't be super scared and feel at peace with us, her forever family!!! :)