China Experience

On March 29th, my dear friend and I left for a two-week trip to China to bring home her newly adopted daughter, Phoebe Lin. We had an absolutely amazing journey through China traveling to: Beijing, Changsha, and Guangzhou. While there, we emailed home almost daily (in addition to phone calls home on an international cell phone). I've compiled the emails which became a wonderful journal of our journey and will begin posting the entries...and maybe my friend's also.
Here is the first entry...

On 3/30/07:
We are at the Business Center of the Wang Fu Jing Grand Hotel in Beijing using Kim's yahoo email account! Can you believe that? It costs $2.60/15 minutes, so, this is a great way to catch up when we can't call. The hotel is really very nice - every service you could imagine and excellent staff. (In fact, customer service is quite important here - we got to give feedback on our passport officer! :)

We are just about ready to grab a snack and head to our rooms. We are exhausted, but seem to have managed the time change OK. Our guide offered to take us out to dinner (the whole group), but Kim and I both agree that we are too tired to socialize. Besides I think I ate 3 times on the flight! The flight was fine - really it was one of the more pleasant flights I've been on in a while. We had an extra seat between us, so that gave us plenty of room.

We are both so amazed at the pleasantness and diligence of the people we've met here. They are just as gracious and helpful as can be. Unfortunately, it is very polluted here - so I'm very glad to have the extra inhaler...and lots of cough drops. The city is a big city - some old and dirty parts, some new and fancy parts.

We are going to the Summer Palace tomorrow and then we have a half day to relax. We've heard there is a nice pedestrian "mall" area with sidewalk cafes and such. We might go find that tomorrow afternoon.

You can email me at this address. We'll be here until Monday and we think we'll be able to get internet access at the other hotels, too. So, you should be able to email us anytime - please do! I'd love to hear from you! Kids - be sure to email and tell me what you've been doing during the days. I sure do miss you. There is a little girl here with her parents (she was adopted 4 years ago) and they are picking up a new baby sister. She's fun to have around - keeps us from missing you quite so much!

I'll check later and see if I have a yahoo mail account - I'm not sure...so until you hear from me, use this email address.

Well, goodnight (for us) - good morning for you all! Miss you guys! Give Sophia a big hug for me...and give each other big hugs for me, too.

Looking forward to your emails!!
Kerry


A side street in Beijing