Touring Beijing

    These last two days have been so incredibly busy!  We have seen the Cloisonné Factory and shopped there, climbed the Great Wall of China, and eaten at a traditional Chinese restaurant with a huge jade store one day.  The second day we toured the Forbidden City and took a rickshaw ride and visited a home in the Hu Tong District.  All with a newly adopted three-year old and three boys in tow!!  Whew!  Makes my head spin when I think about it J  All things considered, it has been a lot of fun although on day 8 of being away from home life in China is starting to wear on us all.  Living in 2 hotel rooms with 4 children, eating unfamiliar food, and feeling pretty isolated wherever you go is trying at times.  But back to the tours, which really were such a wonderful opportunity to experience the native culture of our precious little girl.

    The Cloisonné Factory was very different than I anticipated.  I don't think it would meet any kind of US standard for anything!  But the work is amazing…and we had such a great time buying souvenirs and gifts.  Fu Juan seems especially enamored of anything with pandas.  The Great Wall of China was so different than I imagined.  It truly was breath-taking in its immensity, but it was so packed with people and the stairs were so steep and difficult to navigate, it was hard to take in the presence of it all.  To make matters worse, our darling girl tends to be motion-sick (I think I mentioned that in an earlier post) and after getting to the top point of our climb, she proceeded to throw up all down the front of herself and the back of Stan, who was carrying her on his back in the baby carrier!  What a mess!!!  I was so unprepared: no change of clothes, no bag to throw-up in, and not many wipes.  We got them cleaned up the best we could and headed back down where we were able to find a small "Great Wall" t-shirt (that even had a Panda on it J) so we could at least change her out of the awful smelling shirt.  The group was stopping for lunch that was included in the tour about half-way back to the hotel (it was an hour and a half ride each way) so I am so thankful that worked out, otherwise we ALL would have been miserable!  Needless to say, we were totally spent by the end of that day!

    The next day, we got up and had to be ready early again for the Forbidden City and Hu Tong tours.  We walked an incredible amount and the kids were SUCH troopers!!  Oh my gosh, I have a totally new view of just how wonderful each and every one of my children are!  The thing that stood out in the Forbidden City is just how HUGE it is and how different the Ancient Culture of this land is to anything we have experienced or known in the US.  Everything here is so CROWDED and very dusty and dirty too which is hard for me to deal with at times.  Another interesting aside here is that it is so strange to be the focus of so much attention by total strangers!  I think our family (sometimes all of us, sometimes just the boys) has had our picture taken by about 10 different people/families since we've been here!  Everywhere we go, heads turn as they count kids and then look at us as if to say, "Are they all yours?"  And for the most part, everyone seems so amazed and happy that we have such a large family with a Chinese baby too!  Most say, "Lucky baby" our "Happy family".  I wish I knew enough Chinese to tell them how WE are the ones who have been immeasurably blessed by this little girl from a different land.  Next was the rickshaw ride and tour which was through an area of China originally settled by the Mongolian people of the Han dynasty hundreds of years ago.  It is now an incredibly dusty, dirty, impoverished area although walking inside one of the houses; it was much nicer than I anticipated.  I was glad my boys were there to see how other people live in much of the world…I don't think any of us will take grass, trees, clean air, and a clean place to live for granted as much anymore.

    Through it all, Fu Juan was a smiley, happy girl and my other three were also unbelievably good!  She is doing so well and bonding more each day.  She calls me "Ma ma" and lifts her little arms to be picked up which melts my heart!  She also has started to call Stan "Ba ba" which is Daddy in Chinese.  She is all girl as well which is very fun!!  She LOVES her bows and after I put one in her hair, she will run to the mirror and primp and preen!  It is adorable!  (Can you tell she already has us wrapped around her little finger?!)

    As we are about halfway through our trip now, please continue to pray for our perseverance.  The food is especially beginning to wear on me…I have probably felt the worst I've felt since we've been here today.  (Lots of tummy issues!  And a really bad sore throat as well.)  Stan and the boys are weathering it pretty well, although today there has been a few more tears and bickering (mostly the boys)  This afternoon we are headed to an acrobatic show which sounds really cool and then tomorrow back to Civil Affairs and the Notary Office for a long day of paperwork.  If you have read to the end, thank you so much!!!!  I cannot tell you how much the prayers and encouraging support of you all means to us!