Sunday - Leaving Beijing, Going to Taiyuann

It's a strange feeling to "skip a Sunday".

We knew before we left for China that going to a conventional church service and worshiping with other believers was not possible.  We started Sunday in our hotel room by reading some devotions and the Bible and prayer, all of us together.  Then, knowing we had to meet George in the hotel lobby at 11 sharp, we spent some time packing and going for a short walk. 

Here's a picture of that indoor atrium (taken from the 10th floor) where we eat brekkie every morning. The orange catwalk on the lower left is for a wedding later that day.

Joel and the boys have been remarkably good at staying on top of their homework and writing in their daily journals. With so many exciting distractions all around, it's easy to neglect it. Joel is busy here with Mr. Houweling's math lessons, and doing it quietly without complaints.

One last walk in Beijing before leaving.

Fashion in Beijing.

It's 11:00 a.m. here and our luggage is getting loaded up into the van. 

Today we will travel via train from Beijing to Taiyuann, which is about 1200 kilometers away.  It will be nice to unload one of our large black suitcases packed with donations for the orphanage and to leave it behind. The other CCAI families departed Beijing earlier this morning destined for various other provinces, to meet their little ones.

George brought us to the train station, helped us purchase our tickets, and got us to the right waiting area. And this is the totally awesome bullet train we boarded. Unlike anything we've ever travelled on. The "feel" is a combination of a West Jet / Alaska Air flight meets Skytrain meets Ferrari.  We weren't sure if we would be traveling on a bullet train or a clunky train with chickens, goats and cigarette smoke all around us. Well, it was indeed a bullet train and, man!, it was beautiful, luxurious and sophisticated. George, our CCAI, rep is with us, along with another CCAI family, Wendy Fix and her 20 year old son, Isaac, who are from Bismarck, North Dakota. They are adopting a 9-year old boy from Shanxi province. Anyway, after a mad dash through the terminal, with all our luggage in tow, we boarded the train and found our assigned seats. Here's what it looked like. Dylan sat with Aunt Pauline. Joel and I sat together. Michelle and Tyler sat together. Wendy and Isaac sat across from Michelle and Tyler...

 

Comfortable seats, huge windows and a whisper quiet ride. This ride was the most relaxing part of the trip so far. A stewardess comes by with a little trolley and gives you a snack-bag and mini-Coke and also checks your seat ticket. We were fortunate enough to be sitting in business class, which had a little more leg room.  All the hassle of arranging to get us from hotel to train station, the buying of the tickets, researching train departure schedules, booking tickets, getting to the train station, finding the right connecting trains, etc. etc. is handled by George, our CCAI rep, and takes all the stress out of such trip. We would be babes in the woods without him!  

The train is quick: traveling at an average of 280-300 km/hour (175 mph) but it feels like you're on the Interstate in your car doing 75 mph.  One great feature is that there's an LED message board always posting the current speed. It's a fantastic feeling. You can walk between the cars. Most people are sleeping, on their smart phones, reading or relaxing.  

The scenery that you pass through opens your eyes to the sheer enormity and vastness and variety of landscapes in China. You start off in a crowded city, then you're passing through quieter municipalities, then in flat farmlands, mountains, hoodoos, red rock canyons, forests, dumpy areas, marshes, etc. It is HUGE. I tended to think of all of China as being a crowded market place with traffic and people. While that's partly true, it's so much more than that. Michelle and Tyler played several rousing games of Uno, Dylan was busy reading and in his coloring books most of the time, and Joel was doing some school reading and playing games on his iPad. I was glued to the window with my head phones on, listening to a music mix on my phone.  The  4 hours flew by.  As we approached Taiyuan, the scenery got a little more industrial, rough and at times dumpy.  The air was more smoky and there was no end in sight to the highrise residential complexes which peppered the horizon in every direction.  

A nuclear power plant.  

We arrived safely at Taiyuann, the city where we will meet Anna.  We were taken via shuttle bus from the train station through congested city traffic to the Wanda Vista hotel, a beautiful place close to downtown. We're told this city has several million people (up to 6 million) and it is intimidatingly large. The air quality reminded me of how the air smelled in BC and Washington for a few days this past summer during the forest fires. Very smoggy and smoky.  After getting settled into our hotel room (this was around 5:00 p.m.) we met George in the lobby and walked to a local shopping mall to catch some dinner.

Dylan was approached by a number of families with small children and was asked to pose with them. Once one camera was pulled out, passersby also pulled out the cameras. 

The mall we were visiting was huge, bright and modern. Lots of people. We couldn't understand how or why a shopping mall would be so packed with people on a SUnday night.  We also noticed that we were the ONLY white people we saw in the entire 2.5 hour span of time we were there. That is a strange feeling. People weren't staring rudely by any stretch, but they were definitely noticing us and looking at us. I asked George, our CCAI rep, "what are these Chinese people thinking when they see an American family like ours together like this?"  George grinned, and replied, "OH! Who are THESE monkeys?!"

We ate at a restaurant in the mall that fries up different meats and vegetables right in front of you.  It was delicious, but we all were struggling with the use of the chop sticks.  The restaurant employees were very gracious and amused at our predicament. They spoke zero English and we spoke zero Mandarin. The restaurant manager fried and served our meal to us and we thanked them profusely.

We returned to the hotel, well fed and exhausted.

Tomorrow is "Gotcha Day", when we will finally meet our daughter and sister Anna.

We are excited, nervous and can't wait for it to finally come.