More Beijing Pics

Day 2 - Beijing

Wow--what a day! We spent the whole day touring Beijing. We met up with the other family who is adopting with our agency. The Hemingway family is from North Carolina and we are enjoying getting to know them. You will see them in some of our photos. We started at Tienaman Square, then on to the Forbidden City. It was so amazing to see places that we had only read about in books. The Forbidden City was enormous. It just keeps going and going. We toured a silk factory where they told us about silk worms and we got to see them stretch the silk to make silk comforters. We almost bought one, but realized that it wouldn't last long on the bed with our drippy-nosed greyhound sniffing all over it! We toured a Hutong neighborhood, which is an old-style way of living where the homes are connected by narrow alley ways. They took us through on a bicycle rickshaw ride and we were invited into a home and served tea while the gentleman told us about his home. We saw an acrobat show and then had peking duck for dinner. It was an 11 hour day of touring and learning about Chinese history. A great day!! We took 150 pics today. I'll try to post a few more!

wow its so hard to believe that we are actually in china! i feel like im going to go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow in my own bed with my puppy and this was a dream. Im so excited to get Kai this weekend, finally ill be a big sister!
China isnt anything like i thought it'd be. when we first landed it seemed like we were flying in circles for 13 hours because it looked almost the same as LAX from inside the plane. But its so cool and the food is great! i love the dumplings and the lemon chicken that we had for dinner tonight.
love you guys imma go to bed,
this is so exciting!!! Little Kai! yay!:]
JESSIKAH <3


o ps. to anyone that i told i was going to email, check your email junk box cuz ive sent two out to everyone and i dont know if it will recognize my adress.

Ni Hao! Greetings from China!!

Well, here we are! Who would have thought this moment would finally come!! The tv display in the airplane read: "Distance to destination: 6,242 miles" I guess I hadn't really considered how far away China really is!!Everything went well with our travel-I know so many of you were praying and we appreciate all of your blessings. We got to the airport with hours to spare. The plane took off at 1:40 am Wed morning. At about 3:00 am, they served us pork and noodles--what else do you eat at 3:00am??!! We landed in Beijing after about 13 hours and after going through customs and claiming our bags, we were met by our CCAI representative, Christy. She gave us some interesting information about Beijing and the upcoming Olympics as we rode to our hotel. We are staying in the Holiday Inn Beijing. It's very nice. We had an excellent breakfast from the buffet. Lots of American choices: Gary had eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon. Jessie and I liked the dumplings and fried noodles the best. I'm unable to post pictures at the moment, as our new computer is not recognizing the memory card or the camera plug. Hopefully, our computer genius (Jason) will be able to help us remotely!!
Our itinerary for our time in Beijing is as follows:

Tomorrow (Friday): Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Lunch, Hutong Tour,
Acrobatics, Peking Duck Dinner,
Saturday: Jade Carving factory, Great Wall, lunch & dinner

We'll post more messages and hopefully, some pictures very soon. Miss you all--time to go get some rest.

PS--we are not able to view comments on the blog due to the internet firewall protections in China. Please do send us a direct e-mail; we'd love to hear from you!
Ninacesena@yahoo.com

Leaving tomorrow

I can't believe we leave tomorrow night. I sit here on my sofa on our new laptop computer (that we bought to take with us), and I can't believe the madness is coming to an end...(or is it just beginning-haha)!!??

I'm already beginning to forget everyhing we went through with all of the paperwork. We started the paperwork in June 2006--two whole years ago! I never could have imagined I would finally be sitting here, on the eve that we will leave. I thought I would be anxious, that I wouldn't be able to sleep (I'll have to let you know how that turns out); but I feel so at peace. Our bags are packed, arrangements are made, there's nothing left to stress about. I can't believe how blessed we are; that after everything that brought us here, we're finally getting ready to make it real!

Thanks so much for your prayers, support, and encouragement!


Stay tuned--we'll post pics as soon as we get there!!!

I guess we can call it a Baby Shower!!

Yesterday my friends from church threw me a "baby shower". We had Chinese food and China/Panda inspired decorations and gifts. How fun!! Thanks, Girls!!!!

PS-I watched "Big Bird in China" as soon as I got home!!

WE'RE GOING TO CHINA!!!!!!!

On Monday we got the call that our TA (travel approval) was on the way. Today we got the official notice and we're leaving for China on May 14th!!!!! We're waiting for our Consulate Appointment to get scheduled so we'll know when we're coming home. It will be sometime around the 28-30th of May.

We're coming to get you, Kai!!!!!!!!!!!!!