All the Tea in China....

is now in my suitcase! Our last stop of the afternoon was at a Chinese tea house for a tea ceremony/tea tasting. It was really nice and I bought WAY too much tea. It was pricey, but then again, when will I be back to China to buy authentic Chinese tea????

Anyway, let me start at the beginning.

We started out today at the jade carving factory. We saw some workmen carving jade and we walked around an enormous shopping place with all different kinds of jade items. We bought a jade "family ball". It's a carved ball within a ball within a ball. It is carved with a beautiful design and it has twelve holes in each ball to represent the 12 months of the year which the family will have good fortune. The 3 balls represent 3 generations of family and the fact that the balls cannot be separated represents that the family cannot be separated.

Then on to the great wall. There are no words to describe how majestic and awe inspiring the great wall of China is. We climbed as far as we could go, which was farther than I thought we would go! What made it most difficult is the varied height in steps. Some were large steps, some were small. I thought going up would be the most difficult....until I had to turn around to walk back down--steep steps--afraid of heights!!!

We had lunch and did a little more shopping. The restaurant was upstairs from a shopping place and inside, there was an ice cream stand. I looked closer and the sign read "Italian Gelato". It just struck me as funny to come all the way to China snd have Italian Gelato. HAHA!!!

We were on our way to the tea house, when Jack (the little boy with the family we are traveling with) had to go to the bathroom. Our tour guide asked the driver if there was anywhere to stop. There was not, so the driver pulled over and walked Jack to some nearby bushes! In China, it is ok for children to go pee on the side of the road!!!! We all got a good laugh!!!

We really enjoyed the tea ceremony and tasting some teas that we had never heard of. I bought some ginsing Oolong, Jasmine, and Lychee/rose bud tea.

We are planning on walking to pizza hut with the Hemingways tonight and we will be up bright and early tomorrow to fly to Chongqing. Our flight leaves Beijing at 8:20 am and gets in at 10:50. Sometime in the late afternoon/early evening we will receive Kai!!!! WOW-I can't believe we will actually hold him in our arms tomorrow!!

Above are our favorite pictures from today. They are pretty much self-explanatory, but I'll narrate them for you:

1st picture: Gary standing next to a large jade carving
2nd picture: A view of the great wall
3rd picture: Another view of the great wall
4th picture: Nina Climbing the great wall--getting very tired!!
5th picutre: Jess and Mandy called it quits and met us at the bottom!
6th picture: All three of us at the bottom of the wall
7th picture: Italian Gelato in China
8th picture: Chinese tea tasting ceremony
9th pictire: The lunch buffet had french fries along with all of the Chinese selections. French fries with chopsticks!!

I'm getting many inquiries regarding the earthqake in Sichuan. It is obviously all over the papers and news here. Beijing is relatively unaffected (emotionally affected; not physically). The area in Chongqing that we are traveling to should not be affected; although our tour guide will be checking our flight in the morning to make sure it is not delayed on account of the fact that the Chongqing airport is being used to transport all of the relief supplies. Please pray for our travel to Chongqing as well as all of the people affected by the earthquake. If anyone is interested in assisting financially in the relief effort, our adoption agency, CCAI is starting a relief fund. You can learn more at: www.chinesechildren.org

The next message we post will most likely be pictures of Kai !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love and miss you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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!!