Squattie Potty

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> Yep, encountered my first Squattie potty yesterday. Ladies, I have to tell you, not as bad as I thought. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

> (getting picture from yesterdays sight seeing ready to upload real soon)

Our view

Just a quick update to say Hi! Skype is not working so far. We can see the other just can't hear each other. It may be a gov't control thing.
Jet lag is getting better, last night I crashed really early and we were all up at 2 am. I hope by tomorrow we are on schedule, or we could be sleeping at dinner:-).

The sun came up and was beautiful shining on the buildings. The smog seemed light today, it was cold but clear. Here are a few pics of our view from our room.

Shopping

Went to carrefour, a store much like walmart. It's a two story building, it sells clothes, household goods and food. It's big and colorful, decorated for Chinese new year. Nate fell asleep as soon as we entered the building. Every person we passed looked at him and smiled, he was still in his coat and hat and he was rock'n a pair of sunglasses. I think people found his glasses humorous.

It was so much fun just looking at all the products in the store. Recognizing the shape and color of items but not able to read the Chinese writing on them. Very popular items had both US and Chinese on them like Tide, Evian, coke and Cadbury. One strange thing was the raw meat was out in bins, people were touching and inspecting pieces then throwing it back in. That would never fly in the US!(pic 3)

Going sightseeing tomorrow, learning to make dumplings, eating our creations for lunch, go to the summer palace, visit a hutong--an old village, then peking duck for dinner. Lots of outside stuff tomorrow, pray we stay warm!
Here are a few pictures of our trip to the store.

We are here

We made it to our hotel. We got in around 2pm. The Beijing airport is huge and beautiful. As you walk to get your luggage they use equipment to scan your body temp. To make sure you were not coming into the country sick. We got our luggage and found our guide and we were off on the drive to our hotel. We got many many looks as we walked with Nate, I think they must believe he is chinese.

It is cold here, about 23degree when we arrived. While driving in, there were many huge 20 story buildings that were all homes/ apartments. The sun sets at around 3:30pm, it was dark by 4:30pm. It made for staying up really hard. We have been up since about 2am. Last night Nate was asking us, PLEASE, can I go to bed...that's a first. Off to get breakfast now.
I will update more later.
Love to all
Kare

Taking off

We are on the plane ready to go. More later!

Ready

we are ready. the count down clock is ticking and we have t-minus 9 hours until we board our plane. ohhh, man are we excited. i can't wait to get to china!

love to all our family and friends!

Almost There

well, since my last post, things have been getting a lot easier. i am feeling so much better, not perfect but almost. i have had the last 3 days to start to put things together and go shopping for last minute items and pack our bags. here is a list of a few things we have done this week.

Stop mail with post office
Called health insurance to add babies
Called credit cards to let them know we are traveling
Arrange a ride to airport, we leave ridiculously early, thanks CT&DT
Got a bunch of “new money” from bank, the Chinese like crisp new dollar bills
2 certified checks to pay for orphanage fees and inside china travel
Got the vaccination letters notarized for each girl
Made plans for an additional day of sight seeing (more info to come about this)
Washed the girls clothes we are taking with us
Put the car seats into the car
Packing, packing, packing...

We are almost there and can't believe it! In just 2.5 days we are leaving for China!
Please pray for our travel. that we stay healthy, safe and there are no delays or issues. This time we go straight to NY and leave for China (going to VN we had to go to Chicago, SF, Taipei, then VN, yuck). Keep that snow away from NY this weekend and we will be good:-)!

We have been working on pushing Nate's bedtime back to get ready for the time change, it's been challenging but we know it will help with the 12 hour difference. Pray that it is an easy time change for us. Also pray that China gets a ridiculous heat wave for just 6 days while we are there. Bring on the heat, it is going to be really cold, pray we keep warm with all the sight seeing!

thank you for following our journey to our girls. We have been so blessed and look forward to sharing this wonderful journey with you. Please feel free to leave a comment along the way, i know we will love to hear from you and it will help with home sickness.

love
kare

Ughhh

For the last 10-12 days i have been battling illness. i had a head cold that went into the flu that went right into another cold with bad congestion and then i had a stomach bug. With only a day or two of semi-health between illnesses it has been very difficult to get things accomplished. DH has been doing lots of errands and phone calls and we are slowly chugging along. Our Christmas was wonderful and quiet and peaceful. We had a lovely day together and really enjoyed our holiday.

We have one week left and we are leaving for China. We are ready to pick up the pace and get all the things we need to get done before this weekend, then we can relax for the New Year celebration. Amazing how this time is flying by, can't wait to see our little babies. I was hoping for an update of our girls, maybe a picture or even just weight and size but nothing has come yet. It has been unusually cold in Nanchang lately, we are praying our babies are staying warm and healthy.

Our Itinerary

I can't tell you how much more work this takes with three holidays occurring while trying to get ready for our trip. We are making it all happen, but it has been a lot of work. We have ordered our tickets and we are packing our bags. We leave in 13 more days! Boy it would be nice to have some master list of things we have to do and when to get them done, i am so afraid that we are going to forget to do something REALLY big. i have lists upon lists of things to do and remember.
We are counting down the days until we can see our precious babies.
here is our itinerary for our trip:


Jan 3: Depart for Beijing
Jan 4: Arrive in Beijing
Jan 8: Group Sightseeing in Beijing: Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City and the Great Wall
Jan 9: travel to province, meet our daughters
Jan 10: do lots of paperwork
Jan 11: do lots of paperwork
Jan 12: Sightseeing or free day
Jan 13: sightseeing or free day
Jan 14: get paperwork back and fly to Guangzhou
Jan 15: medical exams
Jan 16: free day
Jan 17: free day
Jan 18: a big appointment
Jan 19: Free day
Jan 20: take a train to Hong Kong in order to catch a flight for the next day
Jan 21: depart for the US