Beijing Day 2

6:30 pm here on Friday night as I type this. We've been back from our long tour day for a while. Ron has had some time to run out and get some water and a bit of KFC chicken for dinner in our room tonight. We have on EXHAUSTED young lady here.

Interesting tidbit...
On yesterday's tour, we had people from England, Australia,and India with us.

Today we had England, Manchuria (I think), Bulgaria (but currently living in CA), Spain, Germany, and Canada. We were a very diverse group!

We were picked up this morning about 7:15. To say we had a full day was an understatement for sure. We started with the Forbidden City.








(yes it is HOT - We were thankful it was overcast today. I can't imagine surviving a day like we had if it had been sunny.


Up next was Summer Palace. This calligrapher was just hanging out on the sidewalk doing his thing.


Beautiful lotus flowers all along the walkway.


The walkway at the Summer Palace was presented to us as the longest covered walkway in the world at 738 (?) meters. It has over 14,000 paintings similar to the one below lining the ceiling it's entire length.


We ended our time there with a dragon boat ride across the lake. Hope helped pay for our ride.








We are getting these little hand hearts every time one of us asks for a picture these days.


Lunch was at a pearl market. First a demo....


...then we eat.


After lunch our guide took us to a silk factory. Always remember all the thread for clothing, etc, comes from single cocoons. BUT, the quilts are made from the silk of double cocoons. I need to look through some of the video from our tour to check these numbers, but I think if the thread was unwound from one cocoon, it's length is something crazy like 1500 meters. I forget how many cocoons it takes to make one silk layer for the quilts, but then each quilt has 75-80 layers. Cool

Silk Worms


Cacoon


Stretching the Silk


Temple of Heaven was up next.


Entertainment at the Entrance - Interesting Instruments


Hope with Liu Liu our guide for today.


Lastly for today - Tea Ceremony
Mmmmmm! Jasmine Tea


And so ends day two. We are pretty worn out. Our bodies haven't adjusted to the time yet. Hope woke up this morning wide awake at 3:00. She has been a remarkable traveler! She fell asleep n the bus ride back to our hotel at about 6:00 and she has not yet woken up. We couldn't even wake her to feed her some dinner...and if you know Hope, she is ALWAYS hungry. Hopefully she'll just sleep through the night now. One can wish such things, yes?

Have a great day at home. You'll all be just waking up to start the day I suppose. Hope all is well. Has it continued to be stifling high temps there too? Have we had any rain?

Beijing Day 1

Pic from our walk this morning...


On our way!


(8:10 pm Thursday night as I'm typing)

We had a fun day today. We had a little more time than expected this morning before we had to be ready to than we expected. So we started out with a stroll to check things out. It was a pretty gloomy day today. I didn't expect to see much of the sun while we were here, but today was exceptionally gray. We even had to bring our raincoats along for the tour. We visited a different section of the wall than we did during our last trip. We were at the Mutianyu section this time. It really was beautiful, but I wish that visibility has been better so we could've enjoyed the views a bit more. I'll have to search images to find some good pictures of that section of the wall.

Crazy Vendors!





It was fun to ride the chairlift up the mountain. Hope even did great with that. She has done amazingly well so far this trip! What a sweetheart. She fell asleep twice on the tour bus this afternoon.

One of the fun perks of visiting this section of the wall is the opportunity to take an alpine slide down the mountain when you're finished exploring. I think there was a certain someone here who was pretty disappointed the slide was closed due to the rainy conditions today. That someone may just have to bring his son back here with him someday for another chance. :)

A couple snapshots...You can see just how overcast it was this morning with a pretty constant drizzle.








Crazy men who coerce you into taking pictures with them and then beg for $$. We saw this coming. Ron gave them what amounted to about $2 and we just kept walking. Cute pictures though.





After a couple hours trekking up and down the wall, our guide took us to the Chinese medical center that apparently played a pretty important role in the Olympic games. They had a display of chairs that the diplomats had used when they were spectators at the various events. We were all treated to a brief foot massage. Then, the doctors were paraded in to try to convince us to take advantage of some of their herbal medications and therapies to treat whatever ails us. No worries. We left empty handed. HA!

On our way back to the hotels we had the chance to drive by the Olympic village, bird's nest, and water cube. I guess both of the big buildings have ticketed tours for those who are interested. The big stadium is now being used for concerts and the occasional soccer game. Our driver from the airport told us the water cube has been turned into a kids water park.


Hope with our guide Angel (a.k.a Miss Wong)


Time to wrap up for the night. We have another big day tomorrow. Here is my favorite family photo from the day.


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First Pics off the Camera

Wanted to just share a little update. We are waiting to leave for our Great Wall your, I thought I'd pull a few pics.

Here is the stash that is going to get us through the next two+ weeks. I was pretty impressed because our big bags are at the appropriate weight for China in country travel. Also, we only checked the two large bags. We were able to carry everything else with us on the plane. We didn't even need a checked bag for Hope. So, this time we are definitely more efficient with our packing.



Here are a couple more pictures of our departure. Thanks again for the ride Grandma and Grandpa!









We were up at our usual time this morning of 5:30. YIKES! We are probably going to crash hard tonight after our tour. We wanted to go out to a market this morning to buy some water to have in our room, but nothing is open until 9:30 or later so I guess we'll have to figure it out when we get back. We did manage to find a geocache though. :) (GC2KQWP "Close to the Silk Market")


Also on our walk we saw these flowers. Guesses?


One last smile from the lobby of the Jinglun Hotel


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Goodbye Seattle, Hello Beijing!!!

Goodbye Seattle - You're beautiful from up here!


We left Seattle on time without a hitch. Our flight isn't very full at all. There are many many available seats. We are all very comfortable. Ron especially is counting his blessings for the extra leg room economy comfort provides.

(Side note: We're over Canada. Hope Has already finished some
M&M's and peanuts. She has her blanket and pillow and has declared it time to sleep. However, she just peeked out her window and asked if we are in China yet.) HA!

Yes, we decided for the long leg of our travel today to pay a bit extra and bump our seats a bit. Five years ago we were crammed on a very full plane. I was in a middle seat and Ron was on the aisle. Poor Ron also had a stash of life vests under his seat so he couldn't move at all. We are now stretched out with Hope and me on the left side of the plane and Ron across the aisle in the center. He has two empty seats next to him. He can't hardly believe it. It is definitely a different trip this time. *smile*


~~~~~


It's 12:45 am on Thursday. We've made it to our room. Our long flight was fairly uneventful. Hope was even able to stretch out and sleep in the seats next to Ron. We need to find a secret to equalizing the ear pressure for Hope when we land. Gum and yawning isn't doing the trick and she says it hurts. Let us know if there is something else we should try.

Everything went smoothly getting off the plane and meeting our nice driver. The plan is that tomorrow we see the Great Wall.

Night All

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Our Plane

This one is ours. Gate S1


We're ready. Just need it to be 8:25 now. Ron and Hope just left for a stroll around the terminal so I'm giving post number two a shot from my phone. Hope everyone has a good sleep tonight at home. When you wake up in the morning we'll be half way to Beijing. Thank you so much for all the prayers and for keeping us close in your thoughts. We are blessed. Continued prayers for good health, rest, and uneventful travels would be wonderful. God bless!

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Now Boarding

We are seated comfortably waaaay back in Row 43. Thank you to the wonderful woman traveling alone who was willing to switch seats so the three of us can sit together.


Excited passenger. Ready for takeoff.


Goodbye MSP. See you in Seattle.



Well, Hope's first flight was a success she slept for a couple hours after the excitement of takeoff. She woke up with time for a hearty pretzel/peanut snack and then some more window gazing at the beautiful sights of WA as we descended.


74 and Sunny in Seattle

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Updated Pictures of Luke

Since we're leaving tomorrow I thought it might be nice for everyone to catch a glimpse of the cute little man we're going to be holding in our arms in a week!

When we sent our first care package at the end of April I was disappointed not to receive any kind of update.  We had rushed to get the package coordinated and sent in time for Luke's birthday and had really hoped for a picture from his party.  I was eventually able to send an email directly to the orphanage director because a nice woman from one of my Yahoo groups had an address to share.  This is what I received a couple days later:

I'm so happy they organized a little party for him!

Looks like, in true Heutmaker fashion, Luke really experienced his food.  ;)  Notice the little bits of frosting everywhere.  You can't see it in this picture, but there is a big blob of frosting squished into the sole of his left shoe, too.

It was amazing to receive these pictures!  When all we'd had to prior to these was Luke's referral pictures (which we think was taken at about 6m.), it was quite a shock to see our little boy so grown up.  Oh how I can't wait to pinch those cheeks.

While we were waiting and praying for this update, we prepared a second care package.  We decided to send this one on our own through USPS.  You can read about both care packages in earlier posts here and here.  Well, this package arrived safely and we were blessed with photos again.  It appears that these may have been taken on 6/4/12 which was Hope's 5 yr. GOTCHA anniversary.  :)

Here you can see Luke wearing one of the outfits we sent.  I think it is safe to say that 12m clothes are TOO SMALL!  You can also see the photo albums from both care packages, books, toys, blanket, etc.

It makes my heart so happy to see Luke engaged and active with all of the toys.  I hope he's had many hours of fun and that he's shared well with all his friends there at the SWI.

I was a little bummed because we didn't get any clear pictures really of Luke's face, happy, smiling...etc.  (Just a Mama's heart wanting her little boy to be happy.)  Hopefully we'll get to see his joyful spirit shine in person very soon.  I'll close with my favorite picture received from the first update.

"Hmmm....So this is my sister?"  How much more lucky could a little boy be?

Current Stats:

Height - 72.5 cm

Weight - 9.5 kg

Chest - 49 cm

Head - 46 cm

Foot Length - 12 cm

8 Teeth and no longer on formula...Think we'll go back to at least a nighttime bottle for bonding, but he sure seems healthy and we are so grateful for his wonderful care.

See you soon little man!  Love, Mommy, Daddy, & Hope