Peking Duck

We left for the airport at 6:30am Wednesday morning and landed in China at 1:00am Friday morning. That’s right, 2 entire days of traveling to get to our little girl. On the 14 hour flight from Atlanta to Tokyo I was squashed between a professor with a bladder of steel and a tiny Pilipino woman obsessed with hand sanitizer. The trip was completely miserable but so totally worth it.

Right now I am sitting quietly in my posh hotel room (yes, we were upgraded to a suite) while JD and Piper play at their new friend’s house. It’s a little other-worldly that my kids are playing in China with friends they have just met today. These children happen to be the children of a good friend of David’s from middle school in Alabama. You can’t convince me that’s it’s not a small world! David’s friend Melanie met a gorgeous Chinese man in Japan and they now live happily ever after in Beijing. Melanie was the one who made it her personal mission to find Molly Kate after her surgery in Beijing. It was a long and grueling search in a city of 22 million people with dozens of hospitals. But Melanie finally found our baby girl and was able to actually talk to the surgeon who performed her operation. I will never be able to repay Melanie for the piece of mind she gave me after finding out that Molly Kate was ok.

Melanie was our personal tour guide today and we had such a good time. Not a boring tour pointing out the obvious high points of Beijing, but a relaxed day of walking through “real” China neighborhoods and learning bizarre facts about the city and its people. JD and Piper went swimming (with Melanie’s kids) this afternoon and then we went to a famous Beijing duck restaurant. Now that I think about it, it may have been named “The Famous Beijing Duck Restaurant.” I’ll have to get Melanie to verify that for me. Although JD loves to try new and interesting (um, disgusting) foods, tonight he actually had to spit something out at dinner. It looked like a congealed square of chocolate pudding but it turned out to be some kind of red bean curd. We had to laugh watching the boy with the stomach of steel trying unsuccessfully to swallow his food!

Tomorrow we’re going to a section of the Great Wall that we haven’t been to before. It’s farther out of the city but there is a gondola that you can take to the top of the wall and (get this…) a luge-type slide that you can slide down to the bottom on. It’s so touristy and pathetic that I’m embarrassed to say that we’ve put this very high on our to-do list. If you get a minute, look up Great Wall slide or luge on YouTube. There are some awesome videos of the ride down. I really do think we’re going to have a ball.

3 days until we meet Molly Kate. Please keep her in your prayers as she has no idea the change her life is about to make.

Hugs to all of you back home.