北京
北京
北京 北
Today we went to see Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. Really we just walked through it about 1/2 mile. It is so grand in scale that it's hard to get good pictures. It was warmer there than by the lakes & trees of the Hutong area we were at yesterday. We met our group today also & are getting to know everyone. We came back to the hotel and went swimming for awhile. Now, back at the room, Karah is napping & we are relaxing.

More Hutong Moments

Here are a few more photos from yesterday in the Hutong area of Beijing. The young lady with Karah is helping to guide us. She is a local university student. Her name is "Sunny". We really appreciate her help and Beijing hospitality.

Karah seems to really like her a lot.

Oh one more thing, I'm not sure what was going on in this picture I took today but I think this guy got caught letting the air out of bicycle tires and they were making him pump them back up. They just don't put up with things like that in China :-)

Today, Karah woke up at 4:30 AM so we all woke up slightly after that.We got our showers & organized our room a bit. We then learned our way through the breakfast buffet and I learned from the cook that that ketchup is called “fānqié jiàng” (番茄酱 - Can’t have hash browns without them :-). Our friend and guide William is with us and will be traveling to Kunming & Guangzhou with us too! He was our BLAS guide for Karah’s adoption too so it is very nice to work with him again. He introduced us to a university student who is helping to guide us; her English name is “Sunny”. I have some pictures of her here with us. Today she had breakfast with us And she went with us and guided us through the “Hútòng” area of Beijing by one of the old city gates. It was just casual walking and sightseeing. I chatted with the locals a bit too which was fun. My Chinese is understood but makes them laugh because my grammar and tones are so bad. Then we had lunch at Pizza Hut right here by the hotel. Now it’s about 4:30 PM as I am writing this and Mary & Karah are napping. More adoptive families arrive today and tonight and then tomorrow we will meet them. The weather is very nice. It was cool for most of the day & warmed up a bit this afternoon but not hot at all. No rain in sight yet.
. For my friend Mike Foo in the US:
Mike I want you to know this is a “proper” hotel with and ironing board and
Iron in the closet :-)

We are in Beijing!

We are at the Marriott Beijing West Hotel. The flight was 10 hours to Tokyo, 1.5 hours layover & then 3 more hours to Beijing. The streaming movies made the trip go by faster, at least for me.

Karah did very well. She slept probably 3.5 hours but Mary & I have been up non-stop for the entire trip. It's late & I still need to do a few things before going to Bed. So "Wan An!" ( good night).

Tomorrow we travel to San Francisco & then step on the plane to Beijing. I feel exhausted, trying to turn over the household to my grown sons. Make sure you water the garden, the pasture & the orchard; please check the mail, feed the animals; give them the contact info for us and our itinerary. In the middle of getting our paperwork printed off the main house computer, we had a power outage, due to a fire about 2 miles away. Our neighbors were evacuating their livestock. People were calling our house for concern. The power came back on but the computer is dead. I don't have time to troubleshoot it so it will remain that way till I come back. Thank God, despite all the turmoil, we seem to be nearly ready to leave. This will likely be my last post until I reach our hotel room in Beijing. The laptop is going in the carrying case. Please keep us in your prayers.

Final Preperations before leaving for China

With three days left till departure, we are in a daze with all the preparations. Thank you to those who have posted encouraging comments. The biggest challenge has been to get the finances for this. We have received checks in the mail from family and friends to assist. Thank you so very much. The second big challenge is to keep our baggage weight at right around 40 lbs, given all the things we must take. At the bottom of our blog here, you can check the weather for the 3 locations in China we will be at. Also, I will be using AOL Instant messenger in China. The IDs we use on AOL/IM are " kenaniah1 " and " kenatiml ". Keep in mind the time difference in China. There is only one timezone for all of China. We also will be checking our normal e-mail for those of you who have the addresses. We have another member of our travel group posting a blog at http://builtbygod.blogspot.com/ for those of you who may be interested. One week from tomorrow and we will have MeiLi!

First Stop - Beijing

北京-紫禁城- 长城- 颐和园

Sept. 3 (Wed night) -We arrive in Beijing & we wait to join up with the other adopting families.

Sept. 4 (Thu) - Settle into Hotel, get used to new time zone, meet other families, venture out into the city.

Sept. 5 (Fri) --- Visit Tian’an men Square and Forbidden City.

Sept. 6 (Sat) --- Visit the Great Wall and Summer Palace.

It will be fun watching Karah experience her own culture. She's five now so she will remember a lot from this trip.

Flight Paths

Karah's "Forever Family Day" Anniversary

On August 23rd, we celebrate the 4th anniversary of meeting Karah. I could write the story but in this case a picture is worth a thousand words. Her nannies at the orphanage loved her. We owe so much to them for the nurturing and care they gave her. Her Chinese name is FuYue and we have kept that in her name. The meaning of Fu is "happiness" and Yue means "Spiritual Pearl".

Date to Meet MeiLi

We finally got our in-China itinerary. We will be meeting MeiLi on Monday, September 8, 2008 ! We depart September 2 and return home on September 19. I will try to post an update every day during our traveling with photos and perhaps some video clips of our activities.

Consulate Appointment September 17th

Our Consulate appointment is set for September 17th in Guangzhou which is in Guangdong Province. Guangzhou will be our exit point from China. It is a very beautiful city.

We plan to stay at the White Swan hotel there, which is very accommodating to adoptive families. The Link to their website is

http://www.whiteswanhotel.com/ . We will have to do medical

checkups there with the other adoptive families and many other

processing appointments before we can bring MeiLi home.

Inner Strength - The Bookmark

Early in Meili's adoption process, I came across this bookmarker. Neither Mary nor I know for sure how we got it . I started using it in my message Bible which I was reading daily. It always seemed to remind me to pray for MeiLi and for her adoption process. So I would hold this in my hand and pray for her. I translated the characters (which is a meticulous process for me) and I found out it is a Poem that simply says "You already have the power within you".

Psalm 28:7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song I will praise him.

As I prayed, I pictured MeiLi coming from a Southern Province where they grow a lot of flowers. It turns out that the market in Dounan, a suburb of Kunming is Asia's largest flower exchange and exporter of flowers. Kunming is where we will be going to get MeiLi.

Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son

On our first adoption trip to China in 2004, I remember thinking I would be very emotional in China when I first held Karah. I told Mary on the bus that day that I hoped I didn't lose it and just break down and weep at the orphanage. When we did finally arrive at the orphanage, I was indeed emotional but it was a nervousness. The rest of the trip was very exciting and fast paced. When we finally arrived home, I was sitting in the chair cradling Karah in my arms & I had rocked & sang her to sleep, as I gazed at her, the flood of emotion I had expected to have in China finally hit me and I wept a lot. You see, the joy of saving a child from being institutionalized is mixed with the sadness and anger of her being abandoned. How could such a precious child be let go by her parents? I did not understand until I read a book entitled "Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son - Abandonment, Adoption and Orphanage Care in China." It is a book of facts. For anyone who has heard rumors of China selling it's girls or that they do not value them, this book dispels those stereotypes. I highly recommend it for anyone who truly wants to understand.

How the journey to get MeiLi Started.

This is MeiLi's story. To understand it one needs a little background information. When we finished adopting Karah from China in 2004, Mary & I knew that we were not done. We had to wait 6 months to start another adoption from China and we did so as soon as possible. The journey to
get Karah was one of the most exhilerating and rewarding trips of our lives. The jouney to get MeiLi began in the year 2005 with a call to our adoption agency. There have been many delays and what was supposed to take 6 months has taken almost 3 years.. We received our referral on July 7, 2008; we now know who she is, where she is and where we are going to get her!