The Great Wall (Saturday Part 2) and arrival to Hohhot (Sunday)

After our time at New Hope, we met up with another couple that our guide was serving and went to lunch and to visit the Great Wall of China. We went to lunch at a Chinese "hot pot" restaurant. Everyone has a hot pot full of broth spiced to their liking and they bring out many meats and vegetables to cook in your hot pot. It was sort of like a fondue type of experience, but very Chinese. It was pretty good. I was surprised by how much I liked some of the vegetables. The boiled meats were ok but not all that great.

 

They brought us these little juice box things with a very thick, sweet tea in them. It was supposed to balance out the spiciness of the food. 

 

After lunch we headed to the Great Wall. It took us two hours to get there and we were still in Beijing!! I cannot over state how massive that city is!! We rode a chairlift up to the great wall and got to hike on it for awhile. It is truly unbelievably amazing. It is 4,000 miles long...longer than the breadth of the USA! It was built over hundreds of years by different emperors, starting 2,000 years ago! I can't fathom how they did it. It is way up in the mountains and made of large rocks. Our guide told us fascinating things about Chinese history as we walked.

 

Here we are on the chair lift.

 

 

The view looking behind us on the chair lift.

 

Standing on the Great Wall. With my honey. Surreal.

 

This taken through the window of one of the watchtowers.

A group shot of all of us. Our guide, Angela, on the far left and then Tim and Karen, another couple, here for adoption, that Angela was serving.



We hiked for awhile and took a lot of pictures and enjoyed the view, then we rode down the mountain on a toboggan! It was so much fun!!

 

After the Great Wall, we went to dinner. This time our guide took us to a restaurant where we could try famous Peking Duck. It was ok, but not my favorite here. Though I've been pleasantly surprised by how good the food has been, I must admit I am really ready for some good old American food!!

 

We went back to our hotel after dinner. We are still not quite acclimated to the time change. I've been falling asleep early and then waking up super early...like 4 or 5 am wide awake. I am never wide awake early in the morning at home!

 

We checked out of our hotel Sunday morning and our wonderful guide took us to the airport. There we met up with two other families from our agency who are also here for adoption. We will be with these families for the remainder of our trip...up until we say goodbye to them at the Chicago airport! We were SO happy to finally meet as we had connected through facebook but never met in person. We are so excited to have other Americans to talk to and to go through this process with likeminded friends!! We had a safe and uneventful (short) flight to Hohhhot and are all checked in at the Sheraton Hotel. It is lovely and so far we are having much better luck with internet here!

 

Tomorrow, around 11 am, we will meet Caleb for the first time! They are bringing our babies to us at our hotel! We have a guide here who is serving all three families and she will be helping us and serving as our translator here in Hohhot.

 

Please be in prayer for Caleb. Though we have been preparing for him for quite some time, we will be new and strange and probably quite scary to him at first! Please pray for his heart to be open and prepared for us and that we can bond with him and ease his fears quickly! 

I'll post about Gotcha Day as soon as I can!!!