Saturday

Last night we went to sleep at 9pm and awoke at 5 for the day. I don't think anyone moved the whole night (for the first night). I was up for an hour in the night, but that is much better than before. We headed down to breakfast and had a great meal. Joy found some zongzi and it was delicious to her. Zongzi is glutinous rice with some bean paste in the center... wrapped like a dumpling in bamboo leaves and tied with red string. She ate four along with a big plate for breakfast!!! She is loving this food. We have realized how Chinese Joy still is. She has been ordering boiling water to drink with her meal.

We came back up to the room and did our morning laundry. Washing the clothing in the sink with dawn soap and scrubbing with a bar of soap. It does the trick. We scrub and then wring it out well and hang on the clothesline in the shower. Some thicker things we created a system for drying faster. Blue jeans and sweaters get hung wet in the closet and we hang a blow dryer in the closet and shut the door. It is a makeshift dryer. It works well. The room gets hot and then it cools as we are out and about. No drying around bedtime or we would toss all night. Lol. After we got our laundry done, we headed to meet Cindy in the lobby again at 9am. We were driven to Tiannamen square and walked through the Forbidden city as well. This is the ultimate homeschool field trip. Our kids are now experts in Chinese ancient history! They are learning so much! We walked three miles from the van to the van again at the end of our viewing. The beggars were still at the exit of the Forbidden city and they broke my heart. They are so disabled. We left there and went to a silk factory to see how fine silks (bed spreads, rugs, scarves, etc) are made.. starting from a month in a cocoon. They got to see the moths in various stages of development, hold the cocoons and see the whole process of turning cocoon to silk. Amazing. The store was extremely pushy and it was very expensive things. It stinks when everyone thinks that you are rich with money. Lol Joy bought a fan that I will display in her and Evie's room and we bought two Chinese knot hanging decor. We left there and went to a restaurant for lunch. I had a feeling I knew the place she was taking us to. It was the same restaurant that we ate Peking duck at last time! We ordered the shaved lamb with cilantro, spicy donkey with vegetables, rice, broccoli and pork and onion dumplings. Oh, this meal was so so good!!!! The lamb wasn't my favorite, but everyone else liked it. The cilantro was too overpowering. The donkey was served with onions, lots of spicy peppers, lotus, and some greens. It was delicious. Donkey tastes like tender beef. We drank coke and sprite and Joy and Cindy has boiling water. We chatted with Cindy about various things with China and her personal life. She has the cutest daughter named Shi Han with the English name "Julia" (one of my favorites)! I could talk to Cindy all night and all day. She is my favorite guide I've ever had (a few others are definitely close in the running)! She is a history buff and she fills us with knowledge! I walked the children back to the hotel and Justin and Cindy went to the bank to get lots of money transferred over to head to Inner Mongolia! We will leave the hotel at 9am to head to the airport. Cindy will be on our plane and staying with us in Hohhot. I'm so excited to keep her another week. How will we say goodbye when the time comes? I'll have to add her on wechat to keep in touch.

We barely got to the hotel when our friends that are adopting two children messaged us to meet us at our hotel! I was so excited!!! We were adopting from the same orphanage (one of her children and Lily) and that is how we connected. We met up and hit it off quickly. Joy loved Chris and held his hand as we went walking the streets. We found the snack street area and enjoyed looking at all the strange foods. We finally got to get the apples coated in hard syrup on a stick. I have looked forward to it and I wasn't impressed. Next up was bubble tea with tapioca pearls. Loved that tea .. it was very good! I've wanted to try that for years as well. Anna has been wanting to try the green tea ice cream so we went for that as well. All the kids liked it.. I wasn't impressed lol. We had a great time walking the streets and chatting with our new friends. There is a special bond between adopting parents. It's nice to find like-minded people to share time with. We talked and talked and then helped them get a cab and they were on their way. Anna and I walked to get snacks at the 7-11 for a quick snack for dinner. We packed our bags because tomorrow at 9am we leave the hotel to head to the airport to go to Inner Mongolia.
It's finally go time... the real deal. We are coming for sister! Yay! I know I'll cry when I leave Beijing. It's my favorite city in the world. No city compares to it! China has half of my heart. It's a weird feeling.. it felt like we were home when we got here this time. Home is where your family is and since we are all together, I guess this IS our home right now. We are almost to Evie! Two more sleeps!

Pictures to try in the next post immediately after this one. I'm having a hard time uploading both at once.