Touring Beijing (Day 4) - The Day Before Gotcha Day!

Twas the day before Gotcha Day and all through Beijing,

Not an adoptive family could focus, not on one little thing.

When all of a sudden, while on their Great Wall tour,

These families did realize, tomorrow there would be several orphans fewer!

We definitely slept better during our second night in Beijing, but still found ourselves waking up pretty early (~3-4am) after some good solid rest.  Today was another great day, full of busyness, but helped us move one step closer towards getting Alia in our arms tomorrow!

We again started the day with a great breakfast buffet feast.  We boarded the bus earlier (8am instead of 9am) and headed to Tiananmen Square where the main focus is on government buildings and Mao's tomb.  It does not seem that many Chinese are aware of the massacre that occurred here in 1989 at a pro-democracy movement.  We walked past these places, but spent almost thirty minutes in a wall to wall packed tunnel trying to get through a security checkpoint.  Our guide said she had never seen such large crowds.  It was crazy busy and we ended up rush walking through the Forbidden Palace, getting great pics but not really entering into any of the buildings.  After seeing the Summer Palace and then the Forbidden City we realized that Mulan had it real good....haha.

Here are a few pics of the Forbidden City....impressive!  The Chinese certainly know how to build and decorate!

We then journeyed by bus through some crowded streets towards the Great Wall.  Beijing driving is crazy!  We witnessed another bus scrape its side earlier trying to edge out another bus, and then we caught our driver playing chicken with a car in the middle of an intersection...we're definitely learning new tricks for driving in rural Kentucky!

We also had a rare, first sighting of a...pregnant women!  In all seriousness several of the families had been on the lookout for a pregnant woman, but it took us two full days in a city of 25 million to find one.  We whooped and hollared with excitement in our bus.  The rarity of pregnant women is probably a sign of the impact of the one child policy that China has on most of its people, only allowing them to have one child per family....or maybe the pregnant women are smart enough to avoid the touristy sections of town!  Maybe this lady had the munchies for some KFC or was an Ikea groupie like Brittney...

Our next stop was lunch at a combo restaurant and jade market.  Lunch was great and this place went out of their way to serve French fries and fish sticks for the kids.  Good eating along with the traditional Chinese food (Peking duck below).  We have discovered how Chinese people tend to stay so skinny...chop sticks really limit your ability to get food into your mouth!

We then had a tour of the jade market/store.  They showed us how it is cut, designed, and polished.  There is one real important thing you must know about jade...it is pricey!  See this boat?  Guess how much it was on sale for?  Just $65,000!  So if you are ever headed to China and really like large jade boats, start saving!  If you want jade, come to China...this was the largest jewelry store we've ever been in. Jonathan wanted it as a souvenir but Brittney encouraged him to wait until "maybe the next trip when we have extra space in our luggage".

Our guides Jade and Deliah have been wonderful.  They have kept us out of trouble and kept us from being lost...a major accomplishment!  We enjoyed giving them a card and small gifts of appreciation.  They even finished the day by joining us in prayer (for them and for Gotcha Day) even though they were unfamiliar with prayer or why we would do such a thing.  Sweet girls who we hope come to know the adoptive love of our Heavenly Father!

We finished the day at the Great Wall of China.  We only had an hour to walk it, but most of us were relieved by that fact because we were so exhausted already.  The Great Wall is the gold standard for stair climbing!  The section we went to was very packed but beautiful. Here are a few pics!

While on the Great Wall, I (Brittney) thought it was a beautiful representation of the adoption journey.  There are parts you walk on that are small inclines for easy progress up/down reminding me of the easy steps in the process like finger printing, completing papers, etc.  There were small shallow steps that while still taking you up to the next viewing point moved us closer and closer to meeting our daughter just as the many prayers daily for God to show us the child He created for our family.  Then there were large steps that came up to my waist and i had to take quite a step to move from one step to the next up/down the wall.  These steps reminded me of the struggles with an adoption...the waiting process, watching your child grown up in photos instead of in your arms for a time, wondering her hurts, her joys and longing for that joyous day.  After moving up each of these types of terain yesterday, we reached a beautiful spot for pictures and this reminds me of what today is all about...Gotcha Day! The view was beautiful just as the reunion with Alia will be.  While there may be stressful times filled with crying or uncertainties as we care for our new daughter, we must keep the beautiful picture in mind of how God has orchestrated each moment of this process so far!  The Great Wall took hundreds of years to build with hundreds of thousands of workers and is simply amazing.  God knew long before the wall was build what a place it would be and in all reality it's just a wall...how much more perfect is His plan for each of us!  So excited to be at the top of the Great Wall and at the "top" of our adoption journey today and hope in the midst of today we are able to stand back and realize through happy tears what a great God we serve and what a wonderful joy it is to be His!

We've repacked our bags for an early morning departure (6am).  We are excited but nervous.  We know some children respond well on Gotcha Day but others cry and scream...for days.  It is very exciting for us but very difficult for these kiddoes.  If you happen to be awake around 2am ET Sunday, please pray for all of our families and kids as we come together in God's picture of His love in adoption!

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:27

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved." Ephesians 1:3-6

Here is a pic of Alia celebrating her Letter or Acceptance/Referral Acceptance (LOA/RA) with a cake we sent her a few weeks ago.  Today is a day of even greater celebration and praise!