Tossing and Turning

Wynn had a follow-up appointment with the doctor yesterday, which went very well. He listened to her lungs; there's still something in there, but it's not too bad. She's having more productive (i.e., disgusting) coughs since she started on the medicine. It's hard to wrap your mind around seeing a big green blob of snot on her face and thinking, "Well, that's a good sign." Luckily, it's easy to get her to take the medicine; they flavor it up real nice, so she opens her mouth like a little bird the second she sees the medicine dropper.

Speaking of the medicine dropper ... we finally found a way to get more liquids into her. The spoon method took FOREVER, and she (and we!) were getting bored and frustrated having to get out the spoon every time she needed a drink. I saw how eagerly she took the medicine, so last night I sat her down with a cup of apple juice and the dropper. Voila! She loved the juice so much she smacked her lips between "sips". We will need to get her drinking independently eventually (I'm not going along to kindergarten, afterall.), but at least we've got a faster way to pump the liquids in her now.

The doctor's advice yesterday was to fatten her up - in his words, "Butter up that bread!", so we're working on introducing more fats into her diet. As we thought about what she'd been eating, we realized that her diet was almost fat free. No wonder she's so skinny; she's been on the ZONE diet for the last year and a half! (We keep having to buy new clothes for her; everything we have is WAY too big. She fits in a twelve-month top and needs size SIX months on the bottom. All those lovely 18 month and 2T sundresses we have will be worn next summer, I guess. Or this winter with tights and a turtleneck.) After a quest for "fatten up the toddler" food at the grocery store last night, we discovered that she very much enjoys the Eggo mini pancake. She polished off the first two and then brought us the empty bowl to say, "I'll have a few more of those please."

The biggest fight we're having with her (other than getting her to wear shoes) is getting her to go to sleep at night. Once we've got her out, we don't hear a peep from her for eight hours, but she resists falling asleep with such fury! It took over an hour of watching her flop around, kick her feet, talk to her stuffed dog, hum songs to herself, etc. before she finally dropped off. We're working on the going to bed rituals - snack time, bath time, put on lotion, put on pajamas, turn down the lights, etc., but she's just not playing along yet.

Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures from the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Ann

Photo Special Edition!

Smog in Beijing


Beijing Traffic

Us at the Airport in Beijing


The Bus We Rode to the Tarmac


The Highway into Nanning


View of Nanning from our Hotel Window


When They Handed Wynn to Ann


The Part They Warned Us About


First Time Wynn Sat on Mom's Lap with No Tears


The Whole Family by a Rice Paddy Outside Nanning


The Scenery in Guangxi is Amazing!


The View from The White Swan in Guangzhou


Wynn Flapping her Arms for More Tomatoes


Favorite Jelly Flavor: Strawberry


Reading with Baba


She LOVES the Remote

And now, to Nanning

This morning was the first time on our trip where we did not need to be at the hotel lobby at 8:30 to get on a tour bus. Instead, today was Checkout Day for Beijing ... suitcases in the hallway at 11:00 and checkout at 11:30.

We are definitely glad to have come to China several days early so as to get used to the time zone, just be tourists, and get the general hang of how to take care of yourself and get things done here.

We now know that food you buy at the grocery store is incredibly inexpensive (to our standards.) We've gotten bottled water for 2 to 5 yuan (so around 25-75 cents US) and a can of Coke is 5 yuan. A McDonald's double cheeseburger is just 6 yuan, and it is very good. Nestle makes little containers of ice cream here - about a pint (one of those Ben & Jerry's) - and it is also just 6 yuan. And what we would recognize as "juice boxes" of milk go for just 2 yuan. There's always a corner store or supermarket nearby, and you just watch the cash register to figure out how much to pay. Plus, it's a whole lot of fun to see how people shop!

Most of the other families in our group came in a day behind us, and a few only arrived last night! The folks who landed in Beijing last night were given the fast tour of Tiananmen and the Forbidden City (leave at 8, back by 11), which seems crazy to us now that we have experienced Beijing traffic (takes no weekend breaks) and know firsthand just how long it takes simply to walk straight through, stopping for nothing. And then to head straight out to the airport? They are really going to be dragging tomorrow...

The smog in Beijing has steadily worsened since we arrived. This morning was really awful -- leaden gray sky with a glowing red sun. Yesterday, we couldn't see the mountains from several kilometers out during our Great Wall trip. Today, it was difficult to see to the end of the block. Even now - 9 pm - my throat is still achy, and all I did outside was to walk to McD's to get some Chicken McNuggets for Ann's lunch, plus get on and off the bus to the airport, and take the bus to the airplane.

Our flight (Shenzhen Airlines) was scheduled to leave Beijing at 1:50 pm, but when we checked in, we found out they were pulling the departure time forward! So from check-in we had only 30 minutes before boarding. We hustled out to the gate (lower level) and waited just a short while before a (not air conditioned) bus pulled up and over 100 people piled on board. We drove several miles, crossing one main runway and tunneling under another, before pulling up to our bird, parked the furthest out on the tarmac. We scrambled out of the bus and climbed aboard, and waited. About 15 minutes later another bus pulled up, and several dozen more people climbed the stairs into our aircraft. In all, we didn't get off the ground until about 1:40.

Our flight took 3 hours. We climbed up above the smog after about 20 minutes, but it was easily another 75 minutes before we reached the edge of the smog... it seems to be trapped over Northern China for now, but next week you folks in America may have some interesting weather... We dodged thunderstorms for a while before landing in our new base of operations for the next week, Nanning.

Coming through the clouds over Guangxi Province (where we are now) and seeing forests, lush farm fields, and wide-open space was an amazing shift from the dry, urban landscape we had gotten used to. The drive from the airport into the city was traffic-free, and both the airport and city of Nanning are CLEAN - meticulously groomed, polished, and unlittered.

Looking out our 9th-floor window, we have a panorama view of the skyline. Seeing blue sky - and even some of the sunset - was a pleasant switch from the week so far! The hotel seems very nice, and they even have a computer here in the room we can use, unlimited, for just 20 yuan per day (so our concerns about not being able to post frequently are now relieved.)

Tomorrow morning at 10:30 we sit down with our coordinator here to fill out paperwork, and at 3:00 we are scheduled to get our little girl! Even though we are exhausted (in fact we haven't been up this late since we landed in Beijing), we wonder just how much sleep we are actually going to achieve tonight.

Everything changes tomorrow. We will have a lot to talk about!

--Scott

I fought the Wall, and the Wall won...

As you can see from the pictures, today we visited one gigantic, iconic piece of construction from China's past ... and one for its future.

First we took the tour bus out to Badaling (Think Tony Soprano when you say it - badabing!) to see the Great Wall. The traffic was INSANE on the expressway; as far as I can tell, the Chinese have replaced all the functions of a turn signal with the HORN. No "signal, mirror, blind spot, move" as we learned in drivers ed. We rode along for over an hour, still surrounded by big buildings, lots of traffic, and LOTS of smog. Suddenly, I realized that there was a curved horizontal line across the sky ahead of us, and the smog was slightly darker below it. I squinted at it for a few seconds and thean realized, um, those are mountains.

Soon we were driving up a curving road through the mountains. We were fortunate enough to be on the tour where the bus takes you all the way to the parking lot. We passed many people who had parked a mile or more down the hillside who were walking all that way before even getting to the Wall. Our guide dropped us off, explaining that there were two ways we could go: up the extremely crowded side with a smoother incline OR up the not-so-crowded but (in his words) "slightly steeper" side. Yep, we ended up on the steep side. Here we learned that you do not walk on the Wall, you climb. First up some steps of varying heights (a 6" step, a 24" step, an 8" step, etc.) then come the inclines. We learned that just as your muscles adjusted to walking on one type of surface, they'd switch it up and change the terrain on you. It was hard to feel like we ever got a rhythm to our climb, and we were thankful for the handrails and for the fact that we had trained for this by hiking at the nature center for the last month or two. In the pictures you can see how high we went and get a sense how steep it was; though, we both agree that it FELT steeper than it looks in the pictures. (You can see some buses in the parking lot; that's where we started.)

Eventually, we turned around, thinking that the way down would be a breeze. Nope. Again, you had to shift the muscles you were using, and now you got a sense of the height because you could see the valleys in front of you. There were a lot of us with "jelly legs" walking back down. I'd compare it to that strange feeling you get after you've been on ice skates for awhile and then start walking around - like you're just not using your feet right and can't feel the ground. Adding to this strange sensation was the fact that at times your body was actually leaning back at about a sixty degree angle.

On the way back from Badaling, we stopped at a cloisonne factory and "Friendship" store. It's a government run shop that sells all kinds of knick knacks and souvenirs in what looks like an abandoned JCPenny's attached to a factory. We didn't buy anything, but enjoyed the family-style Chinese lunch we got to share with the other CHSFS families at the restaurant upstairs. (Did I mention that the factory/JCPenny's had a restaurant upstairs?)

When we got to Beijing, the bus pullled over on the side of the highway so we could take some pictures of the Olympic stadiums that are under construction. The scale of the main stadium is impossible to comprehend from the pictures, but you get some idea if you look closely and see the workers climbing around on top. (Also, think about whether or not your job is REALLY all that bad as you see them up there working in the ninety-five degree heat.)

Then we went to an official Olympic merchandise store so that we could be the first kids on our block to have t-shirts with those ridiculously cute mascots on them. (This is where we made our first non-grocery purchases of the entire trip.)

It was a long and tiring day, but we had a lot of fun and appreciated getting to see so much more of the area around Beijing. Tomorrow afternoon we'll fly to Nanning and get Wynn on Monday morning. Obviously, we are incredibly excited to go, but at the same time are a little sad to leave Beijing; we really like it here and would love to stick around and see more. I'm sure we'll come back again with Wynn when she's a little older.

We appear to be the only family going to Nanning from CHSFS, so we have no idea if we'll be able to get at a computer until we get to Guangzhou next weekend. We're hopeful that we'll find a net cafe or another family there to help us out, because we know there are a bunch of expectant grandparents and other concerned parties who are anxiously awaiting photos and news of Wynn. We'll do out best to keep you satisfied in that regard. :-)

Ann

And now a shout out to my husband: Scott diligently "studied" for this trip - maps, websites, language lessons, etc. Being here with him and his quickly-acquired wealth of knowledge has made this trip so much easier on me. I can relax and enjoy the trip knowing that Scott's the guy who knows how to ask if the store accepts credit cards, understands how to manuever our way through an airport, and is willing to taste any dish set before us and warn my more timid palate as to whether or not it's spicy. :-) (Of course, he lacks the instant street cred of my "teacher voice".)