July 13, 2013
Restless with jet lag, I wake up early and panic.  I wonder whether any of this is going to work out.  I pray a lot.  I feel like lots of fears are pulling me down.  As I pray, I remember that this trip is not about just having fun, but about learning what God wants to teach us.  I realize that what I need to learn is how to trust him more deeply and fully.  How to really let go of my own need to be in control of all the details.  As I pray, God leads me to remember the story of Joseph and he gives me an insight.  When Joseph had the dream about his family bowing down to him, he had a true dream.  God really did plan for him to lead the family.  I then thought about what he must have felt about that dream when he was sold by his brothers to be a slave, and then thrown in prison because of a lie.  He must have wondered where God was, and wondered what God was doing with his life.  Then I realized that in slavery and in prison Joseph continued to believe deeply in God and seek to show with all of his actions that he believed and loved a big and Holy God.  He sought to honor God even though no one around him knew anything about that God.  I realized then that it was in slavery and in the prison that Joseph's dream was fulfilled.  He became the spiritual leader of his family.  His brothers and his father often did not follow God fully or perfectly.  Yet through and in his hardships, Joseph remains focused on God so closely that when he does get called into Pharaoh's presence he can assuredly say that his God was able to interpret the dream.  I want to be like Joseph and have a great faith.  More than that, I want my kids to have great faith.  That is what this trip is about.  I get up ready for the day.

We head to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.  It is hot and very, very crowded.  We have to push past many people trying to sell us things and get to see the young soldier policemen in training as they march around.  They look very young and very hot in wool uniforms.  Seeing the lines of people for the Forbidden City, we decide to take a different route into a nearby park.  It is hot and we are getting tired, but we enjoy looking at the plants and garden.  Later, we look at the back of our tickets and realize that we only skirted the outside of this place.  There was a whole other side we completely missed. 

We head to Wanfujing Avenue and get a bit lost looking for some place to eat.  Finding something that everyone will like is not easy sometimes.  We backtrack a bit and then finally choose what seems like a fast food noodle place.  What we end up with is a sort of Chinese version of spaghetti, a rice with curry dish, fried rice, and two Chinese dishes with home made noodles. Mollie really likes the curry rice and everyone except for Maggie likes it.  We then go to the foreign language bookstore and the kids read Manga and other books.  Chris and I are too tired to read.  We head back home and finally manage to find a subway to catch for the last part of the ride home.  The kids love the subways.  They are cool and we crowd in with everyone else.  Everyone spends most of the ride on their tablets or phones.  Lots of colorful clothes, unlike the last time I was here.  Many girls are wearing short, colorful and fancy dresses.  The girls have a great time looking at the fashions.  I have a great time knowing that even though we've been hot, tired, hungry and jet lagged, we've held together as a family and begun to feel like China is a place we can be comfortable in.



July  14, 2013
The morning starts off with Mollie finding a necklace in her suitcase that has a cross on it.  No one knows where it came from.  We feel like God is giving us lots of little signs like that on our trip that he is with us and is taking care of us.
We take the subway and manage to find the Beijing International Fellowship church. I almost start to cry as we go into the room.  The last time I was there was just before I adopted Mollie in 2002.  We enjoy singing all the familiar worship songs, including "He is Jealous for Me."  The man next to Christopher has a daughter attending Baylor.  The man behind us is wearing a Rice T-shirt.  He's from Houston and has worked in the oil industry in China for the last 10 years.  Everywhere we go, we seem to meet people who know Texas and Baylor.

For lunch we want Chinese food.  We are, after all, in China. We go down "Lucky Street" near the church and find German food, French food, Italian food, Thai food, Korean food, lots of Japanese food, and a restaurant which claims to serve "Nashville food."  We give up and head into a very upscale grocery store for soft drinks and then head back to our hotel to eat in a little hole in the wall.  We had gotten amazing dumplings there for breakfast.  We had caused the man no end of trouble though. It reminded me of the "Soup Nazi" in New York.  Having no idea what was in the buns, or how much anything cost, we kept on asking questions but it became quickly apparent that we were supposed to take a plate, quickly say how many we wanted and move on.  In the end, they just gave us some things and told us to sit down.  We were holding up the line!  Eventually the line cleared and they let us pay.  It cost 28 yuan, or about $4.  We also have been spending a lot of time in this amazing bakery shop which has buns and unusual pastries. 
For lunch we cause more trouble when we try to order dishes to share.  They serve us huge plates of home made noodles in soup and sauces.  We can't possibly finish the five plates we order.  The whole thing costs about $11.

All that food makes us need to rest.  We just hang out in the hotel the rest of the day and enjoy talking, organizing pictures into movies and sleeping to get over jet lag.

 

July 15, 2013

I wake up at 5:00 to find it is raining outside.  We are supposed to go to the Great Wall today so I am wondering what will happen.  I finally get up and get dressed at 6:00 when I see Christopher and Brendan’s light is on.  I find they are in the commons.  No one else is there except for the older man, who does not speak English and seems to be the owner.  He hums a bit as he fixes things. Wi-Fi is not connecting but they have both been writing in their journals and Christopher begins writing a song. His back is still hurting just the same.  We remember again that the doctor had said it was not a disk problem.  He says the pain is just over his pelvis.

  I check on the laundry and found someone has already put mine in the drier, but then the door was open and it is a little damp. I put it in the guy’s room and find that they have the system where the card goes in a slot to turn on the lights and air.  Our dorm doesn’t work that way and so our room air is always on and we are keeping it pretty cold.

When I come back in there are more people in the commons and at around 7:00 the staff comes to sweep and turn on the lights. A guide comes in with a pink poncho and takes a group on a tour of the Forbidden city.  So I guess we will be going too.  I ask about the tour and it seems that we will still go.  She tells me they have some umbrellas we can borrow, but probably not enough.  We can buy some at around 8:00 if we go into the alley and turn left.

We do manage to get the umbrellas.  Mine is broken but I get a replacement before we leave.  Mollie’s breaks on the trip but Steffi manages to make do with it since she is smaller and doesn’t need as much coverage.  Love the pictures of her popping out of the half-closed umbrella.

It is pouring down rain all day.  We climb the Great Wall of China and go up in ski lifts (with definitely not California Legoland approved safety checks) in pouring water.  It is crazy.  We have a great time.  Sophie says she could ride the gondolas all day.  I take video.  Maggie takes video.  Mollie and Maggie make videos and scrapbooks of the trip during lunch.  There are amazing shots of mountains covered with clouds and eerie rain covered archways and towers and people with umbrellas going down the old, old stairs of the Great Wall.

 At lunch, Chris talks in French to a lady and her daughter.  We both have fun talking with an Australian couple, who like everyone we seem to meet here know about Baylor, RG3, Texas football and San Diego.  Our movies and T.V. have made us all too known all over the world, yet we are also amazed at how many people we meet know about Baylor.

 We look for birds and insects around the wall.  Chris and I see an orange bird with white and black stripes on its wings.  We see small flat snails and a worm on the wall but very few other insects or birds. We meet a group of adopted kids who are one of the first Half the Sky trips of all adopted girls.  One of them is from Steffi’s province. We take pictures, what else? They seem as glad to meet us as we are to meet them on this crazy day.  Lunch is very good and we even manage to find something which is sort of like orange chicken.

The kids are crazy about these Panda buns with black bean paste that I get at the 7-11 across the street.  I get four of them to top off our dinner of peanut butter sandwiches and other leftovers.  I buy chocolate for Christopher.  Everyone else goes to bed and I am back in the commons area checking up on our last few travel details.  I email my family and make a Facebook post to let everyone know we are ok. Time for bed.  Tomorrow we head to the Summer Palace and if we can get tickets, we will see the acrobats in the evening.