China
Bullet Train
For our last night in Chongqing we ate at Pizza Hut. They have a quite varied menu here (New Orleans pasta, anyone?) but the spicy Schezwan lunch we had earlier in the day was much better. We ran across a huge market that catered to women last night with hundreds of small shops each perhaps […]
Picture Panic
This is a geeky post, so those with a life can choose to skip it. The SD card for one of our two cameras filled up and needed to be transferred to my netbook. Claire has been taking pictures of toilets, clouds, stray dogs and lots of pictures of herself from arms length. It also […]
Claire’s Orphanage Visit
We’re missing the breakfasts we had in Beijing. The food was a mixture of Western and Asian and we got to dine with many families with adopted Chinese daughters even those not in our group. And nattily dressed pilots and flight attendants. Here in Chongqing, we have traditional Chinese breakfast foods, including congee and a […]
On to Chongqing
I asked Claire what her favorite part of China was so far and she said it was her new buddy, another daughter in our group. We have separated from her and the others and today just our family traveled to Chongqing, a large city in central China, in the province of Claire’s orphanage. We checked […]
Forbidden City
Yesterday’s post was late because the Internet connection last night at the hotel was especially incorrigible. So I woke up at 4:30 to compose and post it. Yes you can jump to the conclusion that I’m still trying to get used to the timezone difference. Today started with a trip to Tiananmen Square. It was another […]
The Great Wall
Happy fourth of July everyone. We celebrated by Skyping our oldest daughter while she held up her cell phone up to the webcam and played a video that she had recorded of the fireworks at her grandmother’s the night before. It was just like we were there. Not. This was another full day of sightseeing. […]
Beijing Hutong
Color me surprised. The sun is out in Beijing and you could see a sky that was actually blue. We are travelling off-and-on with 5 other families with adopted daughters. We meet each other after breakfast and I managed to forget every other parents’ names almost immediately. (I’m horrible at that.) Our first tour bus […]
Shopping and Scorpions
When the tour company laid out the daily activities, they designated the day after our arriving flight as “sightseeing on our own.” This was a polite way of saying they weren’t going bother with a tour guide when they knew we were just going to fall asleep in the middle of the day anyway due […]
13 hours of boredom
The day began yesterday Thursday at 4:30am; it is now 8:30pm Friday and the rest of my family just went to bed. Even accounting for the 12 hours lost due to the time change, I calculate I’ve been awake for 27 of the past 28 hours. Perfect time for me to write my thoughts for the […]
In between vacations
I’m back from the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure. I took Claire for the first half of last week on the tandem, then I took Katie for the second half. Marissa, who lost interest in cycling years ago, stayed home. I’m now home for four days, just enough time to mow the lawn and pack, then […]