Hi there - so we need to be quick tonight. Gotcha day is tomorrow and we're working on getting organized. Plus Janie didn't get up at 5 this morning, she moved it to 4:30. We're now in Nanning in the Guangxi Province. Today was essentially a travel day. Big contrast from Beijing in terms of climate. Really nice out. We took a 3.5 hour flight today from Beijing to here. Very green here. Reminds me a bit of Portland. Very pretty area. We just returned from dinner with another family from Portland. They are adopting their second daughter. Their first is about Janie's age and they hit it off at dinner.

Back to yesterday in Beijing and some quick highlights. We spent the morning and part of the afternoon at the zoo and the aquarium. Then we moved on to the Capital Museum. After that we spent some time in the markets shopping and then finished with a dinner in a Hutong that Sean took us to. Fantastic meals again. He knows some great places to dine and they aren't going to be found in guidebooks. Really thankful that he took us under his wing for a couple of days.

The picture above probably doesn't do it justice. This little "guy" carried Janie around a courtyard at the zoo for 5 minutes. She was driving and almost took a couple kids out. There's a video that we'll try and get posted but it freezes up when I tried earlier tonight.

Nice aquarium that was connected to the zoo. Janie enjoyed some of the rides.

The highlight of the zoo was probably the panda bears. This guy was great. He essentially had a little yoga routine and we caught him in some stretching/scratching pose here.

And here he is after completing his routine.

At this zoo you can get a lot closer to the animals than other zoos. These bears were doing tricks and people were feeding them. We saw one guy pouring his Sprite over the edge into the bears mouth. Another was feeding the bears cotton candy.

As I mentioned, you can get pretty close to the animals...

Here's Sean and Janie sharing some treats and conversation.

Finally, one of the highlights...we took a cab to a different Hutong and then went back into some alleys to this family restaurant. Here's the fish hot pot that I had. Janie thought it was pretty crazy how they brought the big fish out still kicking in a net.

Finally, early this morning (Sunday) we were out in front of our hotel and this group was out performing (I'm not sure that is the right word). Janie took this one of this woman swinging her sword. I'm sure I'm doing a really poor job of describing some 1000 year old ritual but it was cool to watch. I'm tired and get a new daughter tomorrow so I'm out. The next photo will be of Audrey!

Morning/Evening/or somewhere in between. It is Saturday morning here and we're killing time waiting for the pool to open. Janie and I (John) go down in the early morning and swim with a couple of guys doing laps. Janie is in the pattern of waking up really early, going hard all day, and then crashing in a cab on the way home from dinner.

I know Deb wrote yesterday but I'll just add my catch up. The flight went great and Janie was super. Continuous movies certainly help though. I finally was able to watch the last Batman. The new Bond movie debuted here a few days ago so there's posters up everywhere for it. Our local guide picked us up at the airport and we fell asleep Wednesday night in our hotel about midnight. We then woke up around 3 AM and Janie got up about 5. After swimming we were picked up by our guide and driver and did the Great Wall, shopping, tea ceremony, hutong visit and acrobatics show as Deb described below.

On to Day 2...after the 5 AM wake up call from Janie we went swimming and then met our friend Shuang (Sean). Sean and my dad (JC) met about eight or nine years ago and Sean took the day off of work to show us the sights.

So after some caffeine we walked to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. Amazing, massive places. We went on Friday because on Saturday there will be more people there. It was great to see but it felt like the city of Portland was inside with us. But within the masses of people in the Square and the City there was one person that attracted the most attention. As Janie said, she's like a rockstar. Let's put it this way, if we charged for each picture that Janie was in we'd have paid for the whole trip. The little blondie was the highlight for many other tourists and kept very busy meeting new friends.

No, not Audrey, just another little friend that wanted her picture taken with Janie.

Here's the paparazzi lined up to take Janie's picture. At times we'd get pinned in by all the interest. Seriously, everyone was very friendly though. Actually, I'm really impressed with all the smiles and friendship that we've felt. So after a long walk through the sites, in which we probably only saw a small percentage of the place it was time for lunch.

We took a cab to a nice area where the Chinese youth athletes train and where there was a nice lake. Speaking of athletes but we also saw the Bird's Nest and Water Cube from the Olympics yesterday. So we took a couple of photos by the lake and then had a fantastic meal.

Our friend Shaung, Janie and Deb outside the Forbidden City.

I'm not going to remember all that we had to eat but it was fantastic. One of the better meals that I've had in awhile. Janie is a whiz with the chopsticks and has done a great job at trying new things. We've had some new things but I'm going to try and expand the boundaries today. Knock on wood we've had no stomach troubles thus far.

A little side story about the lake...so Janie and Deb are outside by the lake while Sean and I are getting the bill and finishing a couple local beers. They had these little duck tour boats that people could rent and paddle around the lake. Well they don't know why but two duck boat drivers had a little conflict with fists, and as Janie put it, wrestling. One guy was chasing the other all over the dock and they ended up fighting in front of them. Janie thought this was as amazing as the Forbidden City and had all kinds of questions about this entertainment.

After lunch we went to another Hutong area. This one was an interesting mix of the traditional Hutong with a long, narrow street that (Portland reference) felt like a mix of Alberta Street and the Pearl district. Great shopping, and it helped to have Sean there for some bargaining.

We've been taking street scene photos. Here's a shot of a little cabbage and here's one of the Hutong street where we did some shopping.

Finally, we jumped in another cab (Janie thought it was cool how she didn't need a car seat and how nobody wears a helmet on a bike) and went to the Palace of Heaven. It was sort of like when the Griswold's got the Grand Canyon, took one picture and left, because we arrived there right about closing time. Had another good dinner and then crashed. More to come today...

We made it to Beijing. The flight went smooth and Janie did great. We got to our hotel around 11 pm so we had been traveling for over 20 hours. Janie didn't sleep on the first flight but the second flight, Tokyo to Beijing, she slept the whole way. As for the jet lag, we're doing okay. We were all up at 5 am this morning but we got a fair amount of sleep.

The next day we hit the ground running. Our guide met us in the hotel at 9 am and we were off. We had a guide and driver for the entire day. The first stop the Chinese Friendship Store. A very popular tourist stop on the way to the Great Wall. Janie and I couldn't resist a photo with Happy Buddha. Rub his belly for good luck, rub his head for cleverness, and rub his ears for a long live - We did all three -- we'll let you know how it goes.

The Great Wall. It is truly amazing how they built this and why. I'm not going to go into the whole history lesson but it was pretty cool.
After the Great Wall we went back to Beijing to a Hutong District. This district houses thousands of people and has been around for centuries. The streets are very narrow and most tourists travel through the streets by rickshaws. Our guide also set up a meeting/tour of a family home in the district. Most of the homes will have all of their family living together. The home we visited has three generations living there. The woman that we visited with was kind and very worried about Janie. Miss Janie took a nap in the car ride and was in a zombie type state. I think we spent 50% of the time trying to convince this woman that Janie was okay. We did all of this through our guide who was doing the interpretation for us. The women gave Janie a coat to wear and put a blanket over her. She also kept coming over to Janie and feeling her forehead. I kept thinking she was going to whip up a Chinese herb potion for Janie to knock some life back into her.

Here we are in the home. You can see the adult coat that the woman gave to Janie to wear.

Then we went to a traditional Chinese tea room. The teas were great and we're given all sorts of reasons why tea is so good for you, which I believe to be true.

We ended the day at the Chinese Acrobat show, truly amazing. We were all entertained. I couldn't take photos during the show but afterwards we had a photo opp with one of the performers.

The Gameplan - leave Tuesday the 4th

So we're all booked now. Here's the lineup.

We leave this Tuesday the 4th (election day - we've already dropped off our ballots). It's a Northwest flight from Portland to Tokyo and then Tokyo to Beijing. I've flown the Portland to Tokyo flight a few times, but never from the back of the plane. We get in about 9:30 at night on the 5th.

We have a few days to sight see and acclimate on the 6th, 7th and 8th. We then fly on the 9th to Nanning in the province of Guangxi (Audrey's province). We have some paperwork that day/night and then the big day arrives.

The 10th is called Gotcha Day and from that day on we're with Audrey. We spend the next few days in her province, either staying in Nanning or Guilin. We then fly to Guangzhou on the 14th. We'll be there until the 19th doing a combo of sightseeing and paperwork/appts. This is where the US Consulate is and where we process out of. We're heading home the first day we're allowed to (the 19th) and with time zone changes we'll land in Portland around 8:00 AM on the 19th.

That's the scoop, we'll try and post more details as they come. Hope you can follow along on our journey.

Audrey's story

As we prepare for the trip we thought we'd take a second and record Audrey's story. She was born on June 27, 2007 in Qinzhou. She was found abandoned at the gate of No. 82 Zhongshan road the next day. After searching for her birth parents she was then adopted into the Social Welfare Institute of Qinzhou City on July 28.

Audrey Min is a special needs baby. Avoiding all the technical terms, she was born with a tiny (couple millimeter) hole in her heart. There's a clinic at Oregon Health and Science University that reviewed all her medical records and the doctors believe that everything will be fine with her heart. We also believe this to be true, but are prepared to help her through whatever she needs. She's scheduled for an appointment with a heart specialist in the first week that we're home.

Because of her special need, after a few months in the orphanage she was moved to a foster care setting (Sept 19). We're incredibly appreciative of this and of the foster family. Our understanding is that everything is coordinated by the orphanage so we don't know at this point if we'll meet the foster parents or not.

We've received a little bit of information about her food and sleep schedule. A lot of congee (similar to rice cereal) and she sleeps with the foster mom, so we have a bit of transition in front of us!

She's a very special baby girl, and we're so excited to meet her soon.

San Juan Islands

We went on a quick vacation the beginning of October to the Suan Juan Islands. What a beautiful area. The Islands are located about 1 1/2 hours northwest of Seattle. There are more then 700 islands and reefs but only 176 of the islands are large enough to be named. To get to the San Juan Islands you must take a ferry, which Janie loved. We had a lot of fun, did some sea kayaking, whale watching, biking, and ate some great seafood.

Sea Kayaking was a favorite for all of us. Janie did great, she ate some kelp and took a nap. What more could you ask for?

An unexpected surprise. There was camel, named Mona, on one of the Islands. She was very friendly and came right up to us. Janie fed her an apple and she stayed around for a photo op.

Watching for whales. We did see a lot of wildlife, pretty spectacular.

Mutton Bustin' (Sheep Riding)

We went to the Oregon State Fair in August and yes, we let our daughter ride a sheep.

Here's the priceless video that will put a smile on my face every time I watch. Enjoy!