Video

This was taken in our hotel room within probably 2 hours of getting Xiafeng. I think it shows her personality pretty well.

Shopping

After a while in the room we took her shopping because she only has the clothes on her back. She did come with a little back pack with a few things in it, including some pictures! We really didn't think we would get any.

Anyway, we walked to Wal-Mart which is only a block away, and she was holding our hands and we were swinging her. She loved to jump over the breaks in the cement.

In the store, she didn't have any trouble telling us what she liked and what she didn't like. I took a ton of video, which I'll try go get uploaded if I can. It's kind of big and my Internet connection here is slow, so we'll see what we can do.

After we shopped, we ate and got ice cream.

When we got back, she was pretty tired-she missed her nap today and she got really sad again, crying for her little brother and mom. It took her over an hour to settle down. Our guide, Kathy, has been really awesome, and she came in and helped her settle down. She wanted to go home and is frustrated because she can't talk to us and everything is new and different to her. She also is very attached to her foster family because she has lived with them a long time. It will take her a while to get used to us, but we love her SO MUCH!!! She is a PERFECT fit for our family!

Hotel room

By the time we got back into our hotel room, she had totally relaxed and let her true colors come out. We quickly found out just how well she fits into our family; she loves to joke and tease. She is very smart and funny. Her brothers will love her to death.

She found Brooke's umbrella in the suit case and came out of the room posing and laugh

ing.

Picking Xiafeng up

When they brought Xiafeng into us she was quite scared and just stood there. She quickly started crying and kept crying for about 30 mintes. It was hard to try and comfort her without being able to talk to her.

July 11, 2009

wow! I am in china! it's crazy, I still can't believe it. It is a totally different world over here. Different food, smells and oh my gosh the humidity is bad. it's been overcast and a little rainy so we haven't had the full blow of the humidity and heat yet. it's not going to be very pleasant when we do :/ This morning we had breakfast at our hotel-which by the way is really nice. It actually has stores, a restaurant, and this theatre thing in the bottom. Anyways, we tried some interesting food at breakfast. There was a kiwi type looking thing but didnt have any taste, go figure that one out? There was also this wierd little berry looking thing but it ended up being a hard outside and when you peeled in off there was a soft onion looking thing with a pit. It tasted a little like a pear but way better. It was very interesting. We went and visited a ton of stuff today. We went to this huge plaza that is in front of the Forbidden City, and there were seriously thousands of people. There were a lot of people selling cool stuff like umbrellas and fans so we got some cool stuff like that for cheap. oh ya, and some lady came up to me and wanted a picture with me, it was random but I felt special :) ha ha Then we went into the Forbidden City and oh my gosh it is huge! It has like five outer layers of buildings and in the middle is where the emporer and most important people would be. but in each layer it's like a whole plaza and just filled with nothing but touring people. The buildings are what seperate each layer, but it seriously took us probably three hours to walk through. At the end of the Forbidden City, there is a big garden called the Emperial Garden and it has a bunch of cool trees and way cool flowers, carp in little pools, really cool rocks and buildings. It was a really cool place to go visit but there were tons of people there! After the garden we went to the silk factory, It was really interesting. I didn't realize that silk came from the cacoons of the silk worm. It's a very interesting process. Those cacoons can really stretch and they are really strong too. They had a bunch of dresses, ties, shirts, etc. They are so pretty! We got my sister a cute little red dress and my mom and i white shirts to go through the temple with :) we are excited! We want to find my sister a white one too and then we could be matchy when we go to the temple. After we ate, we went to the great wall of china! It was so crazy! I always imagined it being a flat wall and and you could just walk acrossed it with no problem, but the whole thing is steep steep stairs! We walked up as far as they would let us go but they made us stop because there was lightning. I counted the steps on the way up and I counted around 1100! and that was only on the way up, going down was almost just as bad. The steps are so uneven and so far apart. When you walk up them your knees go up almost to your hips. It was a really long and hard climb. My calfs and hamstrings were burning like crazy! I thought I would'nt get much excercise being over here but wow, that can count for at least a couple days worth! :) It was worth the climb though. When we finally got back to our hotel almost two hours later, we went and ate at a nearby McDonalds :) It was actually good though. It was nice to have familiar food. In the same building they had a market and downstairs a bunch of shops. It's kind of funny because people will always try to sell you things and you can totally bargain with them. If they ask you to pay 50 for it, you can usually get it down to at least 30 if not like 25. It's really funny but it totally works :) anyways, I better go cause we have to meet our group at 5:30 to get on our plane to Nanning where my sister is :) but we won't get her until the next day :( I don't know if I can wait that long but I guess I will survive.

Brooke

well we made it! :) Our plane ride was crazy. It was a 777 and it had five seats in the middle and two on each side. I don't even know how long it was but it was a freakin long plane. The flight was even longer though :/ let me tell you, if you want to be more bored and drove insane, fly for 12 hours. It's a killer. truthfully, even though we had movie screens on the back of each seat it was soooo long! ugh! When we flew into Bejing, they had a bunch of nurse people come on the plane and check all our temperatures. If anyone had a fever they had to check them cause if they were suspicious they would quarantine them for a week. My mom almost got quarantined :/ luckily she didn't. The airport was huge and we had to ride a train to get to the main place to get our luggage. once we got our luggage we went to the enterance and there were tons of people! A person from our adoption agency had a sign so we knew who to go with but there were so many people with signs. We did find our agency person and we got on a bus to take us to our hotel. Let me tell you, if you think I am a bad driver...you are definitely wrong. People here are all over the place. They pretty much just go where they want to and honk their horns to warn people. There are tons of people on bikes that I worry will run into the cars or the cars will run into them...which ever way that works.Once a car got really close to hitting our bus-on my side-I honestly thought I was going to die. Once we got to our hotel we had a little trouble. The front desk lost our passports and we were stressing out. We finally located them and then we had to try and figure out the money exchange. we figured out that 7 RMB (china money) is equal to a US dollar. It took us forever to figure that out. When we got all settled in our room, we decided to venture :/ just a little scary. I was scared for my life, I honestly thought someone was going to hit me with their car...or their bike. Either way it wouldn't be good. Anyways, we walked around and found a mall. We found the food court and that was interesting ordering. considering we had no idea what we were ordering. ha ha we tried a fancy restaurant first but decided to take it easy the first time. I am happy to say that Pepsi is the same in China as it is in the US- just plain good! :) That made me really happy! I am also glad that my dad taught me how to use chopsticks cause that's pretty much all they use here. I would be getting more attention that we already are if I had to eat my food by spearing it with my chopsticks :) ha ha. We get a lot of wierd looks walking around and my mom even made a friend here at the hotel :) I am not sure what his name is but his excuse for talking to her was "he needed to practice his English" but I think it was her red hair :) apparently he knows four different languages though and he taught them to himself. He was pretty proud of that but he is a funny guy. A funny thing about being here is that they are all small people. This "friend" of my mom's is shorter than me. I am a short person, so that is telling you something. I guess that could be why we attract attention too...Anyways, tomorrow we head out early to visit the silk factory, something else, and the great wall of china :) I am pretty dang excited! I just wish we were picking up my sister tomorrow :( I don't know if i can wait three more days...but I guess I have waited my whole life so far so I should live and be able to endure a couple days :)

Map of China

We will fly into Beijing for a few days, visit the Great Wall of China, do a cutrual tour and then fly to Nanning (about 1500 miles) to pick up Xiafeng. We will be there about a week and then go to Guangzhou, for about another week, and then fly to Hong Kong to spend our last day.