The Cretellas 3: Beijing, Nora Lin Day and More!

10/17/13-10/18/13

Waiting in Newark from Cleveland for our Beijing leg!

We landed in Beijing on 10/17, caught a cab and headed to our hotel The Novotel, where we crashed. The hotel was okay, extremely smokey. Everywhere here in China is smokey! We ate breakfast (western food), which was good and headed to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City!!! It was great. Beijing is extremely crowded like NYC, but the people are pushy and you fear for your life crossing the street because of the traffic.

Cool Buddhist Monks

Chairman Mao's tomb. Haha

10/19/13

Great Wall pictures! Our driver "Mr. Li" was very nice, but spoke zero English. He walked very fast. Chinese people move quickly from one thing to another.

The view was amazing. It took 1.5 hours to get there, the countryside allowed us to see beautiful scenery. We then went to the Summer Palace. A relaxing place for the Emperor in the 1600's, not so relaxing nowadays. It was so crowded, we couldn't even move. It is located in north Beijing and is apparently a hot spot. We did get stared at a lot too. But, when your husband wears shorts, a Girard Indians tee shirt and an OSU hat, what should we expect ;)

At the Summer Palace.

Mark paying Mr. Li after he took us to the horribly crowded train station. After an 11 hour overnight, loud train, we arrived in Nanchang, China, Nora's city.

10/20/13

We met our Nanchang guide Fiona at her train station and we drove to our hotel, The Galactic Peace. It's a great hotel with a good breakfast buffet. We had a couple of hours to kill before Nora arrived. She was brought to the hotel by some orphanage staff members, even though she was with a foster family. A Spanish family was meeting their son then as well. We then came down to the lobby and here is what we saw, a scared little girl, I recognized her right away. She came to us, but didn't like it.

We took her up to the hotel room pretty quickly because there was a wedding reception in the hotel that day, and it was noisy. When we got to the room, she cried for a few hours and tried to leave. It was heartbreaking. She passed out and ended up sleeping until 6:00 the next morning. When she woke up, she was crying and scared, but she did warm up to us :)

10/21/13

Today, we had to cross the street to the civil affairs office to sign papers. On our way there, a Chinese woman stopped to talk to Nora. I looked at Mark, confused. She pulled out a photo album, and I saw our dog Teddy. I realized that it was the photo album we sent to Nora. It was her foster mom! She waited outside the hotel, it is where all adoptive parents stay, so she knew we were there. She had a hard boiled egg for her because she knew that Nora would be upset. She happily ate it. We stayed there for only a couple of minutes because our guide said that technically adoptive parents are not allowed to meet the foster parents. So, we were on our way to sign the official adoption paperwork. We are forever grateful to this woman. She truly loves her...