Marnina did great on the flight home – mostly sleeping on the seat between us or flirting and putting on a show for anyone who would pay attention to her. When we finally arrived at the Raleigh-Durham airport, we were wondering who would be there to greet us. Matt had the video camera rolling as we rode the escalators down to baggage claim.

Here are a few pictures of those who greeted Marnina on her first evening in the States:

     

We had to wake Marnina up again today in order to get our day started, which was going to be full. After breakfast, Matt made a quick run to 7-11 for more diapers, but the Chinese Pampers here in Guangzhou (red package) are terrible! The green Chinese Pampers are much better, but we couldn’t find them outside of Kunming. We’re glad we brought plenty of Huggies from home for the plane ride. We’ve had plenty of leaks today, so we’re hoping to avoid changing clothes too many times on the plane ride home.

Then we made our first venture out on our own into Guangzhou via taxi. We had a business card in both Chinese and English so that helped guide is to the area we needed to be. After the taxi dropped us off at a huge plaza area, he pointed us to a building that was a bank. We wandered for a bit and found the right shopping center. It was six stories high and we had a hard time navigating our way to the “B” section of the mall. After showing the business card to several local shoppers, we discovered that we had to leave the six-story mall we were in, cross another plaza, and enter the next six-story mall. Our destination was a fresh water pearl store where we picked out the pearls we wanted and they strung them for us. We bought a few things there for amazing prices. This particular store was found by another family in our travel group who has friends who work for Neiman Marcus. This is where they get their fresh water pearls, so it was a reputable establishment.

After returning to the hotel, we ventured out for more shopping on the island. Then Marnina took a nap while Matt went out to buy us some Fanta slurpees at the 7-11 (the machines have been broken every time we asked). We both experienced a brain freeze and remembered those famous straws with spoons at the bottom. What fun!

We had to wake Marnina up from her nap, to change her outfit for the red couch pictures. Can you find Marnina in the group photo? You can see that when she was by herself, she was quite happy. But we sat her next to Hannah, who wanted to play with Marnina and she started to cry. After she started crying, Hannah patted her shoulder as if saying “it’s ok”, but Marnina only wanted Ma Ma and Ba Ba.

After the photo shoot, our combined travel group of Yunnan and Guangxi province families (~30 families) boarded a bus to the U.S. Consulate. We had our visas checked, went through security, verified that we had the right baby, and then took a group oath with 50+ families that what we had filled out on all our paperwork was correct and that we indeed wanted to adopt our babies.

After the oath, we were all congratulated and everyone cheered and celebrated. Of course, cameras were not allowed, but suffice it to say that everyone was overjoyed that our adoption journeys were ending and that our life was about to begin anew! We now have Marnina’s immigration paperwork and as soon as our plane touches ground in Detroit tomorrow, she’s be a U.S. citizen and officially Marnina Yongwen Krist. Hurray!!!!!

So, we’re off to pick up some special order items, finish packing, and put the baby to bed. Our next posting will be from home and we can’t wait!!!

Shiyan handled our visa appointment for our, so we had the day free again today. After breakfast, our travel group got together for a big play date with all of our children. Matt put Marnina on a riding toy, pushed her around the room, and Marnina was all smiles. Thanks to the Porter’s for giving us their riding toy that Chloe outgrew because we already know Marnina will love it! Marnina is also standing up on her own for a few seconds. She’s still very unsteady and doesn’t always put her feet directly underneath her; but she’s some SO far since Gotcha Day, it’s absolutely amazing!

Marnina didn’t sleep very long for her morning nap because our room was being cleaned, so she took an extra long noon-time nap. Unfortunately, Gretchen was ready to shop and saw that time was starting to tick, so we woke her up and put her in the stroller. Marnina was none too happy, but she never ceases to make friends at the shops we go in to.

We ran into a few stores that were no so tourist oriented and found some really unique items. One shop was an art gallery for local artists – some well known, and some just starting out. Part of their proceeds go to the artist, part to the shop, and part to support the Chinese orphanages. There were several items unique to the minority people of China, so needless to say, we spent quite a bit of time in this shop and are excited about our purchases. This shop also has three cats living there. They are very affectionate and Marnina was introduced to Pi Pi, the calico cat. She just stared and had no interest to reach out and touch her. We’re hoping she warms up to our two cats back home. It’s the cats warming up to Marnina that we’re worried about. Thanks to Matt’s mom for watching our beloved kitties!

It’s been great to have these lazy days with now scheduled appointments or meetings. We really get to know Marnina’s schedule and are spending some fun times together as a family.

  

We got some pictures of Marnina’s bath time tonight. She just loves the water, although the sink is quite slippery. You can see from the water all over the counter that she loves to splash. She’s not afraid of anything, it seems. She even took a tumble off our king bed tonight and rolled right onto the hard hotel floor. She’s like Faith Fournier – Tonka Tuff!

Tomorrow we’ll take group photos and go to the consulate for “the oath” (not sure yet what that is). We’ll also have to pack (hoping it all fits without having to buy another suitcase), do some last minute shopping, and pick up some special items we’ve ordered. Although we’ve really enjoyed our time in China (post-Beijing for Gretchen), we are ready to come home!

We found out last night that the Shamian Christ Church is undergoing renovations, so there were no services this morning. It was disappointing, but we did have a good time of fellowship with various people both with our agency and with other agencies throughout the day today. It seems that 8 out of 10 families staying at this hotel have a Chinese baby with them.

Yesterday, we borrowed a stroller from the Home of Love shop. She’s not too crazy about the stroller right now as she’s only been carried her entire life; but it’s so, so hot here, it’s more comfortable for all of us to have the stroller. I’m glad to say that she’s getting used to it and only fusses when hungry or can’t see one of us. Stella, the sales clerk who helped us from Home of Love just fell in love with Marnina. Of course, Marnina is just all smiles with anyone who talks to her; so, Stella just scooped her up and whisked her around the store. She was fine for a majority of the time, but kept us in eye sight.

Today was a different story. The first shop we stopped in was Susan’s Place. Susan and her friends wanted to hold her, and did – but Marnina would have none of it. She cried and screamed until Gretchen held her. Marnina has really been a Daddy’s girl when she’s scared or needs comfort, so it was a great bonding day for Marnina and Gretchen. She’s finally starting to cuddle with Gretchen when she’s sleepy and Gretchen is loving every minute of it! There were several older Chinese women who walked by when Marnina had her head on Gretchen’s shoulder. They spoke a few phrases of English and said, “Pretty baby”, “Beautiful”, “Lucky girl,” and gave us a thumbs up for having a hat on her head. Many people think she’s at least one year old because of her size and are amazed when they find out she’s only nine months!

  

We have landed in squeaky shoe heaven and now are proud owners of 5 pairs (so far). There are so many unique items here for adoptive families that you wouldn’t find anywhere else, so it’s been hard to decide what we want to get. There are a few items that we’ve special ordered, but some of them are gifts, so we’ll keep it a secret until the gifts are given when we’re home. We’re dying to see how they turn out; but let’s just say that the store we placed the order with outsourced some of the items to get them done in time. Folks we know and some we don’t know come up to us because they recognize us from seeing the special items being worked on.   This afternoon we found the Swan Room, which is a room in the hotel sponsored by Fisher Price. Marnina found a few things she really enjoyed and we got the chance to talk with a few new families, too.

  

We’ve seen pictures from others who have traveled to China of a bronze pug statue and we found it today. So, in honor of Odie – here’s Marnina and Matt with the pug:

For dinner, we headed back to Lucy’s Bar & Grill and ate with the Columbus family from our travel group. They have two girls from China and we enjoy spending time with them. Marnina’s nap schedule has been off today by a couple hours, so she was really fussy at dinner, so we had to call it an early night. Matt always has some playtime with Marnina to rile her up just before Gretchen puts her down for bed. Here’s a cute video clip of tonight’s play time:

Since we switched rooms last night, there was some confusion and we didn’t get our breakfast coupons for this morning. We got a hold of our guide, Shiyan, and found out that the breakfast coupons weren’t the only thing we missed. We were supposed to meet at 8:00am to get Marnina’s visa photo taken. Well, it was 8:30 and we were supposed to meet at 9:00am for the medical exam. It all worked out after we split up and we even had time for breakfast – which was awesome!

Marnina fell asleep on the way over to the medical exam clinic. There were three stations we had to visit – physical exam, ENT, and height/weight. We were so busy taking pictures, that we didn’t even find out how much she weighs! (Shiyan has our paperwork, so we’ll find out later.) When the doctor was listening to her heart, Marnina was still half-asleep and we got a picture of her nodding off and falling asleep on the stethoscope. She woke up shortly after that and wanted to play with the tape measure he was using to measure her head and chest.

    

After the exam was over, she was pronounced healthy with one exception – one of the bug bites on her calf has become infected and we got some medicine for it. We walked back to the hotel in the hot, steamy weather and just stayed in for the afternoon.

There are no more scheduled events for us over the next several days. Tomorrow, we’re going to try to attend the Christian Church on the island. Monday night, we’re going out to dinner as a group. Tuesday afternoon we’re taking group pictures and then going to the U.S. Consulate for the oath. And Wednesday morning at 5:30am, we board to bus for the airport and start our long journey home.

Finally, make sure you scroll down to the July 3, 2007 entry: We just added a video clip of Marnina being silly!

Marnina slept very fitfully again last night. It seemed that she was dreaming and would wake up scared (aka “night terrors”). It was hard to watch. She has always recognized us when she saw us and would smile in the mornings and after naps. But when she would wake up through the night, she didn’t recognize us and wouldn’t let us comfort her. It was a hard night.

After some breakfast, she was better, but I think it’s time for prunes (if you know what I mean). Matt stayed with Marnina while Gretchen met with half of the group to go over paperwork for Marnina’s visa. All of the paperwork we’ve done over the past two years is finally starting to come to an end!

We are still waiting for Marnina’s passport, but we were able to fly out of Kunming with her adoption paperwork from the notary’s office. She did really well on her first flight. We were in the last row of the plane but the galley, so we had the flight attendants at our beck and call. Only we never had to call them because they kept coming up to Marnina and would pat her cheeks, hold her hands, and do just about anything to get her to smile. We were served drinks first and then they headed to the front of the plane to start their beverage service. Marnina also was continuing her flirtatious behavior with the passengers around us. Many Chinese folks were leaning of the seats and into the aisles to take her picture. It was quite entertaining!

When we landed in Guangzhou and stepped outside, it felt just like home – hot and humid! You could just feel your clothes melt into your skin. Yuck! We didn’t know how good we had it in Kunming, which is known as the “City of Eternal Spring” for it’s year-round nice temperatures. It took about an hour to get to the hotel and we were really looking forward to getting to our room since it was already 9:00pm. But our room was quite smoky and we had to get re-assigned to a non-smoking floor. Our hotel is the White Swan Hotel is known as the “Baby Hotel” as all U.S. citizens adopting Chinese babies need to go through Guangzhou before heading home. Because of this, there were no cribs available to us, so we have a “soft bed”. It’s kind of like a big foam swimming pool, covered in fabric. We weren’t too sure about it, but Marnina slept great all night. ALL night. Which means, we all slept all night. Yeah!

No pictures from today, but here are a few Marnina pics to hold you over until tomorrow…

  

This morning we went to the Yunnan Nationalities Village “theme park”. Many of China’s 50+ nationalities are displayed here. If you’re not familiar with the YNV, it is probably best to think of it as “the Nations” at EPCOT Center. The first thing you see at the park is a massive tree, which our tour guide told us is made of concrete. The inside of the park was lush, beautiful, and fragrant due to the many trees and flowers. Behind the YNV is a mountain named Sleeping Beauty (shh... don’t tell Disney).

While walking around the park Matt noticed a sign for the Yi nationality (this is the nationality that we were told yesterday that Marnina is ). Our tour guide Susan took Matt briefly to see its exhibit. One interested factoid about the Yi people is instead of being associated with dragons like many other Chinese, they associate with tigers – which works out well for us with Jasper and Cheezit at home. Hopefully this will be a good indication that Marnina will like them when we get back home.

After getting back to the Harbor Plaza hotel, Gretchen, Marnina, & Matt took a trip to Green Lake across the street from the hotel. This is a massive park! Not only were we able to see much of the park, we were able to see a lot of people activities including many musicians and people playing other games in the park such as Mahjongg. After leaving the park, we stopped in a store and bought two bricks of Pu’er tea.

  

At 4:00p.m. today, our tour guide Susan arranged a trip for us to Marnina’s finding spot. Since it is about 90 minutes away from the hotel, we’re renting a car instead of a taxi since it would be cheaper. We'll have more details on our trip to Marnina’s finding spot in a later blog entry. We’ll be leaving tomorrow around 2:00p.m. for the airport and then onto Guangzhou.

At 4:00p.m., we met our local guide, Susan, and headed to Marnina’s finding spot. Because the village she was found in was so far away we ended up renting a car instead of taxing a taxi. Now, when you think of “renting a car” in the States, you think Hertz, Enterprise, etc. and a nice clean new car. Well, renting a car in China is basically taking a taxi only there is no taxi sign on the car. It was also quite a bit different riding the streets of China in a small car instead of a bug bus. We were never scared, but the traffic is certainly interesting! We’ve learned that whether you are driving, bicycling, or walking in China the motto is “decide where you’re going and be determined to get there.” If you want to cross the street, just step out into traffic and cross. The cars will stop for you, eventually (and with honking). Back to the finding spot trip…

We traveled for about 1 hour through city traffic and highways to the far edge of Kunming. Susan knew where the Xizhuang Village was located, but our driver needed to ask a few locals for the specific building we were looking for – the Xizhuang Villager’s Committee office.

  

Susan said that the people of this village are very rich because the government pays for “everything” (we’re not sure what everything means), so that it was hard to believe that someone from this village abandoned Marnina. Once we got to the Committee office, a woman who works there was just leaving for the day. Susan told her that Marnina was abandoned there in September of last year, but she didn’t remember her. But this woman did say that the abandoned babies they see are “from the families who work on the buildings”. There are numerous apartment buildings going up on the edge of town and there are families who come in to town just to work on the buildings. Marnina is assumed to have come from one of them.

    

This woman also shared that these families usually do NOT abandon their “unwanted children” but rather kill them outright. That was really hard to hear, but Susan kept telling that we were very lucky to get this baby. Knowing all of this information, just reminds us about how truly special and precious Marnina is.

We were able to visit the orphanage this morning. There was another family from Canada with us on the tour. But before our tour began, the orphanage director stopped by to make a speech. When she finished speaking, she bowed to us and Shiyan was getting ready to translate the last part of her speech. Shiyan struggled a bit and had to turn away for a moment to compose herself. The moms started to cry and we had no idea what the director had even said. Shiyan finally translated for us: “She shows her respect to you for giving these four children a forever family. And on behalf of the over 600 children in her care, she thanks you.” Only four out of six hundred children here were given a family this week.

          

Next, we stopped by a local tea house where they taught us how to drink tea and we sampled various local teas.

After a brief nap, we headed back out to a local museum/shop that deals in Yunnan Ethnic Minority items – mostly embroidery, antique furniture, and traditional dress. The twisted embroidery was so intricate that you had to use a magnifying glass to actually see the individual strands that were embroidered – absolutely beautiful. There were no pictures allowed inside, unfortunately. There were several staff at the museum who specialized in certain minority nationalities. One of the ladies came up to Marnina and studied her. She told us that because of the shape of her face and the height of her eyes, she was from the Yi minority nationality. She then proceeded to show us various items made by Yi women and walked us through a few customs of their tribe. We purchased one of the Yi embroidery pieces on silk that has lots of children playing games. It was one of Gretchen’s favorites when we entered the museum and to find out it was made by a Yi woman sealed the deal for us. We plan to hang it over Marnina’s crib.

  

We arrived at the Yunnan Ethnic Minority dinner theater and were given the local dish of “Across the Bridge Noodles”. Visit this website for a description of the dish and pictures. Marnina was quite fussy during dinner, so Gretchen spent most of the meal feeding her congee (watery rice) and Cheerios. The show was lively and colorful and untranslated, but we enjoyed it just the same. One of the guys from our group was brought up on stage, and he had no clue what they wanted him to do. Our guide said that he had to pick which of the people on stage that were covered up with a sheet was the bride. We had fun with that. Here are a few photos of the show:

        

We finally had a day where we just go about life at a relaxed pace. It was a great day to get to spend quality time with Marnina and to get to know her schedule. When we feed her we say “Mmmm” and she echos back. Now, when she’s cries and is hungry, she has an “Mmmmm” sound in between her cries. At least, that is what we think it means right now :). Since we brought a variety of sizes in baby clothes, only some of the things we brought fit her because she’s so long for her age. So, we’re using onesies as T-shirts until we get home.

  

For lunch, we ordered the Harbor Plaza beef burger with fries from room service. We were prepared that the beef burger would not be what you would normally expect, and it wasn’t. We’re not sure what was in the burger, but we won’t ask because it was pretty good and a bit spicy.

We ventured out to Wal-Mart this afternoon. It was three stories, not air-conditioned, packed with people, and extremely confusing! The store looks like it was built into surrounding buildings, so the layout is quite strange. We finally found what we needed and headed home, soaked in sweat. After showers and naps, we ordered room service again and called it a night. It was so wonderful to have free day and it makes us look forward to coming home even more!

  

By the way, Marnina saw her first television show and movie today. Early in the morning, Marnina watched an episode of Cheers that was on. Later in the day, she was watching Star Wars: Episode II with Baba. She is definitely taking after him: His first movie (in a theater) was Star Wars: Episode IV, though he was a few years older then than Marnina is now.

Finally today was just not about us learning about Marnina, but her learning about us... more specifically what makes us laugh. Not only was Marnina able to sit up on her own today, she was able to make herself fall down on purpose - which made Gretchen and Matt laugh, which in turn made Marnina laugh. Just watch below...

We are so blessed with a good baby!! Marnina slept through the entire night with only a whimper here and there as she rolled over. We’re glad to say that the beds here at the Harbor Plaza are heaven compared to the slabs of a mattress in Beijing!

The day started early with the hotel breakfast buffet. Matt really likes the Yunnan style fried noodles, Gretchen loves their house fried rice, and Marnina will eat anything you put in her mouth (this girl can put away some food!). After breakfast, we headed back to the Gotcha Day spot for more paperwork. Yesterday, we had signed a temporary custody agreement and today’s paperwork was to finalize the adoption. After taking an informal oath with a Yunnan adoption official that we want to adopt Guan, Yong Wen and a red footprint, Marnina officially became our daughter in the eyes of China!! Yeah!!! The Kunming orphanage staff gave Marnina a necklace with some Chinese characters on it and 3 silver bells dangling. We don’t know what it means yet, but it’s beautiful.

After stopping back by the hotel for lunch ( we had Chinese takeout from the Blue Bird restaraunt across the street from our hotel - 2 Hawaiian style pizzas - go figure ), we headed back out to get the paperwork rolling for Marnina’s passport. We left a few folks on the bus and our guide said we’d be right back. The photo line moved quickly and we thought we were done, but Shiyan said it was time to go upstairs. At the top of the stairs, we could see a large waiting room and each chair was occupied. It reminded us of getting our fingerprints done in Charlotte two years ago. The entire adoption process can be summed up with one word “wait”. So we waited. In Chinese, “be right back” translates to “we’ll be back in an hour or two”.

  

For dinner we tried the buffet at the hotel restaurant. The theme was seafood, so you can image that Gretchen wasn’t too pleased, but she was busy feeding Marnina anyway. Marnina is really starting to improve on some of her motor skills. We knew they would improve a lot before we came home, but we weren’t expecting such big changes. She’s starting to stand on our lap for a few seconds, sit up by herself for a full minute, and is giggling and blowing raspberries! She is such a happy baby!

We know we left our some details of our trip to China, but we figure nobody would mind if we jumped ahead to Gotcha Day

We arrived in Kunming this morning at 10:30a.m. After checking into the hotel, Matt went to exchange money for tomorrow's adoption registration and notarization fees. At 3:00p.m., we left the hotel to meet our babies at 3:30p.m. After making a few u-turns, we made it to the gotcha day site. The babies were running about 10 minutes late, but all fell silent when the minivan of babies arrived. One by one, babies were entering our waiting room. Matt suddently noticed one of them holding the soft rattle we mailed to Marnina back in May. Then, Gretchen recognized the outfit that same baby was wearing as one from our care package ... this had to be Marnina. Everyone was trying to figure out which baby was theirs when, Shiyan called out "Krist". Matt gave Gretchen a shove and she scooped up Marnina and it was all a blur after that. Thankfully, Matt had the video camera running, so we can recoup some of the details.

We're happy to say Marnina was in very good spirits when we met. She immediately took to Matt (after he got a chance to hold her), smiling at him much and finally falling asleep on him while Gretchen filled out paperwork. You may notice in her picture, the red spot on her nose. We were told it is an infection and possibly a boil, which can be treated with medication. She is also a little congested in the chest and teething.

Fortunately, we also received back the disposable camera we sent back in May and look forward to what pictures await us on it. We also learned that she was in foster care for a majority of her life, only returning to the orphanage a day or two ago.

Marnina surprised us today in many ways. She is a lot bigger than we expected ( for folks local to us, she is about the size of Chloe Porter! ), heavy and LONG! This 9-month-old needs the feet cut off her 12M footed PJ's. She is also drinking whole milk (which we hope to change to formula for a while for better nutrition).

Matt will have more pictures up soon in Photos, but here are some appetizers from today...

We woke up this morning and learned about the terrorist attack at the Glasgow International Airport – wondering what effect this would have on our in country travel to Kunming. As our group gathered to load the bus, nobody we talked to knew about the attack. When we got to Beijing International Airport, it was business as usual. It did not appear as if there was any heightened security as a result of the attack in Glasgow.

When we boarded the plane, we sat near other families traveling to Kunming, but a stewardess allowed Gretchen and Matt to move to the back of the plane for more room. When we arrived in Kunming about three hours later, we were greeted to not only a beautiful city with much greenery and flowers along the roadways, but blue skies and sunshine ( the sky was pretty much gray and smoggy the entire time in Beijing). We also immediately noticed the lower temperature and humidity in Kunming.

Our travel group will be staying at the Harbour Plaza hotel while in Kunming. The building has an interesting architecture to it and offers a great view of the city and the mountains which cradle it all around. The rooms here come with free high-speed internet ( first 3 ½ hours ) and more English speaking cable channels. 

No time to rest in Kunming: We have Gotcha Day within hours of our arrival! More details about Gotcha Day to come!

Gretchen is doing much better today. She has a lot more energy and is walking around more. She could have went on today’s touring (Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Hutong rickshaw tour) but since tomorrow is Gotcha Day and she is still recovering, Gretchen stayed behind.

Today’s first stop was Tiananmen Square. Other than news coverage of student protests of 1989, this was Matt’s first glimpse at the square. Matt’s memory of the news coverage did not do the Square justice in realizing how big it is (it can hold 90 football fields). Inside the square are several statues as well as a massive monument dedicated to those who died in military service.

Once our tour group finished visiting TS, we went through the Tiananmen Gate and proceeded into the Forbidden City. Looking out from the first building inside the Forbidden City were actors who portrayed a Chinese emperor ( clothed in yellow ) along with his wife and concubines – all who waved at those entering the Imperial Palace. Matt was given a cool electronic guide that showed where he was located inside the palace, places he visited previously on his self-guided tour, as well as providing audio information at key spots in the palace. This was the first time Matt was also apart from the rest of the group, which was kinda cool being out on his own in a foreign city, knowing very little of the language.

During the self-guided tour, it began to rain and by the time Matt reached the end of the tour, it was really pouring. It was funny when our soaked tour group was almost at our bus, people on the street were trying to sell us umbrellas to keep out of the diminishing rain – a little too late for a sale. The final stop on today’s touring was a rickshaw tour through an old part of Beijing called Hutong. Being soaked from the rain, Matt opted to take a taxi with another couple back to the hotel.

Just a quick update on Gretchen. She is getting better, but still under the weather. She stayed behind at the hotel while Matt went on to the Cloisonne factory and the Great Wall ( though these two things Gretchen was really looking forward to visiting ).

We had some setbacks early in our tour this morning. Our bus had two technical issues on the way to the factory / Wall, which set us back over an hour. We were scheduled to do the Great Wall first, but since we were running behind, our guide opted to do the Cloisoinne factory first. Along the way, we got to see a lot of Beijing, including many of the buildings that will be used in the 2008 Summer Olympics. They went by so fast and I did not get an opportunity to take a photo ( see photos for some Olympic village photos I took on the way back to the hotel. One thing I noticed in Beijing is when it comes to buildings, Beijing appears to do things in bulk: If you see one building, be prepared to see about four more just like it immediately.

Matt found the Cloisonne factory tour interesting ( before the tour, I did not know what Cloisonne even was ). Photos can be found on the photos page. After the factory tour, we stopped at a restaurant that was attached to a jade outlet. One picture I have to show here... I saw this outside the ladies restroom by the restaurant - though it was a little awkward taking a photo so close to the ladies restroom entrance, but what Carolina Panther fan would not want this?

Going to the Great Wall was very cool. Months preparing on the treadmill paid off, though walking the paths and stairs were one thing, doing it in high altitude was another. It was so amazing to see how the Great Wall went on and one and on. Though located at a national park, there were many vendors around. Our tour guide said we would be able to barter with them for merchandise. Got a XXXL t-shirt ( fits like a XL ) for 40 Yuan ( down from 50 ). Other than a drink, that was all I bought - and no it does not say "I went to the Great Wall and all I got was a t-shirt ( and drink ).

When we got back to the bus, our tour guide shared the following quote from Chairman Mao - "He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man.". Well, according to Mao, Matt is a true man as of today!

As some of you know, Matt got sick before we boarded the plane in Raleigh, but was finally feeling better when we got to Tokyo. We're pretty sure it was something that Matt ate before we left. That being the case, we knew Gretchen would be getting sick sometime later. So in Tokyo, Gretchen started not feeling well, but didn't end up being sick until Thursday morning at the hotel in Beijing.

Our itinerary was light today. Matt went to the grocery store and we both decided to skip the acrobatic show today. Tomorrow morning is the Great Wall and Gretchen will more than likely stay at the hotel. Please pray that she recovers from this illness soon, so that both parents will be healthy when we get Marnina on Sunday.