Tomorrow is the day we meet Gen!

We leave for Lanzhou at 5:15 in the morning to go to the airport.  Yep, you read right...  5:15... AM.

Our guide has the hotel preparing a breakfast box to go for us.  So nice of her to do that.   We got a little update on Gen while we were here in Beijing.  Our last update was 6 months ago and she was only walking assisted.  Now she is walking running and jumping!   She is also saying some words too, which is wonderful news!  Thank you everyone who has been praying for us.   I have felt so at peace while here and I'm praying I feel as peaceful tomorrow.  I'm sure Gen will be stressed during the handover so I want to be reassuring for her.  Will post pics as soon as we possibly can after getting Gen.  So excited!!  

Great Wall

 

Great Wall of China

 

Great Wall of China

Hope these pics all post okay.  Had to resend them a couple times from Yahoo mail because they bounced back due to being over the file size limit.  Sorry if I sent duplicates by mistake!

Great Wall of China

More pics

We're Here!!

Posting this from Yahoo (Blogger is blocked in China) so I hope it comes out okay.   We arrived in Beijing safely Thursday night.  It was a long squishy plane ride but very smooth.   We got caught up in rush hour traffic on the way to the hotel, so it took much longer to get there, and the whole ride was a lot of quick stops and goes with lots of honking.  When we finally arrived at the hotel and I stood still, it felt like my body was still moving!   We were so tired from the trip we just ate a snack and went right to bed. 

Friday morning we had a tour guide take us see the Great Wall of China.  Wow!  Very amazing.  Climbing it however, was no small feat.  The steps are very steep, and the steps are not a uniform height.  So one step might be 2 inches high, while the next might be 10!  Needless to say, our legs are a little sore, and we only climbed to the first tower.  Yes, very out of shape, ha ha. 

I'll write more later but we are off to have breakfast and then have our orientation meeting with our travel group.  Here's some pics of our flight (just for you, kids!)  and some of the Great Wall.  The first few flight pics are from Portland to Chicago and the last few are from Chicago to China.  The very last one is when we landed at the Beijing airport.  I may have to post this in a few batches so they'll post separately.