Highlights from Tuesday, March 22 - On to Beijing!

Since it is already Tuesday night here, even though I just finished Monday's post, I'll go ahead and run through today's stuff too.  Today should be easier - no sightseeing, just more travel.  We started the day slowly with the whole morning to ourselves.  We didn't meet our guide until noon, so we had the morning to get breakfast in the hotel, get our things packed up, and try to work on the blog.  A whole morning and still we didn't get yesterday's post done!

When we finally met our guide (we had a fill-in for Sophia today) his main job was to get us someplace to get lunch and then get us to the airport.  So that was basically what we did.  Our lunch of choice today was McDonald's.  Yes, that's right - my girls back home won't even believe that.  We haven't had any McDonald's in a long time, but I have to say it tasted awfully good to eat some good old American corn-fed beef.  After yesterday's hot pot we weren't feeling adventurous today at all.  After McDonald's we headed to the airport.

A random photo I wanted to post today is the view outside of our hotel window in Xi'an.  There is a school yard of some sort surrounded by what look like a lot of very impoverished apartments.  Really quite a sobering view to look at each day. 

Another humorous thing from today was the bathroom visit in the airport.  I was blessed with my first encounter with a squatty potty.  What is a squatty potty?  Here let me show you...

First of all, you start with this in the bathroom.  Just a big roll of toilet paper right?  Well, yes, but it's not in the stall with the toilet, it's on the wall as you enter the bathroom instead.  Better guess good at how much you need!

So then instead of this (which are still around sometimes).....

......you get this.  A flushable hole in the ground - aka...squatty potty.  Unspeakably gross.  Dirty, smelly, yuck.

Always an adventure here!


So after that awesome encounter, we flew to Beijing, arrived safely, met our next guide, and got to our hotel.  I almost forgot the part about dinner - we went to Pizza Hut, or at least what they call Pizza Hut.  It has a whole lot of other stuff that we certainly would never see in our pizza huts.  The normal pepperoni and mushroom pizza that we ordered was actually quite authentic though and for that we were thankful.  But we had a good laugh about the fried rice, salmon pizza, and octopus on the menu!

Here are the 3 things I am thankful for after today...


1.  that there are NO squatty pottys in America


2.  for Starbucks-to-go instant coffee packets - good coffee in our room!


3.  for the great comments and emails in response to our blog.  It's so encouraging to hear from all of you back home since we feel quite isolated here in this big country.  And how neat to get emails from other adoptive families that we don't even know who email to say they are praying for us.

4.  And this is too funny not to include....We are thankful that our US pizza huts don't serve something called "Teriyaki Octopus with Quail Eggs"