China - Part 2 - Getting There

Our flight out of LAX left at 12:40 am on Friday, January 9th. "The Plan" (as if) was to try and get Jake to nap during the drive to the airport. Nope. The check in process took about forever (ok, maybe just an hour) but Jake survived and was thus rewarded.


We finally boarded, took off and Jake was finally able to get to sleep around 2:00 am. Poor guy! Erik took this picture and I thought it was just going to be a shot of Jake so I was trying to keep my arm out of it. Maybe Erik thought I was trying to be glamorous, I don't know. Jake slept the first 6 hours and then stayed awake for the next 7.


We landed in Beijing, which is a beautiful airport, and spent another hour and a half going through customs, picking up luggage, checking in again and finding our next gate. According to the airplane food, snack timing and sleep schedule, Jake was ready for dessert. Amazingly, TCBY was open so we sat in a dark airport and had frozen yogurt at 6 am and entertained the many staring Chinese as we awaited the next flight.

We landed in a perpetually foggy town, and Jake asked why the city was on fire. I guess that's what fog looks like to a 4 year old who has never seen fog or dealt with cigarette smoke. We had 3 hours to burn so we sat in a semi-creepy tea house with all our luggage and ordered what we thought would be tea. This is apparently what we ordered.


Here we are getting on the final flight, Jake still doing well at this point. This is one of those shots where you think "Does my hair really look like that from the back?"


We made the rookie mistake of succumbing to exhaustion on the final flight, only an hour long, which led to a very rude awakening upon landing. Local time was 4:30 pm on Saturday, January 10th and I carried a sleeping Jake off of the plane. Mark was a welcome sight and helped load baggage into taxis. Poor Jake was less than thrilled but enjoyed the taxi ride eventually. We checked into the hotel and were treated to a home-style meal at a western cafe of french fries, fresh fruit, grilled cheese sandwiches, milkshakes, pizza and quesadillas!

China Debrief - Part 1

Tomorrow night, we will have been back home for a full week. Wow. It's funny because pretty much any other time, someone could ask me to sum up the last 2 weeks and it would take about a minute. I think our 2 weeks in China would take 2 months to recap. This week I couldn't manage to talk intelligibly about the trip but slowly we are in a sense decompressing and hopefully sounding less shell shocked.

We have heard about and seen pictures of the kids in the program for about 4 years now and so it was wonderful to see them in person, talk to them and hug them. They are not the same little children from pictures but have grown and matured. Their personalities and lives are no longer 2 sentence summaries but full and 3 dimensional. I can't describe how wonderful the experience of meeting them was.

These children live up in the mountains and are part of an ethnic minority group that is very much discriminated against. They have been pushed to the poorest farming land and struggle to grow enough to feed their families. Families are broken, fathers and mothers are missing, siblings have been lost, abuse in all forms is rampant and divine forgiveness is unknown. Through a sponsorship program, the children in the program (69 total but only 23 at this winter program) are able to attend school, sleep in a warmer bed, be fed 2 or 3 meals per day and have an opportunity to reach above subsistence farming.

We visited the school before the children arrived and I was immediately in shock. It is a privilege for them to be in school. It is expensive and puts a lot of strain on the family and pressure on the child. If they don't make grades, they don't fail and repeat, they leave. At 5 or 6 years a child begins school, which often means living in a dorm and completing 8, 9, or 10 hours of school each day. Jake would leave next year, live in a dorm, sleep on a bed like the one below and sit in class for at least 8 hours a day.

The girls' dorm building entrance. Everything is open-air and without heat or air conditioning.

This is a hallway in the girls' dorm.

One of the girls' rooms, 8 to a room. No closet, no dresser.And the bed...

The classrooms are not heated or cooled, but the accomodations are far better than their mud hut high in the mountains.

When our Nosu students arrived, it was a joyous reunion for them with Mark and Yvette but we quickly noticed their shivering and chilblains on fingers. The lucky ones had thin jackets and the unlucky had no jacket and some no socks. Emails were sent back to the US asking for sponsors to buy the children socks, hats, gloves and thermals. Here is a quick video just after they received their gifts.

Green Eggs and No Ham

It is so good to be home. The trip was fantastic, the only thing that would have made it complete would be to have had Libby and Danny with us. I say complete, not better, because really, keeping up with all 3 probably would have been much more work (aka nightmare). We did miss them intensely and hope they can go next year when they are a little older.

The reunion was lots of fun though. Dan and Libby came out of the door shrieking and Jake dashed straight to Dan for a big hug. One of Danny's major concerns was going to visit Grandma Lou and pick up our rabbit. Grandma Lou's house is one of his favorite places on Planet Earth. We headed over last night and he completed his routine: hunt for candy, visit the chickens, kiss each baby bunny, search for candy, beg for more food, eat all the fruit in the house, search for candy, and then leave with bags of candy. Last night we were also treated to a half dozen fresh eggs. Dan helped me crack and scramble them this morning and I have to say, they were a little crunchy.

Let's face it, it will probably be weeks before I clean up and present all my favorite pictures and stories from China. The first 1,000 pictures are loaded on our laptop so I'll have to get those transferred before I can do anything with them. But certain individuals, who shall remain nameless, have been "gently prompting" me to at least get a few up. Here are a few that were still on the memory card. I plan on having full entries on food, toilets, the kids in the program, Jacob mishaps, culture clashes, etc. so this will take time people!

Not to give away some of the food blog but you can't really talk about China without mentioning tea. This particular glass irked me. I apparently ordered this in the Chengdu airport, looks a little different than I was imagining at the time. Anyway, it wasn't bad but if I had to give it an English name it would be "asparagus Spinach Tea."I love all the shots of Jake in the middle of a flock of new friends. The kids were so kind and patient with Jake and it was a blessing to see them interacting. Jake was highly upset at not being able to reach the pedals on the unicycle so he borrowed this scooter from a set of twin boys who lived nearby. The boys were really sweet to bring out the scooter every day knowing Jake was going to monopolize it.Here is Jake at the Beijing airport riding the train out. He was bummed out about leaving China but at least a little excited to be on a train.

I'm Coming Home!

It has been an AMAZING trip but we are ready to be home with Dan and Libby! We left Xichang this morning and landed safely in Chengdu. Now we are waiting out our 5 hour layover in an internet cafe that boasted of drinks, snacks and free internet. So far we paid for internet, have been handed some interesting "drinks" and no snacks to be seen. Erik took the backpack and went to KFC, yes Kentucky Fried Chicken, and will smuggle in the snacks.

Can't wait to see and talk to all of you! Can't wait to have dairy again! I'm a little tired of rice porridge with peas, boiled egg and bao tze for breakfast. More details and pictures later. Love you all!

And We're Off!

Jacob is running around our house shouting for joy "This day! I'm going to China this day! I'm ready to go to China!" There is no quelling his excitement yet he has no accurate idea of what he's in for.

Danny and Libby will soon be prayed over and put to bed. The B Family will be living with them in our house. They have been so gracious to volunteer for duty. Erik asked me to pray about going on a trip with him and I was indeed skeptical that we would ever be able to find someone to watch even some of the children. I prayed because I said I would but with a bit of a hard heart. God heard the prayer anyway and Mrs. B approached me at church to say God had laid on her heart that I needed to go on a trip with Erik. I was thus humbled!

Now we will be leaving in less than an hour to head to the airport and off to China! Please pray for the B family as well as Danny and Libby. Please pray for the children in China that we will have the privilege of visiting and teaching. Please pray for our friends who have already arrived (they called a few hours ago and were doing well). They are traveling with a 4 month old and a 4 year old. We love you!

A Public Service Announcement

Let me preface by saying, I am not a collector. I don't have a rack of spoons from random tourist destinations, there are no shelves of Precious Moments and certainly no walls of decorative plates in my house, however I have 2 Willow Tree figurines that were received as gifts.

I placed said figurines on the mantle and appreciated them because I like the people that gifted them and they appeared to be carved from wood, which is at least a little cool. And then my world came crashing down. An individual of small stature was also intrigued by the statuettes and, through some unfortunate mishap which may or may not have involved a John Deere tractor, one little angel-thing was sadly decapitated and the other lost her wings.

Even through this senseless tragedy, I could have coped. But, if your stomach can tolerate it, look closely at the neck region... Does that look like wood grain to you? I submit that it is not! It is plastic my friends! Plastic! We have been hoodwinked and should stand for it no longer. I'll be organizing a 5K to promote awareness so start training.

For integrity sake I must admit to one more "collection," which was also a gift. My dad and step-mother collect these little pixie things that all have "JAPAN" painted on the bottom. I don't really understand that part but it is really important that it say "JAPAN" on the bottom I think. Since there were 3 pixies in the set and we have 3 children I decided they must be representative and set to naming them.

Jacob (whose head is currently attached with Super Glue due to an unfortunate mishap)

Daniel (whose right arm is Super Glued and is missing his left foot due to an unfortunate mishap) Libby (current reigning champ with no Super Glue)

Mighty Warrior

Erik, the Mighty Warrior and his first kill with a bow and arrow. Apparently I need to make room in the freezer... I just received the picture, which was taken with someone's cell phone. The left this morning for 2 days of hunting and he killed his pig before 10 am on the first day. He might be bored for the rest of this trip. We have named the pig "Ralphina" and if you don't get it, go read Lord of the Flies (Piggy was too obvious.)