Day 6: July 31, 2014

Today was a very long and HOT day!  It was our last day in Jinan which is bitter sweet.  It is our daughter’s home town and probably the last time she will be here, but also means that we are getting that much closer to taking her to her forever home in Knoxville.  Our guide, John, took us to an area of natural springs that had a park build around them.  Originally the springs made up a mote around the city walls, but when the Communist party “liberated” them (as John says) they turned it into a park and monument where the exact spot where the Communist solders penetrated the city of Jinan.  It was really beautiful and was filled with lots of people enjoying their day.  We did a ton of people watching and photographing as we walked around, but I’m pretty sure we were more of an attraction than the springs to the locals.   We were stopped so many times to have our photos taken with the people.  Most people asked for photos with the 10-12 year old girls in our group or with Jeff because he carries the big hiking backpack baby carrier on his back.  Apparently the Chinese people don’t carry their babies on them, they only use strollers so we were very funny looking to them.  All three families in our group (us included) only brought baby carriers and they are working great and we get to be followed by the Chinese holding up their cameras or camera phones.  I started taking photos of them taking photos of us…we’ve decided to just roll with is and laugh about it.   If that happen in the States, someone might get punched..hehe.  After visiting the parks with springs our guide took us to the train station.  He helped us get through the first security check point and helped us find our “gate”.  We then said our goodbyes to him and hoped we could make it on our own to the next stop Beijing.   John was a wonderful guide that really seemed to care about the children that we were there to adopt. 

            So we waited at the train station for about an hour and then had a 2 hour train ride before making it to Beijing.  The next trick was to find our new guide in huge crowd.  Did I mention that we had no idea who our guide was….hehe..our last guide John told us to ask to borrow someone’s phone and call the main guide, Tom.  We were too chicken to try to ask to borrow someone’s phone since most of the people would have no idea what were saying so we just followed the crowd.  Thankfully we found a lady in a bright pink shirt holding a sign that said “Bethany”.  From there she simply told us to follow her……..a long long walk later in the very hot, extremely humid weather….she let us to our van.  Then we had about a 45 minute ride to our hotel.  We still hadn’t had lunch or dinner by now and it was around 7:30pm when we finally got to the hotel.  We were able to find sort of a mall with a very dirty food court on the top floor.  Jeff and I were way too chicken to eat there so we left our group and found some other Chinese food that was extremely spicy but good. 

            Miley is amazing!  She just smiles and laughs and rides along with us with every stop.  We are blown away at how much fun and wonderful she is.  She fits right into our family PERFECTLY!  This is such an adventure….a hot and sweaty adventure…and we get to bring the best souvenir home ever!!

            Then we crashed!!!