Heading to China....

This was written by Darrell and Tammy early this morning U.S. time after they got settled in their room for the night.

Heading to China:

Alright, we need to get on the ball here…. We are having a couple of technical difficulties (maybe user error, but oh well). For some reason, we cannot see blogspot from our hotel internet connection. It isn‘t giving a blocked error, but enough of that… We have a work-around. Tammy‘s sister Karyn, has offered to post blogs for us.

Last night, we took Jack and Cary over to Stephen and Rhonda’s house at about 7pm and put them down for bed. They are very excited about Mom and Dad going to get E.V. and it will be interesting to see how they do for such a long stay away from us. Good thing they have the Chambal’s to take good care of them and keep them busy.

As you can see by the photo on the left, Tammy did a great job managing the packing job for the trip. You should see the lists and lists of things that you “might” want to take with you. We are allowed two check-in bags each and we only checked in one apiece… this is no small feat. Of course, we have a couple of empty bags inside our luggage, so we can buy some stuff in China and have room to bring it back.

We had a great plan to get some good sleep and get our bodies on China time throughout our trip. Well, we didn’t sleep at all last night, so I guess we didn’t start out on plan. But don’t worry, we now have a new plan… stay tuned to see how this one goes. Actually, I am finishing up this blog at about 11pm local-China time and Tammy went to sleep about a half an hour ago. As long as I get to bed before too long, it looks like we will be sitting pretty to get up at 7am for breakfast and tours tomorrow.

On our way to the airport, we dropped off some books at the Winter’s Library in Bellbrook and stopped by Walmart for a couple of essentials (gifts for folks in China, a spare money belt, rain ponchos, and a couple of snacks). The drive went perfect and the only hitch was that the ticket agent didn’t know how to let me purchase a lap-ticket for E.V. for the way home. No problem, I’ll just do it over the phone tomorrow. And off we went on our first leg to Chicago… Here is a photo of Tammy on the flight.

We had a short layover in Chicago, but decided to walk to Concourse C (quite a hike), to stretch out our legs. Here is a picture of the tunnel in Chicago. All went smooth and we were on our way to SFO.

We arrived in SFO a little early and had arranged to meet up with Grandpa Richard, Tammy’s Dad, for lunch. He brought some authentic food from Chinatown. Here is Tammy with some steamed buns (She always says that Jack has cheeks like these, but I can’t spell the name for them).(char siu bao - comment added by Karyn) It was great to see Richard, even if only for just a little while.

He was also going to bring some photos of himself that we were going to show E.V. while we were in China, but he forgot. Richard will be visiting us in Ohio later this summer. In fact, we talked about him overlapping his visit with Tammy’s sister Karyn. By overlapping just a few days, maybe we can have a big family cookout at the Phillipson house. Here is a photo of me with Richard.

Then off we went through security and jumped right on our plane to Beijing. We both slept for awhile (D-3hrs & T-5hrs)…. Wish we could have each slept 8 hrs, but we will see what the rest of the day entails.

Flying to Beijing

We had been flying for quite some time before my next note.

The monitor above me had a map with our flight plan and said we were over the Sea of Okhotsk.

Groundspeed 554 mph
Distance Traveled 6390 mi
Altitude 18000
TailWind: 5mph
Time Since Departure: 7:20 hrs

Just before landing in Beijing, Tammy started feeling a little motion sick. This normally wouldn’t be such a big deal, but of course everyone is worried about Swine Flu, so the last thing we wanted was for either of us to look sick in any way. The health officials actually came on the plane and checked everyone’s temperature before we could get off and all went well. Here is a picture of landing in China.

Here is a photo of me going through getting my paperwork processed

After we got our luggage, we met up with the Children’s Hope International (CHI) person, who rode in the shuttle with us over to the airport. The next photo is of her with Tammy.

I tested my phone while in the shuttle by calling our CHI POC for the visit, who was actually in another province in China. The phone worked great after I figured out that I needed to dial a 0 before the number, which started with a 1 (don’t ask questions Darrell… just do it). However, there was a mix up and she said she wasn’t expecting us till tomorrow. We got it all cleared up and I think she was just thinking of someone else. All our reservations were all set, so next up was checking in to the hotel.

The hotel is nice and although it is a 5-Star hotel, the room is much smaller than a standard room in the US. Just perfect for our needs. Tammy took a very short catnap while I unpacked, then it was time to exchange some money and go out for a walk to get something to eat. We ended up walking quite far, which was great for our legs. It was interesting seeing the bikes and mopeds as just a regular part of traffic. Here is a photo of a cute little one on the way somewhere important.

Next up, FOOD. Tammy and I love food and although we are trying to be careful not to eat food from streetside vendors and not to drink the water… we just can’t go to China and not eat some authentic Chinese food. We found this little restaurant with tables outside. No one spoke any English, but the menu had pictures. They had an English version of the menu, but it was short and seemed to be really limited, so we took our chances. The first thing we ordered came out absolutely FULL of those red Chinese peppers. If you know what I’m talking about, than you know how hot they are. I tried to ask for something not quite that hot, but they didn’t know what I was talking about. They didn’t know what I thought was the international sign for, “This stuff is burning my face off and I think I’m going to have fire shooting out of another place come tomorrow morning.“ Well, I know charades/pictionary as well as the next person so I drew a quick picture of a thermometer with a scale in Celsius of course. I then demonstrated that the food we had was hot (i.e. at the top of the scale) and pointed to something else on the menu and asked them to show me where it would be on the scale. They told me it would be much lower, so we gave it another try. The second dish came out literally boiling over a still lit sterno. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to eat it since it was boiling like mad and there was no rice to pour it over or anything. They ended up helping me put out the fire and it started to cool down. It was still pretty spicy, but since my taste buds were still smoldering from Tammy‘s dish, it worked out fine. Actually the whole meal was very good, including the humongous bottle of beer. It was all even better when I paid for the whole bill, including a tip for about $8. All the prices we have seen aren’t this low, but apparently you can get some good prices when you get off the beaten path. Here are a couple of photos of our eating experience.

We also got a chance to call Jack and Cary during the meal, wish they could be here, but they are doing great at my brother’s place.

Finally we headed back to the hotel (picking up some bottled water on the way) to test out Skype with Aunt Karyn (worked perfectly!) And now, I had better hit the rack… Goodnight…..