July 7

Hey, guys,

This is actually Kar - I'm a faster typist, so Ben told me to type up something really quickly while he takes Micah upstairs to our room to pee. For some reason, the internet won't work in our rooms, but it's working well in the main lobby of the hotel.

Kay. To say that the plane ride was horrific is the understatement of the century. Actually, the three older kids did pretty well and slept the whole time, but Gage struggled. Ben and I took turns rocking him to sleep and praying he would stay that way, but he never did for long. When it was my turn to sleep, my restless legs would kick in and kill me. Ben only slept like an hour the whole time.

I watched Jane Eyre on the plane, and from the subtitles at the bottom, I figured out the Chinese symbol for "Hell" and "No." I'm proud of myself. :)

The interpreter that works for Ben and Jason picked us up at the airport in a hotel shuttle and brought us straight here.

It was breakfast time for us when we got here, but everything in the hotel was shut down as far as food - they had two sandwiches and two hamburgers left in the kitchen, so that's what we ate. Then we did baths and put the kids to bed. It took a really long time for them to fall asleep. Gage slept fitfully all night - again, I hardly slept. Neither did Ben. I think we slept maybe 10 minutes the whole night.

Beijing looks really cool, what I can see. We're on the 16th floor, which is fun. They actually have a couple of English-language TV channels, but it's all news channels, which makes the kiddos sad. So they're spending their time shrieking and screaming and running around. Sigh. We have two separate rooms, one for Ben, me, and the baby, and one for all three kids. They only had two twin beds in the kids' rooms, and a rollaway bed costs $40 per night, so we squished the beds together and poor Mikey had to sleep in the crack.

The kids are rock stars. It took awhile to check in to the hotel lobby, and since it was midnight, it was quiet. Gage had like five people staring at him, holding him, taking pictures with him...he was a good sport and complied, but he wouldn't smile. People also wanted to take pictures with Sadie. I think Micah was giving them the "don't even think about it" vibe, so they didn't try. One guy asked me a question in Mandarin, which I didn't understand, but I could tell he was asking the age. I held up three fingers, and he taught me the Mandarin word for "three." People here are really, really nice. They always seem surprised when we say "goodbye" in Mandarin.

We came down for breakfast this morning - they had pancakes and french toast, but everything else was totally weird and scary-looking. I had a couple of slices of watermelon and...that's it. No appetite. Ben was adventurous. He ate a few different things. The kids tried dumplings and decided they aren't as good as they look on Kung Fu Panda. :)

Ben has a meeting in a few minutes here in the lobby, I think. Or maybe they're meeting here and going somewhere else. So it's just me and the kiddos, stuck in the hotel room. Yaaaaaaaaay. I plan to make Gage nap in one room and play games with the kids in the other.

I got a little panicked and overwhelmed last night and spent a while crying. I'm homesick and wondering, "What have I DONE??" But I know it will get better. I felt this way when I first got to England, and it got better. And with Ben here, it will be an easier adjustment.

We spend tonight here in Beijing again, and then tomorrow morning, we take a shuttle down to Baoding.

Kay, I'll write more when we have time and internet access. We miss you guys and love you. We just wanted you to know that we're doing alright. It will start getting more fun once the jet lag has subsided.

Lovies!
-Kar and Ben