Day 2 -leaving Beijing heading to Tianjin

Today started off as a nice restful day. First the rest of the families left in the am with our guide- George to head to their provinces to pick up their children.
Our Beijing guide- George.


We headed to breakfast where we tried some different things for breakfast. I had the Milk steamed buns.
Kurt tried some steamed green veggie- Chinese cabbage. I refused due to being warned about veggies. Some different looking eggs.

We had until 2 pm to repack and wait for our next guide, Marian, to take us to the train station to Tianjin. She will be with us the whole week. When we met her, we knew she is going to be a fabulous help. She also works as a translator for our agency in Beijing and is the main guide for the area. She is about our age too.
Right away she was telling us information about Joylin that she had after calling the orphanage. We were again excited for more details on our mysterious wonder.

A few notes about Joylin:
1) she has been in Foster care for the last 4 months. We are not going to meet the FF b/c it is forbidden by the gov. We brought extra gifts which we will send along to the FF with a Thank you.
2) we know her lip had been repaired but not her palate and so she is eating still only soft foods. Marian bought us a few local foods to bring with us. See photo. I was surprised about the BBQ chips and shrimp flakes but thought the one cracker box looked like our US "Gold fish" brand. I think the teddy bears cookies will be a hit.

3) She likes to play in bath tub, VERY extroverted (hmmmm), and up at 6 am beditme 10:30 pm with only a 1 hour nap - (uh oh) and she LOVES to shop (ok - I just added that in- to be determined!)

We took the Bullet train- Kurt said the train was traveling at 180 mph! It was a smooth ride. Getting all our luggage on and off was another "unique" experience. I would relate it to the subway but we had so much luggage and it was hard to maneuver around all the people. It was extremely crowded. Our largest suitcase wouldn't even fit down the aisle. Poor Kurt was swarmed and the middle of a traffic jam- no one seemed to get it to move out of his way so he could open the aisle. A view from the train trip.


We arrived in Tianjin and it remind us more of a large city (10 Mil people!)Tons of traffic on a Sunday late afternoon. We had dinner in a "fast food" authentic restaurant- Kurt tried Spicy Sour noodles. I talked him out of something rated 4 chili peppers hot. I didn't want him getting sick before our big day! We had to eat with Chopsticks- Kurt was a real trooper- noodles and chopsticks are difficult for the first timer. I will get a picture of this tomorrow:)
Tianjin view from our room- 15th floor.

Our room is a fantastic large corner room. We will have a nice amount of room to play in here. We unpacked for the next 5 days. So now we are suppose to get some rest. The beds are extremely hard. We have 3 blankets on the mattress (ie board).

So tomorrow I will take pictures of the hotel and JOYLIN!