Ladybug Adventures

Sunday, November 06, 2005 7:40 AM CST

Subject: Day 2

Today was a day filled with sight-seeing and touring here in and around Beijing. We started out this morning with breakfast in our hotel. The breakfast was a very good buffet style, that featured both American and Chinese dishes.

We met our guide and our group at 8:30 am and we were off to the Summer Palace. We were able to see a little more of the grounds of the Summer Palace this time than we did on our first trip. It is a very beautiful area and if we get our laptop working we will share a few photos with you.

After the Summer Palace, we went to the Pearl Factory near the Summer Palace where you can buy fresh water pearls that were raised in the lake on the grounds of the Summer Palace. We then had lunch at a nice buffet style restaurant beside the Pearl Factory.

In the afternoon we toured the Great Wall. Although we have been to the Great Wall before, we got to tour a different section of the wall this time, so it made it even more interesting. We were at one of the most popular sections of the wall called Badaling. Since there are so many tourist that visit this section of the wall, there
were many souvenir shops around this area.

The weather has been very nice today, yet just slightly chilly. It was sunny all day and very clear for viewing the Great Wall. I'm guessing the temperature was around 55 degrees farenheit, which was very nice, but a little chilly since there was a brisk wind all day as well.

On the way back to Beijing, we visited a Silk factory. We got to take a tour and see how they harvest the silk. And of course had a chance to purchase many silk items after the tour.

We then ate dinner and arrived back at our hotel around 8:00 pm. We are all pretty tired and ready for bed.

Tomorrow our group will be touring the Forbidden City or Tianamen Square and then heading to the airport to fly to Nanchang. We, however, will be meeting our new guide at 8:00 am tomorrow morning, who will be taking us to the Beijing Childrens Welfare Institute to meet our new daughter Nikole (Xue Zheng). Please keep us in your
prayers and pray that Nikole's transition will go smoothly.

Emilie, mommy and daddy love you and miss you very much. We will be meeting your little sister tomorrow. :)

Hope everyone is doing well. When we post our next message we will be parents of two. :)

Love,
Steve and Lisa

Saturday, November 05, 2005 8:10 AM CST

Subject: Ni Hao (Hello) from Beijing

Hi all,

Well, we made it. We left our house at 3:30 am on Friday morning. Our flight left Fort Wayne on time at 6:00 am. Steve says he now knows what it is like to land on an air craft carrier. We had one of the hardest landing in Chicago that we have ever experienced.

We met up with three of the families in Chicago who will be with us for a portion of our trip. They all seem to be very nice people. I'm sure we will enjoy sharing our trip with them. The flight from Chicago to Beijing was about 13 hours. It was long, but uneventful. Our guide, Helen, met us at the airport and got us all settled into our hotel rooms here at the Wangfujing Grand Hotel. When we walked into the lobby of our hotel Mei, a member of the CWA China program, was here to meet us. She is so nice and will be accompanying the rest of our group to Nanchang, while Steve and I remain here in Beijing with Nikole.

We all met in the lobby at 6:30 pm to go to dinner together, and got to meet another family who will be with our group for the next two weeks as well. They flew by a different airlines, so they arrived in Beijing last night.

Dinner was at a restaurant in another hotel which was about a 10 minute walk from here. We got to experience the popular Hot Pot dinner which is very popular here in Beijing. They supply you with a small burner that has a small pot of vegetable broth boiling in it. And there are various vegetables and meats that you cook in your
boiling broth.

Now for the bad news. As we were unpacking our laptop to post this message, we discovered that the power converter will not accept the plug for our laptop. So we are currently posting this message from the business center of our hotel. We are going to see if we can remedy this problem tomorrow, but if we can not, we probably will not be able to post any photos until we get home.

Tomorrow we will be going to the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and the Pearl Factory. It should be a very busy day.

Hope you are all doing well. Emilie, mommy and daddy miss you and love you very much!

Steve and Lisa

Monday, October 31, 2005 10:13 AM CST

For our family and friends who may still be watching this website, here is an update on our current upcoming trip to China. We recently received our detailed itinerary, which tells us where we will be and what we will be doing each day we are in China. I posted a copy of it on our yahoo grou last week and will copy that same post to this website as well.

In case you are not aware, we have started a yahoo group for everyone to follow our trip to China this time. We are going to post to the yahoo group as often as possible while we are there and hopefully even upload a few pictures. If you want to view the photos we post from China you will need to log on to our yahoo group to see those. I will try to copy all of our post to this site as well, but to make sure you don't miss anything, you might want to check out the yahoo group. You can find it at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hammellfamily

The first time you visit the yahoo group, you will have to create a yahoo login and password and request to join the group. Once your request has been approved you will be able to see all of our past posts to the group, view links I have added and view the few photos I have already put up. Some photos of Emilie and the only referral photos we have of Nikole at this time.

Here is our itinerary. I have added a few website links so you can check out some information about the
hotels we will be staying in or find information about the tourist attractions we will get to see while we are there. Here it is!

Nov 4 = Fly from Fort Wayne to Chicago - Flight UA7255 - United Airlines (D: 6:00a - A: 5:55a)

Fly from Chicago to Beijing China - Flight UA851 – United Airlines (D: 12:05p)

Nov 5 = Arrive in Beijing at 2:30 pm (Beijing time) and stay at the Wangfujing Grand Hotel.
Here is the website for our hotel: http://www.wangfujinghotel.com/english/ssfw/xxsg.html

Nov 6 = Tour the Great Wall and the Summer Palace
The Great Wall Info – http://www.crystalinks.com/chinawall.html
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/great_wall_of_china/
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/

The Summer Palace Info -
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/summer.htm
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/summer_palace/index.html

Nov 7 = Meet Nikole!!!! Go to adoption registration and notarization appointments

Nov 8 = Tour the Forbidden City
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/forbidden.htm
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/forbidden_city/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City

Nov 9 = Tour the Temple of Heaven
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/heaven/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

Nov 10 = Tour the Lama Temple
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/China/Beijing_Shi/B
eijing-1024960/Things_To_Do-Beijing-Lama_Temple_Yonghegong-BR-1.html

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/yonghe.htm


Nov 11 = Get Nikole's Passport

Nov 12 = Go to Hutong Tour
http://www.cbw.com/tourism/hutong/eindex1.htm
http://www.sinohotelguide.com/travel/beijing/hutong.html

Nov 13 = Fly to Guangzhou – Flight CZ3102 – China Southern (12:05p – 3:00p)
Stay at the White Swan Hotel
http://www.white-swan-hotel.com/eng/Public/index.asp

Nov 14 = Take Nikole for her Medical Check and get her Visa Photo taken in the afternoon

Nov 15 = Go to 11:00a Visa Appointment at the U.S. Consulate

Nov 16 = Get Nikole's Visa

Nov 17 = Fly from Guangzhou to Hong Kong – Flight CZ301 (8:30a – 9:30a)
Fly from Hong Kong to Chicago – Flight UA896 (11:35a HK time – 11:40a Chicago time)
Fly from Chicago to Fort Wayne – Flight UA6828 (3:45p
Chi time – 5:45p Fort Wayne time)

Lisa Hammell