Time to get on the plane! We got settled in to our seats, and in a few minutes were off (OK it took longer than that, but this sounds better). Our path would take us up over Canada, the North West Territory, Alaska, the Bering Straits, a little bit of Russia, and down by Japan, to skirt North Korea, then west to Seoul. It was now 06/12/06 somewhere over the Bering Straits we lost a whole day!!! We would have a 5 hr layover in Seoul before beginning our 1 ½ flight to Beijing. All this happened while some of us got a little snooze in!
At 10:00 am China time we landed and headed thru the airport and customs (boy had
everything changed in the 9 yrs since we had been here) the only thing
that looked the same was they were still doing construction.
After getting thru customs and heading out into the open corridor to
find our guides, we hear this clapping and cheering and could see
someone with a movie camera taking picture. We
started wondering just who the celebrity was.
Then after getting a little further through the crowd, we saw it was
not one celebrity, but five! The cheering
and filming was of our daughters, the people who were to guide us in
China, had meet the girls with large bouquets of flowers and were
filming them, as if they were movie stars. Melissa wanted to know
why everyone thought, they (the girls) were so special. We were
told later that it was BLAS (Bridge of Love Adoption Services) first
time to host a large group to come back.
They had done individuals return visits before but not a group.
When we got there our guide got our tickets and we proceed
to walk down the main path way to the Circular Mount Altar,
where you could stand on the raised spot in the center and hear your
words come
back to you if you spoke. It was to busy for us to try
it, but when we were there 9yrs ago we found it worked.
After a brief speech, he presented each of
the girls with a doll from the 2008 Olympics.
The doll’s names in order make the phrase; “Bei-Jing Wel-Comes
You". Then it was off to
dinner. The food was nice, and the service great, but
we all were getting quite tired. Finally
near the end of the meal we had some soup, with noodles in it. It
was explained to us that in each bowl was
just one noodle that filled up the entire bowl!
And then we were asked if we wanted to watch the “Noodle Show”.
Seems that chef the makes the soups (and maybe
the rest of the meal, that wasn’t quite explained) was the second in
noodle making competitions in the country. Well
out he comes with three clumps of dough and proceeds to roll one
out. Then take it and, doubles it, doubles again, etc the number of
strands of dough in between his hands. When all was said and
done he had created on long noodle, thinner that a piece of spaghetti
and done in less that a minute. He then took the next
batch of dough and started over, but this time the “noodle” was
thicker, and with the third one he created a flat noodle.
Each type taking only a minute or so to do, but since he had done all
the bowels of soup that night, he had already do about 30 bowels of
noodles. Quite amazing!!
This day we were to tour the offices of
We then went back
to the conference room and found
place for each family marked. At each spot was a
box like file, our child’s adoption file.
We were allowed to look thru the file and for the most part it was the
same as the documents that we already had.
We did ask Cecilia to ask a gentleman standing next to us, if on one of
the documents it said anymore about where Melissa was found. He
looked thru the index of the file and came
to one document, and said something to Cecilia.
When she translated what he said, he had explained that he now was in
charge of the record keeping, but 9 years ago he had worked in the
matching room and it was his signature on that document.
He had matched us up with Melissa!
That was quite a treat to get to thank him for putting us and Melissa
together. Back to the question at hand
though. When he came to the document
about where Melissa was found, he said all that it said was “The
Beginning of Hubin Road”. Before we knew it was Hubin Road but not
where on Hubin Road (not that the beginning told us much, as which end of the road is the
beginning? Or did it, as we find out later).
When we reached their office, and were started off in the
same fashion, going to each department and having someone explain to us just
what their area did. Their biggest area
was the translation department. Where
they did all the translations for the agencies that used BLAS like
After more group photos, we headed off to a typical noodle
restaurant, for a group lunch. When we
arrived and as we were walking up to the restaurant, we had to move
over on the
side walk for a car that was driving down past where we parked the
bus?
This was different, but apparently sidewalks
were fair game for cars. We got a room
in the back with a couple of big tables and then the food started to
come. We found that this was just your average
Joe’s restaurant and that the food was quite good!!
Wasn’t long before the table was full of
dishes and we were full of good food.
Next on our agenda was a Rickshaw ride in the Hutong area,
specifically the Shicha Lake-Hutong (hutong is an old small narrow
alley way). Our rickshaw was basically a three
wheeled bike with a canopy over the back. After taking off and weaving
in an out of traffic (yes, even the alleys were busy, both coming and
going), it started to rain. Not to be daunted
the driver stopped and put a rain cover over the canopy and a rain poncho
over himself, and off we went again. We wound
up at an elementary school, where the kids had already gone home, but
the teachers were still there learning English. So we got to talk to
them a
bit and answer questions about AMERICA, then it was off once more. 
We also stopped to
see some performers in one of the parks just near the Hutong Alley
ways. Even though it had been pouring down rain. I guess
they knew we were coming as they uncovered their interments and started
to dance when we arrived. They even had a few of us get into the
act. Well some did, but I can't dance Western let a lone Chinese
so I stayed on the side lines. After this was over we got back in
the rickshaws and headed over to our next stop.
We found out that this larger room use to be two smaller
rooms, but they had removed a walk to make it bigger, as they like to
entertain. That was also evident by the
disco ball hanging from the ceiling, and the large screen TV in the
corner. (A stark contrast of old and new.) After showing
the girls and everyone how to
make dumplings, they and anyone else that wanted got a chance to
try. Then they were whisked off to be cooked. Again we were
feed a large meal (including
dumplings!) and found that like the noodle restaurant, the common
ordinary food was quite good. After our goodbyes we
loaded up on the rickshaw and headed back to the bus. From there
it was to the hotel, with an early
wakeup call to put out the luggage, as the next morning we would be
heading to Xi’an