After 16 hours of travel we are safely in Beijing and trying to stay awake as long as possible to help with jet lag. We ran into three other families who are traveling through AWAA in the San Francisco airport and two families adopting through different agencies. It was pretty easy to pick out the adopting families in a waiting area; we were basically the only white passengers. During our wait we were able hear several "first trip" stories from several of these families as well as meet several children who had been previously adopted. Everyone has such a unique adoption story!
We had two very uneventful flights (just how we like them!) and upon arrival in Beijing were met by an AWAA guide. Our guide, Sara, will be with us throughout our time in Beijing. She was a great source of information on our ride from the airport to the hotel. We will enjoy learning as much as possible from her about the culture and unique aspects of Beijing as well as China in general while we are here.
We arrived at the Radisson SAS Hotel around 3:45 p.m. Before going to our room, Sara walked us through some details regarding adoption paperwork we would be filling out and verifying in Guangzhou. She also told us to exchange the money we would need for our orphanage donation, other miscellaneous adoption fees, and any tourist money we wanted. Apparently exchanging large sums of money must take place in Beijing because there is no daily limit on how much can be exchanged. Most other places, including Guangzhou, have a $200 daily limit. Since we were exchanging $7,300, the majority of which was for adoption related expenses, this was good advice. The exchange rate during our time in Beijing was roughly 1 US dollar to 6 Chinese yuan. Even though we knew this, we were still unprepared for the huge stack of yuan we received in return for our small stack of US bills!
After exchanging our money and putting it in the hotel room safe, we walked to a local grocery store to purchase bottled water (you cannot drink the tap water) and then crashed for the night in order to be ready for our first tourist day in Beijing.
We arrived at the Radisson SAS Hotel around 3:45 p.m. Before going to our room, Sara walked us through some details regarding adoption paperwork we would be filling out and verifying in Guangzhou. She also told us to exchange the money we would need for our orphanage donation, other miscellaneous adoption fees, and any tourist money we wanted. Apparently exchanging large sums of money must take place in Beijing because there is no daily limit on how much can be exchanged. Most other places, including Guangzhou, have a $200 daily limit. Since we were exchanging $7,300, the majority of which was for adoption related expenses, this was good advice. The exchange rate during our time in Beijing was roughly 1 US dollar to 6 Chinese yuan. Even though we knew this, we were still unprepared for the huge stack of yuan we received in return for our small stack of US bills!
After exchanging our money and putting it in the hotel room safe, we walked to a local grocery store to purchase bottled water (you cannot drink the tap water) and then crashed for the night in order to be ready for our first tourist day in Beijing.
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| Our hotel room |
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| View from our hotel room |
More to come later!
Robyn & Randy
So excited for you! Glad you arrived and are going to be a tourist for a couple of days!
ReplyDeleteHave fun!! I am so excited for you and look forward to pictures and stories and "tagging" along via your blog. I am checking often with anticipation. I hope you enjoy every memory you are making.
ReplyDeleteYay! You made it. Can't wait to follow along on your journey with you. :)
ReplyDelete