Welcome to the [workaround] Trip Journal Page for Bring Sophie Home

Greetings, friend of Jeff and Robin Gerke and supporter of our effort to home our adoptive daughter, Sophie Song Taylor Gerke.

Since mid-2008 Robin has been building and maintaining www.BringSophieHome.com, our adoption site. We had every intention of updating the Trip Journal section of that page while we were on our trip. We even did the first journal entry, while we waited in San Francisco to change planes.

However, when we got to Beijing we encountered difficulties updating and even accessing our site. Others in our adoption travel group experienced the same thing with their blogs and sites, though other sites on the Web are accessible, and even while our own sites remain accessible to those back home.

Our fellow adoption travelers have arrived at a number of workarounds for this problem. Ours is to develop this temporary workaround page that we can update while we're traveling.

DAY 1

On March 11 Jeff and Robin got to the Colorado Springs airport at 4 a.m. to catch their 6 a.m. flight to San Francisco.

As you can see, they were both excited, but Jeff looks a little bleary-eyed.

The first flight was crowded but fine.

Then after a 3-hour layover in San Francisco, we boarded a 777 for Beijing.

It was a huge plane--very wide--which I think helped make the 12.5 hours go much more smoothly. But that's still a long time on a plane.

We heard lots of Chinese spoken that day--our first taste of what was to come.

The little TVs in the headrests ahead of us showed a selection of 8 movies, which played 4 times through. We have now seen enough of all 8 to not need to see any of them again. (In Quantum of Solace, is James Bond just mad all the time? Weird.)

On the flight we met up with another couple in our adoption travel group. Shane and Kathy are a pastor couple from the Seattle area. A great blessing and a fun way to pass the time.

After 4 meals/snacks and lots of pacing the aisles, we finally arrived in Beijing. As you can see, Robin still looks excited and Jeff still looks bleary-eyed.

Can you see the "Foreigners" sign over our shoulders? We were really in China!

Here we come, Sophie!

DAY 2

At the airport we hooked up again with the couple from our travel group and then went through Customs. We found the party meeting us there and started accumulating other folks from our adoption travel group.

That's Oscar, one of our two travel guides. He's a real character. Young and full of confidence and a lover of Bon Jovi. He's in two rock bands in Beijing and likes to serenade us on the bus. Happily, he's pretty good!

Robin and Jeff and Shane and Kathy stuck together for this day. The bus finally left for the hotel, with about 8 of our travel group families on it. Three of our adoptive parent families have brought one or more of their young children along.

The bus took us to our hotel. It was still afternoon there, but after midnight to us. The four of us went to a Chinese supermarket to get bottled water and look around.

Great adventure. Then we ate and returned to the hotel, where Jeff and Robin attempted to sleep and where Robin was successful...

DAY 3

Our adoption agency wisely gives us all two days in Beijing to begin resetting us to China time. They fill they days with tourist things, and there are wonderful things to see in and around Beijing.

On this day, we went to the Forbidden City, a silk factory, an authentic Chinese lunch, a ceramics production place, a huton (low-income living district), and a Chinese acrobatics show.

The morning at the Forbidden City was bitterly cold and windy. Wind chill of probably -10 degrees F. None of us had come prepared for that kind of cold. The weather report had called for 50 and 60s the whole time.

By now we'd gathered with all 16 or so families in our group and our second tour guide, Barbara (she keeps Oscar organized and on-task).

Here we are entering the Forbidden City.

This place is awe-inspiring, beautiful, and huge. But after 2 hours in the torturous cold, we were willing to pay to leave. [grin]

The day was incredible, though, and despite Jeff's lack of sleep catching up on him, they had a great time.

Here we are on the rickshaw to see the low-income huton (alley) home.

It's really a bicycle with us in our little wagon on the back.

The trip through those back alleys was very educational and quite a contrast to the magnificence of the Forbidden City. It's an interesting choice that they would take us here, but it was very cool.

Here's the inside of the house of our hostess, who explained how she lives and her current and past situations.

After the many events of the day, plus the jet lag and hours of exposure in the wind and cold, our whole group was pretty tired by the end of this day. That's the point, of course, because they want us sleeping well through the night so during the day we will be energetic.

We watched the acrobatics show and were duly impressed by their mastery, but we were all ready to get home.

Here's a photo of a China flag, just for our son.

Next up for Day 4: the Great Wall and the Olympic venues.

DAY 4

We visited the Great Wall of China today. Oh, my, what a thrill this was.

We stopped first at a jade outlet/factory place, where we picked up some souvenirs for our children, including a little jade bracelet for Sophie.

Then we drove way out of town to the north until we reached the Great Wall. It's a magnificent sight.

It was just incredible being here. One of the seven wonders of the world. The majesty and scope and sheer workmanship of it was overwhelming. And it just went and went and went.

Jeff decided to see how high he could climb. There are a couple of towers higher than the highest one you can see in this photo. The whole group started up, along with hundreds of Chinese and foreigners, but the crowd thinned out with every next step.

Jeff discovered that the Chinese for "This step is too high--why aren't they all uniform?" sounds pretty much the same as the English for it, or any other language. Frustration and heavy breathing and a note of exasperation.

Jeff made it to the highest tower you can see from the bottom, but when he got there he found that there were two more towers above it. Jeff made this video but then turned around.

Click this link to see the short video.

The visit to the Olympic venues was fun but too short. They weren't able to go to the venues themselves. It wasn't on the tour and there was an extra fee. We were able to get out and take photos though. Cool to be this close to these icons.

Back at the hotel, Jeff and Robin got packed for the trip tomorrow. They'll be leaving here at 8:30 to go to the airport and fly to Zhengzhou (say JinJoe). That will be a travel and acclimation day. And then the next day...Gotcha Day.

Finally for Day 4, a look at Chinese money.

DAY 5

Okay, now things are really getting interesting. This morning our travel group of 13 families got on a plane in Beijing to fly to Zhengzhou (in Henan Province). Tomorrow we'll all get our babies!

Jeff has been wanting to learn how to say "I'm your Daddy" to Sophie, so today on the bus ride to the Beijing airport, he asked our Beijing guides, Oscar and Barbara, to teach how to say "I'm your Daddy," "I'm your Mommy," I'm your big sister," "I'm your big brother," and "I love you," so the whole family can learn to say these things.

Here it is on video.

Then we all got on the plane and flew to Zhengzhou (say "Jin-Joe"), where we met our new guides (the CCAI reps): Yisha and Evelyn.

The pollution here is worse than it was in Beijing. It looks like a constant brown fog. However, our new hotel is very nice.

This is where the magic will happen. Tomorrow.

We had thought we'd all be getting babies in the morning, in one giant baby-exchange session with tons of crying and chaos. But it turns out that they're dividing our 13 families into 3 groups, based on the orphanages the babies are being brought from.

Because our Sophie is coming from an orphanage in Nanyang, which is the farthest from Zhengzhou, they won't be able to make it here by the morning. So the three families who are adopting from Nanyang, including us, will be getting our babies in the afternoon.

That will be all right. We'll have both our new guides there with us, so with only three babies we'll have much better access to the guides' translation abilities so we can ask the orphanage personnel all our questions.

We've learned all kinds of things about these babies. Apparently they're all potty trained already. They start from when the kids are 15 days old. But of course they're training not with a potty but with a hole in the floor. The parents hold the babies over the hole and give a verbal cue to "go" and they go.

But it's all on a schedule, as is their eating/bottle feedings. If we can continue this, we'll certainly save on diapers! But...wow.

As I mentioned, the hotel here is beautiful. It's much nicer than the one in Beijing. Here's a photo of our room here--with a wonderful special new addition.

A crib. Oh, my.

Tomorrow, dear friends.

DAY 6--Gotcha Day

Cue sappy narrator's voice: "The day began like any other..."

As you saw from yesterday's update, we were in the third group of three to go to get our babies. However, someone in the first group asked if Jeff would come videotape their "gotcha moment." Jeff readily agreed, not only to help out (and get him to videotape our moment in return) but to do a little advance recon on this to see what our day was going to be like.

We'll skip you over that part for now and discuss the elements when we get to them in our story.

After Jeff returned to the hotel and he and Robin had lunch, they still had 2 hours until they had to show up to get ready to go get Sophie. So they walked around the huge city block that the hotel is on. Very educational. People stared at us like we had two heads.

Finally it was time to go get our baby.

We've been having new problems with the trip journal. So I've put the rest of Day 6 and Day 7 and following on a new page.

Click here to go to the new page.