Notes from our China adoption trip

Wednesday, March 29, 2006, 7:01 a.m.

By Terry R. Cassreino

BEIJING – Here are a few notes and observations from the first two days of our adoption trip.

Quiet airport

We arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night to a eerily vacant airport.
I think we were one of two or three flights that arrived about 9 p.m. to the airport. Nevertheless, most of the retail stores there were closed, leaving travelers with few options to buy a Coke or bottled water.
We also had a little trouble finding our representative from Lotus Travel, who was supposed to take us to Hotel Kunlun. That, however, was my problem: I forgot to pack the tags from Lotus we were supposed to wear on arrival, which would have made it easier to spot us.
We found here and arrived safe.
But it was the airport that struck me, especially after stopping in the extremely busy Tokyo and Detroit airports. In fact, the Tokyo airport was so busy Pam and I found it difficult to navigate.

Freeway ride

Traffic on the freeway from the airport to the hotel was heavy.
That didn't come as much of a surprise to me, though. A gentleman who sat next to me on the Tokyo-Beijing flight is an American who lives in China. He told me the traffic can be so bad that a trip from downtown Beijing to the airport can sometimes take two hours. Two hours. To put that in perspective, the airport is no farther from downtown than the New Orleans International is to the French Quarter.
Our drive from the airport wasn't quite that long. But I was surprised by the heavy traffic.

Nice hotel

The Hotel Kunlun so far is nice.
We were told our rooms in China would be smaller than those in the United States. But based on the Hotel Kunlun, I disagree. Pam and I have a nice size room with a king-sized bed, a desk, Internet access and a color television.
Reception, by the way, is nice.
We can get CNN, a movie channel caled Star, the Chinese version of HBO (with movies in English and subtitles in Chinese) and several Chinese stations. We likely won't get "The Spranos" and "American Idol," so we'll have to play catch-up when we return.
We haven't tried the food. But the hotel has several restaurants (including Chinese,Korean and Indian cuisine). I understand the breakfast buffet fatures Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes. We'll find out soon enough.

No adoption news

No news yet on the adoption front.
We did ride back to the hotel with another couple from Portland, Ore., who is adopting through Holt (although through another province and not Jiangxi like we are). And I ran into another family this morning in the hotel lobby who are adopting through Holt.
As the families begin arriving, I'm sure Pam and I will meet more of them. Apparently, Holt may have as many as 30 families here this week.

Text and photos copyright 2006 by Terry R. Cassreino