Flat Jeremy

Flat Jeremy is my little buddy that traveled with me to China. He got to see and do all kinds of fun things.




He hung out with the Clay Warriors.
These guys are from the city of Xian (shee-ahn). They were guarding the tomb of a very famous Chinese emperor.



He went to the Great Wall of China.
This is a giant wall built over many hundreds of years to protect China from bad guys.



Flat Jeremy cooled off on the bus with some bottled water after the Great Wall because it was very hot outside.

He enjoyed the view of the Pearl River from Shamian Island.
The Pearl River is the second largest river in China.



He did Tai Chi in the park.
Tai Chi is an exercise that many Chinese people enjoy. These ladies are using fans to do it.

  


He went to the Henan Museum (huh-non) and saw lots of ancient Chinese weapons, pottery, and inventions.



The Henan Museum.

He watched people play a game kind of like "hackey-sack" with a feathered thing-a-ma-jig. Many groups of people play this game in the parks every day! He decided to bring one home because it looked really fun.




Flat Jeremy had a really great time in China, and now he's getting ready to come home!

Adopting Teegan

A woman from Teegan's orphanage brought him to our hotel. (Even though he was in a foster care home with a family, this woman was in charge of bringing him to us.)

Teegan met his new Mommy for the first time, right here in this hotel hallway.

Teegan met his Daddy too. In Chinese, kids say "Ma Ma" for Mommy, and "Ba Ba" for Daddy.

Teegan felt a little nervous. But he didn't cry. He was very brave.

We brought Teegan back to our hotel room. We gave him toys to play with. He began to have fun. He likes cars and trucks. He says "beep-beep" when he sees them.

Teegan is a regular little kid. He laughs when his Daddy hangs him upside-down.

He likes to make silly faces to make other people laugh.

He likes to watch TV.

He likes to wear his hat backwards.

And plays Peek-A-Boo.

And he thinks his "Jie-Jie" or, Big Sister, is super fun.

Nihao!

Can you say that?  That's how you say "Hello" in Chinese.  Say Nee-How.  Nihao!

We flew in many air planes to get to China.  It took a very long time.  We saw lots of little tiny houses and buildings and roads from our plane way up high in the sky.  Most of all, we saw clouds.  Have you ever wondered what a cloud looks like from the top?  Here is a picture I took from the airplane window.  You can see that the cloud looks pretty much the same from the top as it does from the bottom.  Below it are lots of little tiny roads and buildings.

Here are some more clouds.  This time, you can see a snow covered mountain sticking up through the clouds.  This mountain is in the state of Washington.

When we arrived in the city of Beijing, China, we saw a very busy, big city.  There are lots of tall buildings, big buses, fast taxis, and zipping bicycles.  There are people everywhere. 

We went to Tiananmen Square.  A square is a big flat concrete place for people to walk around on.  This is also an area where the government of China does their work.  There are government buildings all around.  Tiananmen Square is so big that you can put 1 Million People on it, standing side-by-side.  That's a lot of people!

This is the story of a mother, a father, and a sister from the United States of America traveling to adopt a two-year old boy, Teegan Kaixuan, from a beautiful land called China. This little boy doesn’t know it yet but he has a big family waiting to welcome him home. This family includes his two big sisters, Tabitha and Tobianna, and his two nieces, Faith and Hope. This blog is for them to share with their friends as they wait for their mommies to come home. Follow our journey as we fly on 9 different airplanes before we land again at home.

Did you know that China is more than 7000 miles from our home? Look at the maps
below and you will see the path our planes will take.

Big airplanes can travel about 500 miles per hour. That’s really fast! We usually don’t drive cars faster than 45 miles per hour when we are driving around town. Even going so fast, it will take us a long time to travel to China.

We will eat our meals and sleep in our seats. We will be on airplanes for more than 28 hours. That is more than a whole day. Since China is on the other side of the world they have a different time from us. When it is morning in China, it is night in the United States. We will leave home at around 1:00 in the afternoon, but in China, it will be 1:00 in the morning. If that is hard to understand, don’t worry, it is hard for grown-ups to understand, too.

So fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to start an adventure.