Sammy's Adoption: Day 3 - Flying to Xi'an in the Shaanxi province

The hotel we stayed at in Beijing was so nice and so very interesting!  Every sitting area had different chairs.  Here are a couple examples:

I though the pastries were the only thing at the buffet.  But when Phil and I sat down to eat, I saw that Phil had totally different things on his plate.  I asked him where he got his food and he pointed to the HUGE buffet next us.

This was the huge buffet I somehow missed seeing.

This was watermelon juice.  It was actually pureed watermelon so not as refreshing as it sounded when I picked it up.  But still super fun to try!

This is the Beijing airport - isn't it cool?  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the airports but that shell thing is the airport and it's just a HUGE open area that is really quite nice!

Happy to be rested and on our way to the provincial capital of Shaanxi.

Such beauty!

Getting ready to land in Xi'an.

We got off the plane and as we were walking into the baggage are of the Xi'an airport, we saw our guide, Celine, holding our agency sign.  We waved at her and got our bags speedy quick.  Then we went with her to our van.  It was beautiful outside.  Bright and in the 70's or 80's.  Our driver was very nice.  Celine said she was going to introduce us to the area.  She talked about Xi'an, which is her home town.  She has a lot of pride for her city.  The original city has a wall around it, but because the city became so large, the city limits are much further than the wall.  She said there are now three rings of what we would consider major interchange around the city (like there is one ring around Chicago).
We got to our room and it was already set up for the baby!  That made it feel a little more real!!!

Eating dinner at the hotel.

I didn't realize until after I started talking that our server did not speak English.  I asked her what kind of fruit was in the fruit platter.  She thought I was saying that the fruit I was pointing to was one that I didn't want but still wanted the fruit platter.  I was just trying to learn the names of the fruits since they were fruits I'd never seen before.  So then I tried to clear it up and said, "No fruit."  She said, "No fruit" and wrote something down on her pad of paper.  Clearly she was writing down that I wanted to order the fruit platter.  So I waved my hands and said "no fruit" and she said "no fruit" again.  So Phil ordered his burger and then I ordered a tuna sandwich.  She pointed to the menu and said "no tuna".  I pointed and said "tuna" and she repeated, "no tuna".  I said, "no fruit".  She said "no fruit", so I took her pad and pointed to the first thing she wrote down and I took her pen and scratched it out.  She nodded her head and walked away.

A while later Phil got his meal.  And I got nothing.  I was laughing so hard tears were rolling out of my eyes.  No fruit - no tuna.  After Phil finished his burger, the server brought my sandwich.  No fruit - no tuna.  It was a club sandwich.  Now I was laughing so hard I was crying.  Phil told me I blew it.  I felt so bad to be laughing!  Phil said from now on, when things aren't what we expect or going as we planned, we say "no tuna".  We said it a lot during our trip.

We went to bed super early - like 2pm or something like that.  We ended up sleeping until the next morning.  I think around 4am we both woke up, but tried to sleep a little longer still.