Day 4

We were up and at 'em this morning somewhere between 6-7am.  Yay us!  We knew we had to be ready to leave at 9am to catch our ride to the train and had plenty of time to do so.  We partook of our last western breakfast at the hostel.  Every morning we were able to enjoy breakfast which was included in our stay.

Hash brown, sausage, ham, egg, and toast

Our last breakfast, I had wonderful conversation with one of the hostel employees.  She is such a beautiful girl but refused to reveal here age.  She was stunned by how many children we have.  We also had the pleasure of watching her practice kung fu on Saturday.  It is required of all the hostel employees to practice kung fu on the weekends.

After breakfast we were off to the train station and off to Zhengzhou (joong-jaw) in the Henan (hoo-nan) Province.

On the way to the train station, we passed by the entrance to the Forbidden City again.  As you can tell, it rained but there were no umbrellas up.  Sunshine, umbrella.  No sunshine, no umbrella even if it's raining????!!!

This place is packed!

This is called the fast train.

Wall to wall people waiting.

If you look closely at the sign, it says we are travelling at 300 km/hr or 186.41 mi/hr.

I don't know about you but when I picture China in my own brain, I think about all these beautiful buildings with ornate roofs.  Truthfully, all housing in China is either concrete or brick and not the nice looking kind we have.  While riding on the fast train, I tried to catch some pictures of housing and it was depressing.  Most of what I saw was what we would consider squalor.  Run down, falling apart, concrete or brick buildings and the living spaces are teeny tiny.  Yes, you could tell that from a high speed train.

Excuse the smog but notice the housing and corn.  Lots of corn.  What we thought was interesting is that the corn is usually planted in square plots.  Some corn would be going North and South while the next patch would be planted in rows East to West.  Sometimes, there would be a patch of beans, a patch of corn, another patch of beans, a patch of some other plant and so on and so on.

The other thing we noticed was many houses were either dilapidated or unfinished.  Not sure why but there were so many it truly was sad.

Once again, in case you thought Dustin was Chinese, this proves he is NOT.  This is our floor of the Holiday Inn hotel.  He has to avoid the exit signs. :(

Guess where we went shopping today?  Yep, Walmart!  Boy did we get lots and lots of looks.  Especially since we had a stroller filled with diapers and food to bring back to the hotel.  White people just don't have a reason to be here.  There are no real tourist attractions in this area of China.

I love the fire extinguishers that say in an emergency call 119.

I promise to take pictures inside of Walmart if we go back but we were too busy trying to figure out where everything was located.  Here is one of our finds.  Orange Mango Oreos.  They had other flavors as well.  Super yummy and they smell awesome.

We bought a few noodle bowls to eat in our room.  Don't know what flavors they are but we are feeling experimental until it bites us in the butt.  It is so freaking hot outside, we may not venture out much at all.  It is well over 90* today and the humidity is awful.  This is a subtropic climate.

Our new stroller for J-man.

And a package of over night diapers.  Less than $6.  Not bad.  Again, you should have seen the looks people were giving us.  An empty stroller and diapers being purchased by two white people in China that obviously speak no Chinese.  Say what?

Well, it's 8:30pm and it's hailing now.  The power has gone out more than once, so I better hurry up and post this.  Tomorrow is our big Gotcha Day.  We love and miss all of our friends and family.  Thank you again for your prayers.  Tomorrow, more pics of Jordy!!!!! :)