Hidden Video Store

Monday March 23rd

This day was pretty full so I split it into several posts.

We started the day by heading to the office of our hosts. They run a consulting business here. On the way we stopped to visit a video store our host buys his videos from. The moves are in English, and legit, and they have optional Chinese subtitles. I would have never found this place on my own! You go down an alley that looks like a loading dock, enter a small sliding door into a small lobby filled with mailboxes (I thought it was apartments at first) Then we went up a flight of stairs, down several dark hallways and ended up in front of a plain door, but inside was a video store! It was pretty funny!

In the air again

Sunday March 22nd

Happy Birthday Mom!!!!

We left Hong Kong today to fly to Dalian. The flight was a little over three hours long. While inthe airport we tried to get access to the internet, there were signs saying there was wifi, but we could not get it to connect :(

John and I had an empty seat between us again, which was nice. We went through customs twice, once as were were leaving Hong Kong, and once as we entered Dalian. We had no trouble getting through. When I went through they did ask me if I was traveling with someone, I pointed to John and said I was traveling with him. Three men all gathered together and talked, pointing to John and then the customs worker told me to have a nice trip - so I am not sure what that was about! I don't know if they were looking for someone or concerned about a woman traveling alone, or something else completly, I have no idea! Customs also put all our luggage through x-ray machines. The whole proccess was pretty interesting, but fast.

We arrived at our host's house pretty late, but still stayed up talking for a while. They are so nice and gracious! I don't want to name them incase it causes any problems, but our hostess had beauitful flowers for me! We are so excited to learn from them!

Hong Kong

Saturday the 21st (China time)

We arrived in Hong Kong safe and sound! The last flight was good, but we were both ready to be off the plane! We got our luggage quickly and made it through customs with no problems. Ralph met us at the airport right away and we took a tram into Hong Kong.

The British influence can be felt all over Hong Kong. The money, although not pounds, is designed very much like pounds! Signage around town really shows the English influence too! The area around our hotel was pretty touristy, but our hotel was really nice!
This is the our room - small but very nice! This is the only soft bed we will sleep on our entire trip!
This is our room from the other direction

This is the view looking out our window - wow- what a difference! Very humbling


There was really a mint left on our pillow when we came back from dinner!


Every street corner has 3 or 4 men who approach and follow you asking you to come up to their shop to look at copy watches, handbags, and tailored suits. It became almost comical because they approach you one after the other. Hong Kong is very modern, and stores carry many items like you would find in mall stores. There are some touristy shops with "traditional" type trinkets, but most of the stores were very modern. The prices were comparable to US city prices, no big bargains on electronics (unless you look at buying them from the copy watch people, but then I fear what that might mean!)

We took a ferry across to the other side of the island, and it was beautiful at night, the lights from the city was amazing.
One view of the skyline from the boat.

On the other side of the dock there were some men fishing, we were all laughing about it because the water there is so polluted, we were wondering if the fishing was a decoy for something else (like selling drugs).

We slept really well and got up to eat at the YMCA - which is a really nice hotel here!! The breakfast was an international breakfast, with scrambled eggs, right next to fish, rice, porridge and broccoli! It was a really good breakfast though and we all ate more than we should have! It was also cool to watch out the window and see as Hong Kong "woke up" and more people were on the street.

We then went to an international church service which was really nice. The message was really good :) Hong Kong is very open, as open as the States. We then took a trolley ride to see the city, it was really neat!

We did buy a few souvenirs, but I wanted to wait until we got to mainland to get most things. It was pretty cool to watch Ralph barter in Chinese :) Hong Kong was an amazing place, very diverse, we didn't even stick out there. It has just about everything you would expect from a big city!

Next Group of Entries

Ok - So we have not had reliable internet for a few days, but I have been keeping my blog in a notebook, so I will update several things today :)I will try to put the date in the blog since they are all going to be written today!!

We are currently in a hotel in DanDong - super exciting... but more to come :)

We Made it through the long flight!

We just finished the long flight - phew! We have a short layover in Korea before heading to Hong Kong. Both John and I are doing very well!!


It has been a long travel, and we are glad to be close to our destination. :) All of our flights have been very good - and smooth! Asiana was the best though! John and I had the row to ourselves, it was nice to have the extra seat to spread out to! They served lots of food, and came around with water or orange juice every 30 min to an hour.


For those of you concerned, both baby and I did very well on all the flights so far :) No nausea and only slight swelling on the long flight.

The Airport here in Korea is pretty neat, We are sitting in a mini-movie theatre like room with a big screen tv for anyone who wants to watch a movie. There is an internet "zone" right next to us and the whole area is filled with things like a mini-museum, shower area, live stage area (performances don't start until 11 though, and we will be gone by then! :(, massage and relaxation salon, and several restaurants and cafes.


John took a couple interesting pictures of the things that caught his eye! (He has not yet mastered the camera, so some of the pictures are a little fuzzy! :)

The lobby area of the lounge

This is the sign right outside the massage and relaxation salon - it shows what services they have to offer!

This is a display window - there are two layers of glass and the snowflakes and flowers are 3-d paper art

This is the live stage - there was a Korean Traditional Folk music concert scheduled for 11! (John's thoughts on the concert was Renaissance fair meets Korea! lol)

This was one of the main walkways all the stores are still closed because it is so early!!

We are both ready to get there (and get cleaned up a little!!!) We started this journey around 8:30am on Thursday (I don't even know what day it is anymore, I think it is Friday at home, but it Saturday here, I think... lol)


Well, we are off to find our gate, we will update again soon!!!

Time to Travel!!!

John and I are so excited - it is finally travel time! All the homework we will get done before the trip is done! Packing has begun and we will be ready well in time for our departure.

I have been feeling well, but please remember me as we travel, I have never traveled pregnant before, so I don't know how I will do!


We fly out of Kansas City tomorrow (Thursday) at 4:05 and should arrive in Hong Kong noon on the 21st (we loose quite a bit of time going over - but we gain it coming back!) We have packed lots of magazines, books, filled up our MP3 Players - so we are as ready for the flight as we can be!!!

We will be coming home late on the 30th, and for those of you worried, no we will not be driving home, we booked a hotel in Kansas City. Best part - the room includes parking for our entire trip! Woot!


John is excited about going through LAX - he has heard how big it is! This will be an amazing, life altering trip for us, and we are beyond excited. This year has been so huge for us with baby on the way and this trip - we are so thankful!


Well, I guess it is time to get back to packing, but stay tuned - we are on our way to China!!!!

Baby on the way!

Well, I guess I have not done a good job of keeping up with our blog - lol

The news is officially out, and has been for a while, the Rowe family is expanding! Baby is due to come the end of August (the 25th). Both John and I are super excited, this is something we have wanted for a long time!

We have had several doctor appointments, and both baby and myself are doing very well. At our last appointment (this past Friday) the doctor was having difficulty finding the baby's heartbeat so he used the sonogram to check baby. Baby was there are doing well - he was having difficulty finding baby's heartbeat because baby was moving around so much! John got to look at the monitor first and as I lay on the table I jealously listened to his exclamations of excitement! He was able to see baby's head, body and even saw fingers and baby was "a wiggly thing" according to John. lol Once I could see the monitor I could pretty clearly see the head and body and boy was baby really moving! It was the most amazing thing to see baby moving so much, my heart was jumping for joy, I felt so blessed and grateful for this amazing privilige we have been given.

We also scheduled our first official ultrasound for April 6th. The doctor will check that all the organs are present and growing and hopefully we can find out if baby is a William Thomas or Elizabeth Rose! They have a huge screen on the wall and we will get those fantastic ink blot like pictures to share!

Things are going well for us, we miss all our family in both Tennessee and Kentucky - we love you all!

Testing

This is a test blog!

We have had an amazing! We spent a few days in TN with my family, and then we went to KY to visit John's family. We are reminded how blessed we really are!