Taking you where the guidebooks don’t

After years of hoping and waiting, and eighteen hours of flights, we finally made it to Beijing. It was coming up on midnight by the time we checked into the hotel and made our way up to the room.  Excitement about the trip and anticipation of meeting our daughter had worn off; we were completely exhausted and nervous about being in an alien culture. And we really needed to use the bathroom.

I put the key in the door and opened it. Our room was dark, so I flipped the light switches. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. With the dim light from the hallway, I could see there were instructions above the light switch, in Chinese...

This is the point where the travel guidebooks and your adoption agency’s preparation stop being useful, and you have to figure things out for yourself.  That’s where this site comes in.

weninchina.com gives you the practical how-tos about your China adoption travel experience, supplementing what your adoption agency has presented. We don’t get into adoption paperwork, process, or politics here, but we do get into what kind of shoes to pack, how you get breakfast, and where to exchange your money.

We aim for this site to be the first travel resource adoption agencies’ China programs refer parents to. This site will be continually evolving and expanding, and with your feedback, suggestions, and photos, we can help our fellow traveling families have a great experience.

If we can save you the ten minutes of fumbling around in the dark to figure out there’s a slot above the light switches to slide your room key card into to activate the electricity -- like I did --, then we have removed a stress and made your trip a little bit better.