This baby has been around the world. And I can’t speak for him/her, but China was one of my favorite experiences. Here are the highlights.

Starting my journey from our little “international” airport in Illinois. Warning: my color scheme is going to stay pretty consistent throughout the trip. It’s a Chinese packing secret.

I arrive at the hotel. It is the next day at 6 pm Beijing time, and I have been traveling for 18 hours. I settle in with a pot of white jasmine tea in the hotel lobby and plan to stay up another four hours to curb the jet lag. The tea was delicious, but I was dismayed by the price tag – almost nine US dollars – until they gave me a jar of tasty macarons, flavored strawberry, lemon, and green tea. After I polished them off, I looked down and my belly is covered in little specs of pink, yellow and green macarons. It’s officially a crumb catcher.

I have a conference call before bed about 10:30 pm. My head is pounding, and the jet lag is starting to affect my brain function. Well that or all of these switches to choose from to turn out the nightlight.

This small bookstore had no less than twenty copies of the Steve Jobs autobiography and five advertising banners located throughout.

I am visiting just before the Spring Holiday (or Chinese New Year). Here is a group celebrating early with an impressively coordinated line dance. The concierge calls their “Happy Dance”. In this part of China, it is well below zero.

These columns are made entirely of blocks of ice and lights. They were breathtaking.

And now my tour guide, Mr. Lei, is bounding up and down the Great Wall, while I am huffing and puffing it. Photographs are an excellent excuse to stop and catch your breath. I take almost a hundred.

Well, there were steps for a while. And then, you are climbing broken limestone and chunks of ancient rice. Yes, that is correct. According to Mr. Lei, the only thing keeping the wall together is old sticky rice.

We are now 1100 steps up the wall. Mr. Lei asks if I want to climb the next part, which steeply rises up with no remaining wall to brace against. I point to my “crumb catcher” and tell him it’s probably not safe in my condition. (Save!) That’s when he first notices I am pregnant.* And down we go.

On the drive back from the Wall (it takes 1.5 to 2 hours from Beijing), we stopped at a Cloisonne that makes these beautiful Chinese vases and platters. They show you how they bend and then affix these tiny copper strips into small patterns on the vase and fill them in with enamel.

*I was fascinated by everything I learned about the culture. First, Chinese are particularly protective of pregnant women. Several noted – in a friendly way – that women don’t travel when they are pregnant. Oops.

One piece of advice I will try to take with me is that the Chinese believe that after birth, the woman must rest as much as possible and drink low sodium soup for at least one month to recover. True Chinese wisdom.

Also, most women return to work after they have a child and the grandparents provide child care. The Chinese women were particularly interested in how we also manage a career and children. It was topic that – despite some vast differences in culture – put us, at least during that conversation, on one single plane.