One More Day!

Ni hao, friends!  Today is our second full day in China, so I thought I'd update you on all the happenings so far.  This will probably be a stream-of-conciousness post that I will edit later.  I've only had about 6 hours of sleep in the last 5 days, so I'll deal with grammar and making more sense when we are home, haha.

First of all, a big THANK YOU to our friend Deanna Peterson, who got up at 0'dark thirty to take us on a 3:30am trip to the airport! You went above and beyond, friend!  And I must add that we have seriously great friends, as no less than FIVE people volunteered for this task!

We left Denver at 6am and took the first leg to San Franciso.  Had about three hours of layover there, then headed out on the long flight to Tokyo.  It was very, very long, but Jim had upgraded our seats to the bulkhead, so at least we had a tiny bit more room.  The weirdest thing about it was that by the time we got to Tokyo it was 11pm our time and we were more than ready to go to bed, but since it was 2pm on a sunny afternoon in Tokyo and we still had hours to go, that wasn't happening.

Our plane to Hong Kong on a sunny Japanese afternoon, which was the middle of the night for us!

Killing time during our layover.  So happy we had our laptops.

Keelan took this photo in the restroom in the Tokyo airport.  It's to sit your child in while you use the bathroom, haha.

Another 2 or 3 hour layover there, then the final flight of the day to Hong Kong, which was much longer than I'd anticipated, being an almost 5 hour flight.  I wish I'd taken a photo of the man who was sitting by Justin.  He was an elderly Japanese man who just fell in love with Justin for some reason, tucking in his blanket, putting down his tray for him, showing him pictures of his family, and hugging him and holding his hand at the end.  I was pretty much a zombie by that time, and wasn't thinking so clearly, but it would have been a good photo opp.

We had to go through customs in HK, which took some time, and then we were off to get our luggage and find the van driver who was picking us up.  We stepped out of the building and almost couldn't breath for the humidity.  Totally insane!  I hereby revoke my long-time award of "The Sweatiest Place on Earth" from Miami, Florida and give it to Hong Kong!

It took much longer than we'd planned on to get into China, as our van driver was stopped at the border and told to pull over and take all our bags out.  So we're standing in a garage in China in the middle of the night, after being awake for two nights and having gained (or lost?) 14 hours, and we don't know what the heck is going on, and our driver isn't much help, and uuuugh.  They finally figured whatever it was out and let us go.  We got to the hotel at 1am China time, but by then it was late morning in Denver.  Not fun.

The next day (yesterday - Friday), we took a shuttle to the Shenzhen airport, not even knowing what airline we were on - all we had was the flight number from our in-China rep - but we managed to get that information, find our way through the airport, saw our first child in split pants, took a shuttle out to the plane to board, and had a short flight to Nanchang, Jiangxi, on which we were the only Anglo faces.  The lady sitting beside Justin took a liking to him (he must be cute, or something), and took several photos of him and her together on her iPhone, all the time waving at her friends across the aisle so they would see her sitting by the American kid!  They handed out meat-filled dumplings for the lunch, not a tiny bag of pretzels as on American flights!

Our plane from Shenzhen to Nanchang.  

Met our guide "Shirley" in Nanchang, and made it to the Galactic Peace Hotel by about 5pm.  If I hadn't spent so much time reading adoption blogs and forums over the last 10 months, I would have thought we would die on the way.  The traffic is nothing like any city in America by a LONG shot.  People don't drive in lanes.  They are in and out and pull out in front of each other and honk and honk and honk, and get within inches of each other both on the sides and in the front/back.  Meanwhile, the scooters and bicycles are going by, most with at least two people on them, weaving in and out or traffic.  I can't even begin to do this scene justice.  It is incredible.  The same scene is continually going by our hotel.  It just doesn't stop.  Shirley says there are 5 million people in Nanchang, and it is a sight to see.  I will post photos at some point (they are all on our various phones right now) of the endless sky-scraping apartment buildings.  Shirley took us on a walk to a grocery store (NOT your basic Safeway!) and it was just a sea of humanity.  I will get some photos on my good camera of this before we go.

Today it is raining, so we are hanging out at the hotel.  Jim and boys are in the pool right now - I really should go down there myself to get a glimpse of them in their swim caps, hahahaha!!  If it stops raining, we will go to McDonalds for supper.  Again, we will take our lives in our hands getting there!  There are two other adoptive families coming to this hotel in the next couple of days, so it will be nice to have them to talk to and for our children to play togehter.

TOMORROW is our Gotcha Day!  I need to write up a list of questions for our guide to ask the orphanage director when they come.  (They will bring her to our hotel room.)  I am so excited and happy to finally have our Caylie JiuChang with us, but also nervous, as I have no idea how any of this will go down.  But God does, and that's good enough for me.  :)  We were originally told by in-China agency rep that we would get her in the morning, but our guide told us yesterday that it wouldn't be till 4pm.  Ugh.  So now we will sit around all day waiting!  But, good news for you all . . . by the time you get up on Sunday, it will already have happened, and I will have photos posted.  :)

I think that is it for now.  Please pray for Caylie, as we were told yesterday that she was taken from her foster family and put in the orphanage a few days ago.  Some orphanages do this just prior to adoption, and I don't know why.  I was praying that this would not happen to her, but apparently it has.  So we continue to pray for our sweet girl's heart while she goes though not one, but two very difficult transitions in a matter of days.

Thank you for your prayers , friends.  We need them.