We Are In Guangzhou

We have arrived in Guangzhou and everyone is feeling great. The flight from Nanchang was fine. We all felt good heading to our third leg of the China trip. One funny aside: we decided to get some sandwiches to have for the flight since we had about 45 minutes until our plane boarded. For some reason, it took a really long time to get the sandwiches so the plane was boarding by the time that R and I came running back to the gate. That sort of threw us in to a fit of disorganization -- we had the baby, the stroller, the snuggli baby carrying thing, our two wheelie carryon suitcases, the diaper bag, and the big bag of sandwiches. It was just too much stuff to carry and the airline people were just looking at us probably thinking " these guys are a complete disaster". So after a bit of running around bumping into each other a few times, we ended up just throwing the sandwiches away since we couldn't carry them and we were so running around at that point. Then we had a funny scene on the airplane trying to find places to put all of our stuff. Then after we finally were all seated, the guy who was sitting at the window of our row wanted to move his seat (probably wanted to get away from the crazy people) -- so we all got up and let him get out and move to another seat. We got situated again and the flight attendants told the guy he couldn't move his seat. So we all had to get up again while the guy unhappily moved back to his window seat in our isle. It was comedy. I was sitting there thinking: ok, the baby has never been on an airplane before and we're the ones acting like travel novices!

But we finally took off and everything settled down at that point. The baby slept for most of the flight and only cried as we were landing in Guangzhou. This is a much bigger city than Nanchang and we all felt really good to be here. As with all of the cities we have been in, there was massive traffic getting from the airport to our hotel. The bus driver was very skilled at getting us to the White Swan Hotel in one piece. We had heard so much about the White Swan -- it's where most of the US adoption families stay. After getting settled in our room (which is awesome), Anli took all of us to get Visa photos for the babies. Then she gave us a quick tour. There are lots of good stores and I know R and Etu are going to have a good time buying baby things (in fact, they did a quick run into one of the stores and bought two baby outfits).

Everyone else in our travel group was tired and went back to the hotel to grab dinner in their rooms. We wanted to eat together so we had a quick dinner with Etu and Eugenio and the baby at a wonderful Thai restaurant. The baby slept the entire time on R -- it was such a happy scene. Then we came back to the hotel. We fed the baby a bottle and got her ready for bed. She seems so happy and it's just incredible to me that we are all a family and it's starting to feel normal. R put the baby in crib and I totally conked out on the couch. I was going to post to the blog last night but was so tired I could barely make it from the couch to the bed.

Today, we are going for the baby's medical exam -- a requirement by the US in order to get a US Visa. We'll post pictures from Guangzhou later today. In the meantime, I have posted a few good ones from Nanchang -- from our trip to the park on our last full day in Nanchang. More later.

J.