We left our house on Thursday and stayed in Seattle. The Friday 20 Feb flight from Seattle to San Fran was fine and left us with only a short layover. At 11:00am we left San Fran and flew the great circle route over Alaska and Siberia. The flight was looooong. The ride got real bumpy over the mountain ranges in Alaska and Siberia. The weird thing was that the entire flight was in daylight which made it hard to sleep. The first six hours was ok; the last six lasted forever but eventually we landed at Beijing at 3:35 pm (Saturday). The layover in Beijing was 4.5 hours; it took us a little bit to figure out that we had to take a fifteen-minute bus ride to another terminal. We finally left Beijing at 8:00pm and arrived in Changsha at 10:15 pm. We got to our hotel at 11:00pm Sat.
The hotel is a stunning 5 star high-rise glass building. We got up the next morn and bumped into some other adoptive parents at breakfast. One of the other families is getting a daughter from the same orphanage in Chenzhou. Our guide (Anna) took us to the local Hunan Provincial Musuem which housed the artifacts and burial remains of a princess from the Han dynasty (2100 years ago). Some pictures are posted (sorry, couldn't bring myself to take a picture of the princess). The history is mind-boggling. The artifacts are incredibly preserved.
We later met up with the other two families and went to the local Walmart (yes, we did). The airlines lost on one of the families’ baby suitcase and had to replace baby clothes and gear. The store was packed. We were able to pick-up up a few things but really can’t buy too much until we figure out what formula the nannies recommend for Amelia Tingyu.
We went to dinner at a local restaurant and struggled to order. Most simply settled on the pork or noodles by pointing to the pictures on the menu.
Today is Monday morning. The Chenzhou babies are being driven up so we won’t get to see her until about 3:00 pm. That gives us the morning to take care of some of the logistics and paperwork. I’ll post as soon as we get back from picking her up at the Civil Affairs office.
No comments:
Post a Comment