Chongqing to Guangzhou

Hello all. As you know we are tucked safe away in Guangzhou (GZ). We had a pretty uneventful Friday before we arrived at the airport. Hope was a little clingy, Noah was restless and I was out of sorts stressed about how to pack our bags again. I did get to take Noah swimming for about 45 minutes and that helped him tremendously. He has been such a trooper but today was especially boring and he was really ignored. Anyway, we got everything packed up and were off to the airport. Our guide informed us our flight was delayed about 2 hours, but he was going to try to get us on an earlier flight that would be only a one hour wait. We arrived at the airport at 3:15 pm. At 3:20 Michael informed us we’d gotten on a 4:10 flight. He was getting the ladies at the desk to hurriedly get us documents so we could get issued tickets at the baggage counter. We raced way down the hall to where we would drop off the baggage and were met with the unexpected turn of events where Hope and my flight numbers were wrong on the papers and the man made Michael run back down to the ladies and get it fixed and run back. We finally got boarding passes and it is like 3:50 pm. We race through security where Eric gets thoroughly frisked and then we race to our gate. Except we have to take a bus to get to our gate. The bus thankfully had not left yet. We pushed our way on, well Hope helped with that, people tend to give us some space when they see us coming. We got on and literally they shut the doors behind us. We drove to the plane and had to climb up the outside stair things with 3 carry ons, a backpack, shoulder bag, 21 lb baby and Noah. We settle in and I’m in my own row with two empty seats. Eric and Noah are a row back across the aisle. A flight attendant reached across to me and Hope to try to buckle her in a lap buckle that attaches to mine and some how Hope thought the woman was going to take her I think and Hope went NUCLEAR! Thrashing, arching…well you know the drill by now. The “kind” gentleman behind me actually asked the flight attendant if he could move. Nice. After about 10 to 15 minutes of this she calmed down. I now call this her Vietnam flashback mode. We took off about 15 minutes later and she did beautifully. Her and played and talked and giggled. Her only other freak out was when I asked for hot water for a bottle and they brought it to me in a dixie cup. I asked for more and he refused to go get it and insisted I give him the bottle to go fill. I told him she would scream but he didn’t know English. So she screamed till he got back and then all was right with the world. The flight was 1 hour 40 min. and she was super. We touched down, met our guide and got on a van for a 37 minute ride to the luxurious hotel. (I’ll post pictures later of the Hotel, waterfalls and our room). We checked in, and they kept decline both our credit cards because they were debit cards. We had to hand them $300.00 in cash to secure the room. Whatever. Later Eric checked our bank account and saw that each of the 5 times they ran the card it cleared, then they credited it back. Whatever. We checked in our rooms and then Eric and Noah went for McDonalds…of course. When we arrived in our room and the crib was already set up with a special basket of things for Hope. Apparently the hotel does enough adoption business that they give these baskets out to adoptive families.

When the boys got back from the late night McDonald’s run Eric informed me they ran out of anything beef. Okay…weird. So we ate cold chicken. Hope went down with a bit of a fuss but for only about 15 minutes. We all were in bed by 10 pm. The next day would be the medical exam that I was dreading. Why…well as you know Hope doesn’t like anyone but us touching her…so a full blown medical exam should put her into orbit. But that is my next post…Blessings dear ones.