Ni’hao Y’all

Glory to God the Williamson’s made it safely to China! We are tucked in nicely at the Park Plaza hotel and it is 8:48 a.m. (13 hours ahead of my Alabama CST folk).  We arrived in Beijing finally at 12:40 a.m.! We were scheduled to arrive at 10:30 p.m…we missed our connection in Hong Kong due to a late take off in Chicago. Then our rescheduled connecting flight was delayed over an hour. We couldn’t get the emergency number to our guide company,who were to pick us up in Beijing, to work on our phone. We called our travel agent back in the States, Sue, and left a message. Eric was wise enough to actually email her the specifics of our flight information and so we were met at the airport by a precious lady named Lydia, who is our guide while we are here in Beijing. I was so stressed that the company would not receive word of our flight carrier and time change, meaning we would have to find and pay for a ride to our hotel at 2:00 a.m. But Sue got our messages and came through for us, which is why we wanted a travel agent for this trip. We finally arrived at our hotel at 2:30 a.m. After checking in we tore open our bags (it looked like they exploded actually) and sought out pop tarts, peanut butter and crackers, fruit bars and goldfish. We all took showers and then fell into bed around 3:10 a.m. The boys are still sleeping but I am up due to an achy back that did amazing well on the trip I must say (more glory to God there). We are planning to bum around the hotel today and at 4:15 we will be met by Lydia again to go see a Kung Fu show (Noah’s super excited and this was planned especially for him). The show is about a little boy who is orphaned and is taken in by monks and taught Kung Fu and I think becomes a great hero or something warm fuzzy like that. So nothing thrilling to report right now, just that God is so faithful and we arrived safely. Please keep praying for our family. Love and joy from the other side of the world. Here’s a couple pictures of the journey!

This is the Williamson’s at the Birmingham Airport at 4:30 in the morning…

Yes this is the Travelocity Gnome. We met up with a sweet couple also adopting from China (Ashley & Mark), they were on our flight. We met them for lunch at the Chicago airport before getting on the plane. Loved them, can’t wait to catch up with them in Guangzhou! (The Gnome is theirs, notice how we have his hat pointing to Hong Kong).

Another smiling Williamson photo before boarding the plane in Chicago.(You won’t find any more smiling family photo’s in Hong Kong or Beijing on this day). While we were at Chicago (for 5 hours) we scoped out the airport and the Hilton Hotel. Since we have a 7 hour lay over on the return flight home we checked on rates and availabilities of a room at the Hilton that is attached to the airport. Praise Jesus we got a “day room” reserved for only $79.00! I’m thinking that will be the best money spent on this trip. After that we found the Brachiosaurus replica in the airport and later the boys went to find the playground/children’s museum to waste some time.

It was actually a 15:08 hour flight, but the mileage is correct. You can’t see the whole flight path yet but we went up and over near the polar cap and down.

Some important things to note about this picture…first is that we are just coming over Russia and are only half way there. Second and more importantly is that do you see we actually have to PASS Beijing to get to Hong Kong!! That was so hard on our hearts and psyches' ! It’s 3 hours between the cities.The last thing to note is how close we are to this screen…these pictures have not been zoomed. We are actually right behind the wall this screen was mounted on. Praise the Lord! We were spoiled, we had lots of leg room and nobody could lean back on us. We had some standing room (as long as we didn’t block the screen), and the bathroom was right in front of us. We sat by a woman with a 10 month old boy named, Justin. He was precious and perfect the entire time, but his Momma had to hold him almost the entire time. I wondered if that wasn’t foreshadowing for me… She had a bassinet set up in the wall in front of us, but he was rarely in it. It is weight rated for 25 lbs so we are going to see if we can get the same seats on the way back.

Speaking of precious and perfect…here is our amazing son at about 11:30 p.m. on the flight from Hong Kong to Beijing. He slept about 6 hours on the flight to Hong Kong so that was great. Noah never once complained about the travel. At one point on this last flight when we had one hour left I leaned over and said, “Are we there yet?!” I was being funny but Noah calmly replied, “I’m not going to even answer that, and I have not asked that question once on this trip.” He was so serious and he was correct. We praised him lavishly for this truth...30 hours of travel and literally not one complaint. He even tried most of his horrible airline food. I am so proud of him, he did beautifully. What an incredible young man.