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New Day, New Province
Our focus today was on getting from Changsha to Guangzhou...funny how a 90 minute flight consumes your whole day! After a breakfast of sweet potatoes, French toast and beans, Junie was ready to pack up and say goodbye to her home province for the forseeable future; hopefully we'll be able to bring her back to visit someday. We left our hotel at about 12:30 for the Changsha airport...the airport there is not super big...a small waiting area, no info in English really in our terminal, so we did our combination of pantomime and broken English/Chinese conversations to make sure that we got on the right bus - crammed in with the rest of humanity - and then off the right plane. We got a nice thumbs up from a Chinese lady who apparently approved of the adoption : ) Our flight was a bit delayed - it was Junie's first flight ( a test run for the 14 1/2 hours home ), but she did just fine, enjoying the view, the peanuts, the tray tables, the turbulence.
We arrived safely in Guangzhou and endured a nauseating ride to the hotel - our guide had to pick up another family, so it was just us and the driver who apparently didn't want to KEEP his foot on the gas pedal - better to just tap it every 15 seconds or so and lurch along through the always-busy traffic until we arrived at what can only be described as an oasis - just as we prepared to enter the hotel driveway, we spotted it, our salvation, STARBUCKS! There will be a trip there tomorrow morning, for sure! To say the new hotel is awesome, would be an understatement. There are a variety of restaurants, a huge lobby full of shops, etc. If you didn't want to experience China, you could easily spend the day in the hotel, at the gym, the spa, the salon, pool, etc! Didn't think Junie would enjoy another night at a restaurant, so we did room service - best mediocre pesto pasta I have every had, after a week of faithfully experimenting with and (mostly) enjoying Chinese cuisine! Sarah was delighted with her cheeseburger and fries. Considering a McDonalds lunch tomorrow...then switch back to Chinese for dinner!
Our new room is great - we have a separate living room/bedroom...the bathroom is all marble and has separate doors for the toilet/rainshower/bath. We have some room to spread out! The beds are hard as boards, as usual, and actually are a bit smaller than at the last hotel. Pushed mine up against the wall so that Junie won't fall out - with the amount of room she takes up, though, I may have to cram myself into the little crib they provided for her. As always, we have already needed to request toilet paper. I am planning to hide whatever remains of the new roll when we go out in the morning, so that we'll be provided with a WHOLE fresh roll for the day!
We are headed for the dreaded medical exam tomorrow, along with getting June's visa photos taken...her immunization records look pretty well updated, so I am hoping that she does not have to endure too many shots. She'll also have the TB test, which will be read on Monday...we should meet a couple of other families tomorrow. One is adopting two older kids, and one with a little one. Will be nice to meet some other parents!
New Day, New Province
Our focus today was on getting from Changsha to Guangzhou...funny how a 90 minute flight consumes your whole day! After a breakfast of sweet potatoes, French toast and beans, Junie was ready to pack up and say goodbye to her home province for the forseeable future; hopefully we'll be able to bring her back to visit someday. We left our hotel at about 12:30 for the Changsha airport...the airport there is not super big...a small waiting area, no info in English really in our terminal, so we did our combination of pantomime and broken English/Chinese conversations to make sure that we got on the right bus - crammed in with the rest of humanity - and then off the right plane. We got a nice thumbs up from a Chinese lady who apparently approved of the adoption : ) Our flight was a bit delayed - it was Junie's first flight ( a test run for the 14 1/2 hours home ), but she did just fine, enjoying the view, the peanuts, the tray tables, the turbulence.
We arrived safely in Guangzhou and endured a nauseating ride to the hotel - our guide had to pick up another family, so it was just us and the driver who apparently didn't want to KEEP his foot on the gas pedal - better to just tap it every 15 seconds or so and lurch along through the always-busy traffic until we arrived at what can only be described as an oasis - just as we prepared to enter the hotel driveway, we spotted it, our salvation, STARBUCKS! There will be a trip there tomorrow morning, for sure! To say the new hotel is awesome, would be an understatement. There are a variety of restaurants, a huge lobby full of shops, etc. If you didn't want to experience China, you could easily spend the day in the hotel, at the gym, the spa, the salon, pool, etc! Didn't think Junie would enjoy another night at a restaurant, so we did room service - best mediocre pesto pasta I have every had, after a week of faithfully experimenting with and (mostly) enjoying Chinese cuisine! Sarah was delighted with her cheeseburger and fries. Considering a McDonalds lunch tomorrow...then switch back to Chinese for dinner!
Our new room is great - we have a separate living room/bedroom...the bathroom is all marble and has separate doors for the toilet/rainshower/bath. We have some room to spread out! The beds are hard as boards, as usual, and actually are a bit smaller than at the last hotel. Pushed mine up against the wall so that Junie won't fall out - with the amount of room she takes up, though, I may have to cram myself into the little crib they provided for her. As always, we have already needed to request toilet paper. I am planning to hide whatever remains of the new roll when we go out in the morning, so that we'll be provided with a WHOLE fresh roll for the day!
We are headed for the dreaded medical exam tomorrow, along with getting June's visa photos taken...her immunization records look pretty well updated, so I am hoping that she does not have to endure too many shots. She'll also have the TB test, which will be read on Monday...we should meet a couple of other families tomorrow. One is adopting two older kids, and one with a little one. Will be nice to meet some other parents!
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