Finally

I again want to apologize for taking so long to post. This blog has been an exercise in frustration while here in China! Our host country controls its internet access, and Blogger is a "forbidden" site, so finding a way around it took up the first few days. When I finally had time to post, we were too busy or too exhausted to sit down for the time it would take to really catch everyone up. Then, I have tried 3 different times to post, and 3different times it has disappeared as I have tried to save or create a draft after working on the post for 2-3 hours each time! Since I am not one to give up, I am going to try again! Only this time I will make my posts shorter, so please bear with me. When I first started this blog, I told you I am not a computer whiz, and I still am not!

Anyway, we left home on July 30th. The day before that we stayed up until 1:30 am packing and getting things ready. I was doing just fine and not getting nervous at all. I reviewed our paperwork for the 100th time to make sure we had everything, when I realized that there was a form that we needed to take with us that needed to be notarized! No big deal, except that it was 10:30 at night, and our flight left at 6am the next morning!! AAACKK!!!! I got on the internet and was fortunate enough to find an emergency notary that lived close to us. He met us at the local Quik Trip, and we were done in under 15 minutes! Thank heavens! There for a while, I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown! Anyway, the next morning we made it to the airport in plenty of time, and I was smiling all the way! I had fantasized about this drive for almost 2 years, and nothing was going to get me down!!!

We had a comfortable and uneventful flight to Newark, NJ, and the flight actually arrived about 20 minutes early. There was a 2 hour layover in Newark, where we were able to meet some of the families we would be travelling with and who were on the same flight as we were to Beijing. They are so nice, we knew we were going to have a great trip! Our flight to Beijing left on time, and it was just fine. Each seat had its own tv in front of it with on-demand movies and tv shows, and the food was really good. The seats were comfortable, too, even though we were flying coach. For anyone who will be flying to Beijing, I highly recommend flying Continental. We flew United when we went to China to adopt Makenna in 2006, and Bernie and I both thought that our Continental flight was better in every way-comfort, tv, flight attendants, food, etc. Plus, it was over $1000 USD cheaper! Of course, by the end of the flight all you want to do is get there- 13 hours is 13 hours, no matter how comfortable!!

When we landed in Beijing, we were all exhausted. We went through the "temperature check" and thank heavens we were all fever-free. We then made our way through the checkpoints to another terminal where we picked up our luggage, then we were to meet our CHI coordinator, Jessie, right outside the baggage claim area. It was a surreal experience-we are exhausted, hauling all of our belongings and a sleeping child, then you round a corner and there are at least 100 Chinese people waving 8x10 signs in every imaginable language trying to find their parties, talking, yelling and laughing really loud, while in the backdrop it is a huge terminal with thousands of people going in every direction and being very loud themselves. I was googly-eyed with fatigue, and we had to stop to focus on the signs-it was very confusing!!! Luckily, our coordinator found us and lead us to our group, where we met more families travelling with us. We loaded on a bus and headed to our hotel, which was very nice. We unloaded, went to a little shop for bottled water and some coke, then went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The sky over Beijing was very hazy, but it was from humidity, not pollution (like last time!). We were so excited to be there-the first leg of our trip was over!! We all went back to our room-by the way, did I mention that my Mom is with us, too? Everyone had a shower, I also had a sleeping pill, and the next thing I knew it was 10 hours later. Thus endeth the first day!

I am going to post this and write some more and post that, then maybe I can get the whole story out!!!