Today started off with the usual slow wake up. Alia is not a grumpy morning person, but she stays kind of semi-comatose for the first fifteen minutes of each day. Shortly after waking up today Alia began to share her smiles and laughs with us. We thought that her smile was simply a straight faced teeth baring for. That was all we had gotten out of her before, but today we discovered that she has all kinds of smiles!
Children that come directly from orphanages we have noticed tend to be much less expressive the first few days of an adoption, almost stoic. As time progresses the children begin to show the whole range of emotions...so with the smiles and laughs also comes the screams and meltdowns...at moments we miss the calm, stoic days, haha!
Alia has a devious and sly smile. She curls up her lips into the biggest smile, baring her beautiful teeth. If you just watched her eyes alone you could see how she smiles with them too! Her laugh cracks us up too! She didn't respond to. Tickling the he first few days but now will laugh hysterically when tickled. She also loves to laugh when grabbing noses between her ring and pinky finger and when playing peek a boo. She is a blast (except when hungry or tired...as we type this she is having a meltdown to avoid nap time). Even how she finishes her meltdowns is funny as she just abruptly stops screaming and started snoring (just happened as I am typing, praise the Lord!)
Today was our last day in Guiyang, Guizhou so we took a final trip to the supermarket. It was fun to get out of our rooms before being bus and plane trapped. Their supermarket is a lot like a two story walmart, but includes a much cooler meat section (Jonathan thinks). Brittney was too grossed out to enter into the meat market portion. Dinner anyone?
This final day is also when we get back our children's passports. While batting .800 or getting a 80% grade may be an accomplishment, 4 out of 5 passports does not fly when traveling internationally. Although we has Alia's passport in hand, one family did not and it was obviously distressing to them. We all prayed together and waited together on our bus, stopping by the passport office on the way to the airport. The kids went stir crazy on the bus so we took them on walks back and forth on the street. No luck. We ran out of time and had to go to the airport without one of the adopted children's passports. Thankfully we had other paperwork indicating who the child is, so we were able to check in obit hour it. Just before going through security, the passport was hand-delivered! God has his perfect timing! For future adoptive parents, we found out later (because another family from our group in a different province had this happen), you can travel without a child's passport and they end up delivering it to you in Guanzhou. Not the ideal way, but possible.)
Our first airline trip. A dreaded day. A precursor of our impending 14 hour international trip. How was it? Short but rough. Pretty much every kid had a melt down at some point in the trip...misery loves company, haha! We practiced the art of bribery, distraction, and redirection. Alia especially enjoyed the introduction of her baby doll finally (she hasn't liked it much untill today) and loved the food service on the plane. The flight could've been worse but it didn't exactly give us much encouragement about the 14 hour trip (10 times longer than our 1.5 flight today). In one week we will wake up at 4am and travel on three flights (Guangzhou to Beijing, Beijing to Chicago, and Chicago to Louisville) for 19 hours of total flight time and a 30 hour long day...crazy, right?!? It doesn't help that Alia almost always prefers to be held by Brittney alone now...should be interesting! Lord, please help us!
After a 9:30pm arrival we walk a long, long way to our bus. You think American airports are big? We're pretty sure that Beijing and Guangzhou are much, much bigger. We has a nice bus ride to the hotel and finally got to bed near 11pm. We are staying at the China Hotel by Marriot which is huge and amazing...hopefully it's amenities will make the next week pass by even quicker!
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