Arrived in Beijing (Days 1 & 2)

We left our house for an early morning trip to the airport, gently kissing our girls so not wake them (it is Sophia's first day back to school).  After a short ride to the airport, a quick checkin, and a brief plane ride to Chicago, we met up with some AWAA friends in Chicago.  They are adopting a little two year old boy (their first adoption and fifth child) from the same province as us (Guizhou).

We hung out at O'hare airport for about three hours, eating some deep dish Chicago pizza, getting to know our friends, and making last minute phone calls.  The whole check in and boarding process went smoothly and we loaded up.  Our stewardesses were so sweet and excited for our adoption.  They gave us lots of helpful traveling advice, telling us not to worry about the trip home or stress having a crying child on a 14 hour flight.

Our flight left Chicago around 1pm and arrived in Beijing around 2pm the next day (11 hour time change from CT plus 14 hours in air).  Jonathan managed to watch 5 consecutive movies and not sleep while Brittney got a few hours of rest in.  It was weird having the sun constantly up throughout our trip and to land with it still being the same time of day.  Our seats were exit row seats (nice leg room) but we had a constant stream of people doing the "potty dance" while waiting for the restrooms in front of us.  We had a special visitor every so often in a 3 year old Chinese girl who ran half the length of the plane back and forth about ten times.  She was precious, a reminder of our sweet Sophia and Lydia back home and our precious Alia who we get to meet in around 60 hours!!

We also discovered that on long fights the stewards/esses have a secret ladder they climb down into the belly of the plane to take naps.  After landing we walked and rode a tram/train to another terminal for immigration.  We were concerned that we would have a 1+ hour wait after entering into a 400 person blob of people with no discernible lines.  The Lord provided a nice policeman who snuck us to the front and we were through in just 15 minutes.  We then breezed through customs, without any inspections at all! Our AWAA guides easily found us with their signs when we exited baggage claim and then we met two more AWAA families before heading out on a bus ride to our hotel.

Beijing is HUGE!  Imagine a city of 25 million peeps, crazy big and spread out. Our hotel was only 30 minutes away but we enjoyed taking in the scenery along the way, just beginning to learn the culture of our sweet Alia.  Hotel check in was nice and easy too, our guides do everything for us!

After dropping off our bags, we discovered a beautiful flower arrangement and kind, heartwarming note from our guides.  We then exchanged some money in the hotel lobby Chinese currency is known as the RMB/Yuan/kuai.  Not sure why three names but have heard them all.  The exchange rate is 6RMB to $1 so $100 seems to magically multiple by 6...but so do the prices.  Yay to funny money!

We wandered around with our AWAA friends and grabbed some Baskin Robbins and hit up a Watsons for water bottles (think Rite Aid/CVS without the fill-up pharmacy and much smaller).  It was nice to have these stores in the hotel itself, so convenient!  We then went back to our rooms for bedtime and it is now 3am...getting used to the time change is interesting!

It has been convenient to have wifi (future adoptive families, a VPN account is necessary if you wan to access Facebook or Blogger, browsers work better than apps) to message family and friends.  Hopefully we'll get to keep updating this blog in the days ahead.

 We treasure your prayers for our travel but especially ask for prayers for our girls back home as they adjust to our absence and prepare for the addition of a sister.  We also appreciate prayers for Alia as Sunday will be the best day for us, but a traumatic day for her as she enters into the hands of different looking & sounding strangers.  We are so excited to meet her.  It is almost surreal...hard to believe we are finally here and about to meet our girl!!