Tired and Sore

Well sorry for the delay in getting a post out today, several factors involved, and where to begin.  We left Zhengzhou and flew to Guangzhou for the final leg of the journey. Our flight wasn't until 6 pm here so we had a long day of waiting and anticipation. Everyone was anxious to move on to a new city after 6 days in the Henan province.  I will say the sun finally came out and the smog/fog moved on so they do have pretty days there!  But if its that smoggy in January I hate to see it in July!  Any way, the final political step was to get Lainey's Chinese passport so she could travel and we received it just fine.  Getting through Zhengzhou airport security was another story.  I have never seen an airport that wants to look in the bags that you are checking!  Almost everyone in our group had something pop up on the screener at the ticket counter that set off the alarm!  For us it was the bottle of Lysol spray!  Some it was the tin of Chinese formula, we had one too, but they didn't mind it, go figure.  So they apparently won't open your bag if its in question like the U.S. will, you have to open it for them even though you can't get to it on the plane!  So that was a mess pretty much every family having to go behind the counter with one of our guides to be the interpreter for the security guy that was nice but knew not one word of english.  Then the plane ride.  Our the stampede to the plane I should say.  No one told us our plane was parked on the runway, not the gate so we had to hop on a shuttle bus and then get out on the windy cold runway to walk up the ramp to the plane.  So many of us had taken coats off babies and such to make them more comfortable not knowing a cold blast was ahead, let alone the mad rush off the bus from from doors to the one ramp to the plane! The locals are very pushy on a friday night and in a hurry to get home and didn't mind shoving us slow americans out of the way.  So that was fun.  Then the plane ride was completely full.  Laine was a trooper again.  She was in the baby bjourn on Christina and just kept woofing down cheerios! She ate half a plastic container plus a bottle.  Poor Christina had to change her on the plane.  Not only is that small with one person, but try it without a changing table that many U.S. planes have!  The toilet seat was the only flat spot!  Ask her about that one some day!  The flight was only two hours, but they had a nice meal and a movie!  While Christina had Laine and was giving her a bottle I had Christina's meal and was feeding it too her!  Quite the little production.  The movie was the Transformers part 2.  Ironically it was played in English with Chinese subtitles!  Odd huh!  But it was also full of not for little kids words that were not beeped out and it was played over the plane speakers so you couldn't turn it off!  So we get here fine and survive the mad rush to get off.  I think the last 20 people off the plane were all us with kids.  Everyone just blows by like a busy street no courtesy at all.   We met our guides for CCAI. We have Grace and Jason here.  We all boarded the bus for the 45 minute ride to the hotel.

Guangzhou is much larger 13.5 million people.  But its warmer!  Its supposed to be like being in Miami this time of the year.  There are palm trees everywhere.  The cold front came in with us but the low is still like 48! Balmy, pulling out the shorts!  Our hotel is the famous White Swan hotel.  Almost all adopting families stay here.  Its a large beast, 28 floors! We have a great city view from the 15th floor.  The room is nicely appointed with granite and fine touches.  But its slightly smaller than the last.  We still have the split beds, and oh the beds!  They are hard as bricks. I will go through lots of aleve this week.  It makes my back feels better but every other joint just hurts feels like I just finished moving into a house! We didn't get to the room until after 11 and then we had to try to get settled since we'll be here for 8 nights!  Ugh!  Today its the trip to the doctor for Laine.  She has to pass medical inspection so to speak!  She also gets some inoculations to enter the U.S.  Should be a fun filled morning!  She didn't fall asleep until after midnight so we are expecting a little crankiness.  Gotta run.