and we're here!

We're in China! It was rough getting here. From flight delays to the actual flight to the transportation to the hotel... Put simply, I am relieved to have arrived safe and sound.

Today was a good day. We left the room around noon to go find lunch and a pair of shoes for Olivia. (She took off one of her shoes sometime during the chaos last night, and we didn't realize it until after we checked into the hotel.) We found a nice mall and had Papa Johns for lunch. It was awesome, and I've never been so happy to see a Papa Johns restaurant. We found a pair of shoes, too.

It's rainy today, but the area here in Shenzhen seems beautiful. (from what we could see from the cab ride to the mall) Our hotel is posh and feels like home (JW Marriott). The bellman wanted to inspect the room for us when we got in at 4:00 this morning. (Yes - 4:00am) We gave it a 2 second glance and explained it was gorgeous. We were more than satisfied. The staff is great - super helpful and accomodating to us non-Mandarin speakers. Everyone adores Olivia. I was warned to expect a lot of attention because of her, and the predictions were correct. She mostly stares at them, but occasionally smiles back and says hi.

Tomorrow we leave for Nanning, where we will meet Cora. I am grateful to have had a lazy day today, to adjust to the culture and the time difference. And lack of sleep. It just does not seem real that in a couple days we'll have another daughter. It has been hard getting here. We have been so distracted that we haven't had time to think about it - the reason we're here.

It's now around 8:00pm and we're ready for bed. If we hadn't just woken up from our four hour nap, we'd just call it a night. (probably not going to help the 12 hour time change adjustment)

I know you'd probably like to see pictures of us in our new surroundings, but we haven't even gotten the camera out yet. So here are pictures of our hotel. cheater




Oh! I forgot to share about one of our biggest blessings along the way... While waiting for our flight out of Detroit, we noticed a family with a young girl, evidently adopted from China. This family came up to us to say hi, because we were the only ones in the airport with a child, and their daughter was hoping to meet other kids on the flight. I asked the little girl if she was going to China, and if so, what she was going to do there. (I had an idea!) Yep - she was going to get a new baby sister (who actually turned two today!) This family was even seated in the seats directly in front of us on the flight. It was so much fun to share in the fun of us both adopting. We will be staying in the same area once we get to Guangzhou and are looking forward to meeting each others' newest family members!

That's about it for now. We'll have more to share from Nanning! Much more!