Guangzhou

3/1/05

Wow, what a looooong day it’s been. Sorry I haven’t posted until now or uploaded any pictures to the website. That should clue you in on how busy we’ve been today.

After waking up at 5:30 a.m. this morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast, packed our bags, and headed for the airport for a 9:40 a.m. flight to Guangzhou. That extra piece of luggage I bought yesterday was packed solid. I’m not sure how we’re going to get our Guangzhou souvenirs home. Oh well, we’ll worry about that later.

We had an interesting snag at the airport. I bought a couple of small swords/daggers to remember Nanchang by (like I needed anything to remind me of that place) and packed them into a bag that we checked in. Security noticed them on the X-ray machine and Grace and I spent quite a long time convincing them that I wasn’t going to kill someone. I wanted to make a sarcastic statement to these guys like, “Well, I can carry them on if you’d like,” but I figured that would probably delay my trip to Guangzhou since I would be waiting on the next available flight from a lovely Chinese prison cell. I’m not sure what Grace said to them, but they wrote down my passport information and finally let me and my baggage board the plane.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for. Katie Lin did great for her first flight. She fussed a little bit during the ascent and descent, probably because her ears were popping. We tried to relieve her discomfort with a bottle which definitely helped. She spent a good portion of the flight in my lap playing with her spoon, a wet wipe package, and her bottle (which was her surrogate drum). It’s amazing what entertains little ones, isn’t it? We spend so much money on toys and they seem to get more enjoyment out of the package they came in.

After landing at the Guangzhou airport, we waited for an hour for our other Lifelines families to arrive from Changsha. Then it was off to the White Swan Hotel where we waited for another hour to check in. The best part of the wait was the fried rice I ate from a local coffee shop next door to the hotel while Lily, our guide, handled the hotel blunder. Yummy! It was the best rice I’ve had since my last trip to Taiwan. I’ll be back there tomorrow, I’m sure. Lily was kind enough to treat everyone else to pizza during the wait, but of course my goofy food allergies prevented me from enjoying the pizza with the rest of our crowd.

This hotel really is amazing. I can’t believe we’re finally here. After seeing so many pictures, videos, web sites, and TV shows about the White Swan, it’s surreal actually being here. There are literally hundreds of Americans and other westerners here with their newly adopted Chinese children. I’m in china-girl heaven. They are all beautiful, everyone last one of them. I just want to kiss them all (under the age of five, of course).

We spent about 30 minutes getting settled into our rooms before heading for the girls’ medical exams. Katie Lin is a healthy little baby. They said she weighed about 19 lbs., but that was with her heavy clothes on. I’d guess she weighs no more than 17-18 lbs. I’ll spare you the other stat’s. Let’s just say she measures up to my standards of a beautiful little China princess.

Then it was off to Lily’s room to do the U.S. paperwork. These were Federal Government documents so you can imagine how long it took. It was excruciatingly painful, but Lily did a great job of leading us through it as quickly as possible with her “cheat sheets”. I must say, she is pretty impressive. I can tell she’s done this many times before. We don’t even have to go with her to the U.S. Consulate tomorrow. She is going to handle everything for us. She is just one of many very talented, hard-working people at Lifeline Children’s Services.

After working up a serious appetite filling out so many forms, we all went to a local Tai restaurant. It was, without a doubt, the best meal we’ve had in China. I’m sure we’ll go back before we leave Friday. It’s only about a five minute walk. Many of you may not realize this, but the White Swan Hotel is located on Shamian Island. It is like an isolated city of it’s own with little shops, restaurants, a hospital and schools. It’s very safe and is full of Americans, so everyone is very comfortable here.

Tomorrow we will relax in the morning before going pearl and jade shopping in the afternoon. Pray for me, men, that I will be able to control my wife on this shopping spree. Hey, maybe I’ll keep Katie Lin while she goes shopping! Yeah right…Sonya want let KL out of her sight for more than 15 minutes at a time. Can’t say I blame her though. When you’ve waited and prayed for someone for so long, you want to spend as much time with her as possible. She is a dream come true!

God bless,

Jeff, Sonya, Drew, Ben, Katie Lin and Grandmother