Home at last

Sunday update: We arrived home from China on the 15th and we’re still trying to adjust to the time difference. Journey is busy discovering her new home and becoming acquainted with her toys. She has been sticking pretty close to me but today she was willing to venture into other rooms by herself and actually let me out of her sight for a few minutes at a time.

As our friend Lauren wrote on our blog, our computer crashed and we were unable to blog or check email, so I thought I’d share some of our experiences in Guangzhou. We flew from Nanning to Guangzhou on Friday night, the 9th. Our hotel was absolutely beautiful. We arrived late on Friday and had to be up early on Saturday for medical exams for the babies. That was quite the experience, lots and lots of babies getting poked, prodded and measured and not enjoying it one bit. Journey was quite the trooper even after she had to get 5 shots. The heat and humidity followed us to Guangzhou so we didn’t venture out of the hotel very much. We did visit the zoo on Tuesday morning and it was very beautiful with an abundance of trees, plants and flowers. Unfortunately, because of the heat, most of the animals stayed in their covered areas and probably thought all the visitors were crazy to be wandering around in such hot weather. Tuesday afternoon we had an official trip to the US Consulate where we had to take an oath swearing the information we provided was true and that we would take good care of our little girl. This visit was also part of getting Journey’s immigrant visa and our last official business before returning home.

We were able to see more of Journey’s personality during the second week of our trip, which was quite an eye-opener. During the first 5 days she was pretty docile and slept a good part of the time. After arriving in Guangzhou she began to come out of her shell and we experienced a couple of episodes where our sweet little girl became a crazed demon. We found out she can throw a very impressive temper tantrum, but this usually only happens when she’s tired. We also saw more smiles. One evening we visited the swimming pool and she really enjoyed playing in the water and gave us her first laugh.

The flights home were long. We flew to Beijing on Wednesday night and didn’t check in to our hotel until 11:30 pm and then had to leave for the airport at 5:15 am on Thursday. We were able to use our miles on American and get seats in business class so we would have a little more room on the long flight from Beijing to Chicago. We even got 3 seats so Journey could sleep in one and we wouldn’t have to hold her for hours. Unfortunately, she didn’t like that idea and insisted on sitting in my lap the entire trip. When we changed planes in Chicago, she became a happy child and was smiling and really charming the other passengers and flight attendants. Journey officially became a U.S. citizen when we touched down in Chicago.

Overall, our adjustment to our new lives is going well ~ Journey is getting used to her new surroundings and Doug and I are building up our stamina in order to keep up with one very busy little girl. More later . . .