We've arrived in Guangzhou!

We have arrived safely in Guangzhou and what a change of environment it is!  Driving away from the airport we said we felt like we had landed in Florida!  Palm trees, perfectly landscaped flowers everywhere, warm weather....wow!  Then to that beautiful mix we add the AMAZING hotel we are in.  Even bigger wow!  This morning as we were finishing packing I took a couple of pictures of our hotel room because I didn't think I had made a point to take any just of the room.  The only other pictures I took on that same camera today were of our new hotel room.  Goodness what a contrast!  Check this out....

Packing up at the hotel in Beijing.  Pretty much this was about it to the room.  One room with our king bed and Lydia's rollaway bed.

No wonder I was falling asleep blogging every night.  The desk was right there in the middle of the dark room where everyone else was sleeping.  I always had the computer screen as dim as possible and I typed in the dark, as not to disturb anyone. 

Leading out of the room was a small hallway with the coat closet and a little nook for the water boiler and some shelves.

Basic bathroom - sufficient, but nothing special.  The worst part was when the cigarette smoke from smoking floors would come in through our bathroom fan - even if the fan wasn't on.

Fast forward about 12 hours and this is where we are now!  This is the Garden Hotel in Guangzhou.  And this is just our room - tomorrow I will try to take a bunch of pictures of the amazing lobby.  There's even a waterfall and garden out in back of the hotel - we can see it from the window in our room.

Wowza!  What a room!  We have two rooms - a living room and a bedroom.

Looking back at the door in the living room

The bedroom with Lydia's roll away bed.  But the beds seem so much more comfortable!  All of them we have slept on so far have been varying degrees of rock!

The view of the other side of the bedroom.  Looks into the bathroom - and yes that glass wall looks into the tub/shower area!  There is a remote control shade that comes down over the glass!

Into the bathroom.  Sink and counter on the right.  Turn to the left and you'll get....

....the tub/shower room and toilet room!

Wow we are spoiled now!  Fresh flowers in the room too!

So we've improved our area slightly!  It was so funny after we arrived, TingTing was running around the two rooms like she was so surprised to have so much space!

She did great on her first plane ride today.  It's amazing to me that a little three year old can do as well as she did when she doesn't really understand where we are going or why, and we can't even really tell her.  But she went along with things pretty well and she came out still smiling on the other end.  She was pretty constantly busy through the whole flight, which makes me wonder what we are going to do for 14 hours in another week!  It helped that they served a meal on this flight - which I guess is common on China flights?  There was some food on our last China flight too.  So that entertained her for a while - never mind the fact that we had just eaten lunch before getting on the plane!  She also loved to look out the window when we were close enough to see the ground.  She looked out the window on her knees for the entire landing.  And the whole time she was saying, "Mama!" and "Baba!" and pointing at what she was seeing, or chattering on in Chinese! 

Looking and looking and looking out the window

We learned she loves sweetened plain yogurt

Showing her doll her wooden dress up toy!

 Gotta get to bed - I'm falling asleep again, even with the lights on!  Tomorrow morning we meet our guide at 9am, this time with a small group of families.  We've been on our own with our guides up until now, but we were told that there are several families from our agency all coming into Guangzhou with their children at the same time and that we are going to be a group of some sort to go through some of the consulate stuff together.  That'll be a nice change too I think.  We have very much enjoyed our freedom and being able to make some of our own plans.  But it will also be nice to meet some more families and see their children as well.  So we meet tomorrow morning and go to the medical exam for Lydia.  This is apparently a requirement for the US Consulate and for USCIS.


Three things we are thankful for today...


1.  That we got to leave Beijing and come to Guangzhou since we were getting pretty stir crazy in that little hotel room and in our hotel routine there.


2.  That we successfully got Lydia's Chinese passport this morning before going to the airport.  There was some question when we got to the passport office about whether or not it was ready, but the problems got smoothed out and we walked out with her passport.  Whew!  That would've caused some major problems if it hadn't been ready!


3.  That my sweet girls and parents back home seem to be doing really well and hanging in there during this very long time!



Thank you so much for your continued support and prayers.  Lydia has done really well so far, but we have also seen a couple of mostly subdued sad emotions.  She gets very quiet at times - mostly in the van like I mentioned before.  She also has had some fitful sleeping.  She hasn't woken up screaming or crying loudly, which we are thankful for.  But she does sometimes wake up in the night.  When she does, it's very strange because she doesn't call for us or make much noise.  She just sits up in her bed, and sometimes cries quietly.  Other times she's not even fully awake and she just rolls around back and forth in her bed and whimpers in her sleep.  Usually after some time sitting up and laying back down, she settles back in after getting a drink and using the bathroom.  We are really thankful that she hasn't had screaming fits in the night, but even just the quiet crying is different to deal with because of the language barrier.  It's hard to comfort a child without much language, and when they don't respond in their moments of sadness.  So continue to pray for her especially, that she would continue to make a smooth transition to our family and that her frustration or confusion would be quickly worked through.

Good night!