Sunday June 14th

Sunday June 14th

We flew today from Beijing to Guangzhou.

 

 

 

 Taylor and I had the pleasure of sitting next to a not to nice smelling person. Deodorant and showers seem to be optional around here. Taylor kept taking out her beautiful day lotion and sniffing it to get rid of the smells....

 

 

Traveling again today took a little toll on Jack. He got quite upset going through security. First he was searched with a wand, then his bag got searched and the Chinese have a habit of talking quite loudly as if they are yelling. They are really just talking but it is a bit overwhelming at times. All that and lack of sleep, jet lag and he said he just wanted to go home. But in the end, all is well and he is back on track.

We were picked up by Simon, our wonderful guide and brought to the beautiful hotel. Simon has great connections here and was able to get an incredible deal for us to have a 3 bedroom apartment in the 5 star hotel. We have a full kitchen, huge living room/dining room area and it's 2 levels.

So nice considering we will be here over a week. Kids got to swim in the pool this afternoon and were very happy about it. Guangzhou is extremely hot and humid. Just how I like it but it is a bit overwhelming when you first step out into it. I guess it would be comparable to St. Louis humidity in August when it's 100*'outside.  We decided to head out for Vietnamese food for dinner- a little of a break from Chinese food but it was quite comical at dinner. No one at the restaurant really spoke English and our Chinese is almost non existent. I kept wanting to speak vietnamese to them but it wasn't working either. My mom finally broke down laughing after she was forced to try and eat with chopsticks because they had no forks at the restaurant. We finally managed to get her a big spoon:)

Tomorrow is finally the big day. We will meet Liya tomorrow Monday around 2:30 pm which will be 1:30 am Sunday night central time. Everyone is so excited and we have been asking Simon all kinds of questions about her. He told us a very touching story when we arrived today about her. He said that Liya told him she has been saving all her money up and has bought us all gifts. When I asked him how she got money he said, every year at Chinese New Year they give the kids a little bit of money. So this year she saved that and they also give the children a little money when they leave the orphanage. What an incredibly thoughtful child! We will meet her tomorrow and take her back to the apartment with us tomorrow. She will be with us the rest of the time. We will spend time this week applying for her passport, getting her medical check up and on Thursday we will all drive to her orphanage and spend one night in her home town city. Originally Mike and I were just going to go but Simon arranged for us all to go and I think it will be a great experience for Taylor and Jack. So they will get to see where she spent the first 7 years of her life. The orphanage is about 3 hours away (one way).

I hope everyone is enjoying our blog. Katie my sister in law is nice enough to post for us everyday. Everything is blocked here in China. We can't access Facebook, certain web pages, no google and certainly no blogs. So we have been emailing her everything and she posts it. So we are not able to read any messages you are posting. It will be fun to come home and read it ourselves and see the posts from all of you.

Our plan tomorrow is to have my mom video tape our first meeting with Liya. Hopefully our wifi will cooperate and we will be able to include some video tomorrow!

We would appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers for us tomorrow and the rest of our time here. We can only imagine how nervous and scared Liya must be. We are praying for her to have trust in us, open her heart to us and allow us to love her. So many thoughts and emotions going on right now!

Thanks to all and good night!