Made it to Guangzhou..
It was a long day – we checked out of the hotel at 11 – went to the orphanage. This has to be the nicest orphanage we have seen. It is a like a small city – complete with a running track! Pictures to follow later. There is only 1 orphanage per city, which was surprising to us. They had a music room, separate buildings – really it was remarkable. Almost makes the required "donation" seem like it is going to the places it should for once.
As for Ellie – she did great with the whole trip – waived to some workers we knew, but held on to Dana for most of the time. At the end, her special nanny came to say goodbye…. Something we had requested NOT happen. This involved a bunch of tears on Ellie's part and made for a sad exit…. Her fit wasn't long, and there was candy involved, but it was upsetting for us nonetheless.
Off to the airport (note no naptime or lunch in these events). Security was a bit of heartache as Dana's passport number was on Rob's ticket. We didn't book these tickets, our agency did. They got a supervisor involved and all seemed OK. Nothing like being held up with a passport issue in China to make your heart skip a beat J The rest of security was fine, although they of course made Ellie take that precious backpack off, which proved to be a near on the floor tantrum – but backpack back on and 2 smarties later all is well.
We are all getting pretty hungry at this point – Ellie had just about exhausted our supply of cherrios we brought. Rob went scouting for some food, but none of the airport restaurants had take out – all sit down. We wanted to sit near the gate, so we ended up with pop, a candy bar, and a box of shortbread type cookies. There was nothing to be found in the pretzel type category. Most of the packages in the store were totally in Chinese and seemed to be meat or soup related.
Our flight was delayed – due to weather. We couldn't figure that one out, nice day here and there. On the board they just put "Delayed" – with no time. They had a hand written sign on the desk that said under new time "not fixed yet". Hungry, tired with no end date of departure – makes happy travelers. Ellie and Dana road the poor man roller coaster while Rob hung out by the gate. About 20seconds after we committed to going to a restaurant for food, they announced our flight – YEAH!
Bus to tarmac to plane uneventful, although very hot. Shortly after wheels were up, Ellie fell asleep and slept until we started our decent. We saved her food and had her munch on some as we were coming down.
A bit of a scuffle with our agency about hotels – classic example of REALLY bad communication, but we are in the Marriott that we had made a reservation for.
Saturday morning is medical – always a painful part for the parents in the adoption process. We are not looking forward to the TB test. US Consulate things on Tuesday – we are back to doing a bit of paperwork, which is always more exciting than waiting around, as bad as that sounds.
Pictures and more tomorrow sometime.
