We Made It Out!

Praise be, we made it out of Nanning after 8 long days! We had our final breakfast in the hotel restaurant of which we had become so tired, checked out at 10:45, and happily boarded the bus to Nanning Airport. It was about a 30 minute ride and, as she has all along, our guide Linda (in one of the accompanying photos) made sure all our bags were checked in for us and that we had the seats we asked for on the Shenzhen Airlines flight to Guangzhou.

The 1 hour flight was uneventful except when Colleen took out Sha Sha's sealable water bottle to give her a sip. What Colleen hadn't accounted for was the fact that this bottle's seal was air tight, and that the water inside was still pressurized at ground level; the air pressure inside a plane's cabin is set at 8,000 feet, significantly less than ground level. So, when Colleen broke the seal, all the water shot out out the nozzle and all over Colleen. I was laughing, but what really made me crack up was the middle aged Chinese across the aisle who thought this was about the funniest thing he had ever seen. As always, Colleen took the whole thing in stride and had a good laugh herself.

We landed at Guangzhou's huge, modern airport, got our bags immediately, and were escorted to our waiting bus by the White Swan Hotel's representative. An hour later, Colleen and I were back at the hotel we had stayed at two and a half years before when we got Emma. Talk about a surge of memories! Everything was just as we remembered. And, what's so nice is that this really IS a fantastic hotel, unlike the one in Nanning that just billed itself as a nice hotel but was in reality very bland. Linda checked us in and arranged for our bags to be brought to our room shortly.

We only had about 15 minutes in our suite on the 27th floor (see photos) before we had to head down again to take the girls to their medical check-ups a few blocks away (see photos). We took Emma on this same trip to the check-up, and this brought back memories as well. Sha Sha, as she has been since the day we got her, was wonderful...in spite of not having a nap and being flown across China in her first airplane ride. She's such a good soldier. She never complains, never cries, eats whatever is put in front of her (because we insist on her doing so, just as we have always done with Emma), and sleeps like a champ. Turns out She's 22 pounds at 18 months...a tiny little thing! Emma was about 21 pounds when we took her in for her check-up, but she was only 12months!

By now, we were exhausted, hot, and hungry, but we had one more errand to run: laundry. We returned to our hotel and went back up toour room to get all our dirty clothes and then take them around the corner to the place we used two and a half years ago, Jennifer's. They did a great job, folded our stuff beautifully, and didn't charge an arm and a leg. So our stuff is there, we're back in the room, Sha Sha is being hysterical is so many new ways, and we're expecting a thoroughly American dinner to be delivered from a transplanted Brooklynite who owns a restaurant called Danny's Bagels. We have a Philly Cheesesteak, small pizza, 2 soups, and a grilled cheese for Sha Sha. Thank God for American food...we're awfully tired of Chinese food as much as we do like it normally.

It will be so nice to get Sha Sha to bed, rinse off, and hit the sack to watch a little CNN, ESPN, or whatever. We're happy to be here, and keep this fact steadily before us: we're headed home in 4 days. For now,though, we're going to keep having a great time with our group and all the other American adoptive parents who stay here. More tomorrow!