Zhengzhou!!


This is Ben playing the little Super Nintendo Tom brought. Not many exciting pictures yet. :)

Thursday  we made the trek from Beijing to Zhengzhou. George was great and took us literally as far into the train station as possible and explained everything we needed to do. On a normal day without three pieces of luggage, four backpacks and 2 extra bags, this would have been a fun adventure, but with the luggage, particularly as no other passenger had nearly as much stuff, it was a lot.  Add to that about 50% of a terminal just staring at you..pressure is on!! In a big city like Beijjng I honestly was not prepared for the sheer number of stares we got. Staring is normal in China, I have learned that already, but there is nothing like feeling like a hot mess with the spotlight on you. Not everyone knows about adoption, so some people are confused, and I would not doubt that with the current political climate people in China are not very pro-USA. Ben insisted on pulling our smaller piece of luggage, and he was incredible, pulling it onto the escalator behind him and all, but I also worried people were thinking we were making him pull this luggage! The train was spacious and fast, only 2.5 hours instead of 3, and they boys were pretty good. 
The in-country reps our agency has are truly the best, and George had greeted us this morning letting us know he and Rita were worried about us finding a cab, and could they hire a van for us? Um, Yes!! So we stepped off train, walked out of the terminal and were greeted by a CCAI driver who ruffled the boys’ hair and took Bens luggage from him (much to his dismay, haha). In 15 minutes we were at the JW Marriott ZZ. We are staying here until Sunday, as we had points to stay for free.  We were upgraded and received free breakfast and free executive lounge access, which means easy, free dinner that has things the boys will eat. We could have stayed throughout the ZZ part of the trip here, but we wanted to be with our agency families after we get our girl, so we will move to the Hilton on Sunday.  After we got settled, Tom went out and found gifts for us to bring by tomorrow, fruit he had gift boxed and other treats and sweets. It is midnight now and we may have gotten close to assimilating to the time change, except for me who cannot sleep more than 4 hours. Tomorrow our guide from Lotus Travel is meeting us in the lobby at 630am, so it will be one more long day before 2 days of rest. Praying this is a good experience for Evan, as he has been asking to come back for so long. I hope he gets loved on like he did the day he left. 

pictures from the plane...

 




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