Phase Two – From Beijing to Nanjing

So we successfully bowed out of the trip to the Imperial Summer Palace much to the dismay of our logistics director Jack but gave ourselves plenty of time to be organized and ready for our next phase – on to Nanjing and to our son.

But first – we were joined by other families! Carol from Md (her daughter Emily is at home with her grandmother) and the Dickersons (Stephanie, Chris and their daughter Morgan) from Connecticut. We got to meet each other and catch up over breakfast – so nice to get to meet after hearing about each other from our agency.

We did have a bit of drama at the airport – after parking and hauling all of our stuff in two different vehicles to the airport – it turns out that only one of the families was actually flying Air China in Terminal 3 and two of us were on Hainan Airlines in Terminal 1. So we had to haul all of our stuff to Terminal 1 which turned out to be several kilometers away. No taxi would take us – so we had to take a shuttle and we were cutting it a bit close running back and forth throughout the airport with cartfulls of baggage. Once we got our stuff to the right terminal and the right check in line one of our checked bags kept setting off the alarm. So the staff had to examine the bag and all the contents – send it through and the alarm would set off again. We think it might have been either the zipper or the handle. But Jack and Greg and the airlines staff were all trying to figure it out -- they actually had them come behind the counter and translate an explanation of all the contents (baby food, baby medicine etc etc). Never did figure out what was setting off the alarm but finally they let it through anyway after much lobbying by Jack. When we finally finally finally got to the gate they were boarding the last passengers. So it all worked out fine just like we all knew it would – but my body would not believe my mind – my heart was racing and I was tense. Jack, poor man, felt so bad and was sweating like crazy. Christina, our tour guide of all things, was very calm and helped Jack tremendously, she was a champ. All of us, meaning Carol, Greg and I were all in middle seats in separate rows but so what – we were on the plane to Nanjing! And it helped us bond with Carol, she’s great.

posing with Jack in Beijing:


We love love love Nanjing! Of course that means what we saw of the city on the drive from the airport to the city center which took about an hour. Nanjing seems to be a mixture of DC, LA, San Francisco, Miami and New York all in one place. Aggressive angry drivers – many lights were flashed and horns were blared. And this was Sunday night!

Our hotel is fantastic! Very posh and sanitized water available sink side for brushing of teeth! We have a little crib in the room! Tomorrow we are to head to the government offices at 2:00 PM to meet and receive our little son at 2:30 PM. We cannot wait! As you can tell by the number of exclamation points I have used in this post just how excited we are – but our little man is going to have a rough travel day of five or six hours traveling by car or bus to meet his mama and daddy – right at feeding time!