Our Travel Journal: We are in China!

We made it!

We were delayed an hour and a half in Hong Kong due to weather, nearly an hour of which was spent sitting at the gate waiting for clearance to taxi. It was at least 75 degrees in the airplane the entire flight, for some reason, so we were very glad to get to Zhengzhou.

We made it through everything at the airport just fine, and came out to the main lobby to find....no Candy (our coordinator from AGCI). Fortunately, we had her cell number and Wen Ling called her up. Turns out we came out from an area that they hardly ever use, and she was waiting for us at the gate that they DO usually use. It was fine and we weren't too worried about it anyway; we figured we'd find her eventually.

She had a van and driver waiting for us. As near as we can tell, he will be available to us anytime we want while we're here.

We talked to Candy some, although it was hard to carry on a conversation in the van. We'll get more details tomorrow, but she did say that Leah is back at the orphanage; Gotcha Day is still 4:30 on Sunday; and we'll go to Luoyang on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The hotel is a Holiday Inn and it's nice, although the room is very small. It does seem a little odd to be in a hotel where the sink is placarded, "Water it not potable until boiled." There was some confusion when we checked in about how many beds and how many rooms we needed, but after much spirited discussion in Chinese between Wen Ling, Candy, and the desk clerk, it seemed to get worked out.

Then, as we were putting our suitcases away, there was a knock at our door, and we opened it to find two housekeeping staff members with a crib, which they promptly carried into our room. It seems that somewhere in the bed and room discussion, it came up that we were adopting, and they must have assumed we were getting an infant. We couldn't communicate with the people who brought it in, so we just smiled and said thank you. Wen Ling got it all straightened out later, and we are now crib-less once again.

We went to dinner in one of the adjacent restaurants, which turned out to be VERY nice. One of the many servers (he regularly brought around different kinds of meat to the table) was very tall and definitely not Chinese. Turns out he was from Brazil; and I have no idea how he came to be working in the middle of China. Non-Chinese people are few and far between in Zhengzhou.

Zhengzhou is very smoggy, and our eyes hurt. Tomorrow, after we hopefully sleep in, we're going somewhere sightseeing for part the day. We had to come to Zhengzhou a day early because there were no flights tomorrow, so we're going to try to make the best of it while we wait for Leah.

Molly loading suitcases while I bark orders and man the camera: