August 14th-16th

Exodus 23:20

See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.

We are in China! We have now said that to each other at least 100 times. We made it, our luggage made it, and we are EXHAUSTED! I will go back to Monday for you all. We were planning to leave our house at 1030am. At 9 I zipped up the suitcase, wheeled it to the door and looked down to see INSIDE the suitcase. The seam had busted. You know all my carefully planned out light packing list? I guess it was not so light. So mark hurried to my parents to borrow their large suitcase and I started repacking. But I started stressing because of course i had it all in their so perfect, i had worked on it for weeks! He ushered me out of the room and repacked it all himself! But when we tried to weigh it, we knew we were in trouble. It was 60 pounds! I guess they had a heavier suitcase than we did. But no time to worry about it, we decided we would just pay the difference. We got to the airport w/ plenty of time to spare. Paid our $50 penalty for being over the weight limit, and said our good byes to the kids. It was So hard to leave them! But I know they are already having lots of fun in Branson. Made our way down to security, and my backpack went off. They had to search it, SEARCH ME! I guess they reasoned that I had used hand lotion that morning, which transferred to my bag when I zipped it up. I figured maybe they stopped me because I just looked to giddy! I was on my way to China! We flew St Louis to Denver, leaving just a little late. Denver to LA w/ a long layover. But in La we met up w/ Jeff and Annaliesa Gove who are from Portland. We had been chatting online through our agency. Their baby Evangeline is the same age as Sage and they have 3 bio kids at home. We had a great time chatting and getting to know them. At midnight we finally left! The plane was very nice. We were in Premium Economy, which meant larger seats, more space between, headrests etc.. I have to say, I expected the flight to be hard, but it was MUCH harder than I imagined. Regardless of the seats being bigger than economy, I still can't sleep sitting up! Even w/ sleeping pills, I did not get into a good sleep at all. I kept thinking, I don't understand how we are going to do this w/ a baby! I would look over at mark, who after he closed his eyes, NEVER changed positions, though he claims he did not sleep well, while i tossed and turned. We did get our first taste of chinese food on the flights. Dinner was pork and rice, which I stuck to rice since the pork was spicy. Raw shrimp w/ some other raw meat that we avoided, and a salad. Breakfast was really good, eggs, hashbrowns, sausage. After the 15 hour flight into Guangzhou, we had to fly into Beijing next. We made it through the airport w/ no problems overall. Well we did have some guy take us on a cart who had us very confused (Brenda, we tried to tell the men about the scams, they did not listen so we wasted our yuan on that!). Mark: "It costed us $2.50 and he took 4 of us over a quarter of a mile with all of our luggage. It was worth it!" But other than that, we found our way around ok and awaited our next and final flight of the day. We met up w/ another CHI family at the gate who are adopting their 3rd child. They have 3 year old Lilly w/ them who is from Hunan and just adorable! We will be seeing more of them tomorrow while we tour. The flight into Beijing went fine. Although we definately were the minority there! They served us lunch of noodles and beef and it was so good! We were met by a CHI rep at the Beijing airport, who took us all to our hotel which is the Radisson. She was telling us that Sabrina would be taking us to Hunan to get our "spicy girls". We should meet Sabrina in a couple of days. We had dinner w/ the Goves at The Hard Rock Cafe. The taxi ride was just as exciting as we were told! They just drive wherever they want, they cut into people, very scary! I just tried not to watch. Our 20 minute taxi ride was $2.00! After dinner we went to the grocery store which is next to our hotel. Stocked up on water, soda, and hangers. (not enough in our room!) Cheap, very cheap. I have so much to say, but my eyes are swimming. I have been very dizzy tonight and I assume it is from jetlag. We forced ourselves to stay awake all day so that we could get on China time. It is almost 8pm so we will be going to bed soon. Can you believe it, we are in China! How long I have dreamed of this moment. What would it be like on our flight, how would it feel to get my first glimpse of my daughters birthcountry. It was an emotional day. As we flew we had the personal screen showing us where we were. As we flew over Hunan, my eyes were filled w/ tears, we are close, So close to our baby girl! We have never been as close as we are now. I am where she is, and where she has been. Tomorrow we will tour the Summer Palace, i think. Hopefully i will be able to write w/ more coherent thoughts! Oh, and we are having some hotmail issues, so we are going to have to switch our email to mrlaxton@hotmail.com. We know we can pull that up, but we can't get into our Sage account for some reason. Please, write us! We treasure the messages we have been able to read in our guestbook. We feel we have already been gone so long, yet it has only been a few days. Good night from China!