Ni Hao!

Greetings from Beijing!

We left the house 24 hours ago and have finally arrived at our hotel in Beijing. Thanks to wonderfully smooth skies we had calm flights but to be completely honest; it sucked.

It sucked bad. We both catnapped a few times but total we slept maybe 3 hours of the 14 hour flight.  Ten hours in I thought we should be here and then realized we had 4 more to go. 

For someone who doesn't care for movies, can only watch a show on TV once and can't read while moving (car or air) being in an airplane while in a seated, upright position was about the closest thing to cruel and unusual treatment I hope to ever encounter. 40 channels on video entertainment and nothing on; you can only put the same Discovery show on 5 channels before I figure out that I'm not actually watching 5 different Discovery Shows. Worried you might miss the movie on channel 1 if you flip through looking for anything interesting to watch? Don't worry, you'll pass the same movie about 4 more times.

My brain has mentally blocked out the part that looks ahead to the future.  We aren't even thinking about the fact that we have to it all over again in 17 days and this time with a child whose never flown before.
Future PAPs flying on United-
Economy Plus is completely worth the money and the food was actually decent. It's been 15 hours since I ate the first meal they served and my digestive tract is still in tact so in addition to tasting decent I guess it was actually OK for me as well.
Also, I am usually cold but today I was hot everywhere. The planes were hot, the airports were roasting and our hotel room? Well, let's just say I am firm in my belief the Man upstairs. Why, you ask? Because we were put into a room that has opening windows. We just have to deal with the traffic.

Only 12 more hours until we leave to meet our newest daughter! The excitement, anxiety, nervousness and anticipation are just about enough to make me sick each time I think about it.

The plans have changed a bit- instead of going to the orphanage and getting her tomorrow and then finalizing the adoption Friday morning we will now do it all in one day. Our formal adoption date is 1/28/10.

Her nickname is pronounced yah-yah, somewhere between YaYa sisterhood and wha like whammy. She said if we say yaya like the sisterhood she will understand. She also told us the literal translation for ya-ya is "doll".

Oh- and her favorite food is egg fried rice; she will make friends with Matthew quickly. J

 

Hopefully we'll be able to hop on skype tomorrow morning, we have to leave the hotel at 8:30.