On to Kunming!

Sunday, March 22, 2009

I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and couldn't get back to sleep... For one, I can never sleep well when I have an early flight. For another, I kept thinking about adoption details and about Ellie. My mind just kept racing. For still another, I didn't eat very much the night before so I was feeling hungry. At 4, I just went ahead and got up. Emmy joined me at 4:30. (She was so tired at dinner last night that she didn't eat very much then either...) The rest of the family awoke at 5:45 a.m. Even with such an early start, we were still scrambling to get packed up and out of our room to meet Lisa, our guide, at 7 a.m. We arrived at the Beijing Airport around 7:30, and we were hurried to check in and get to our gate. We took off around 9:15 and arrived in Kunming at around 12:30 p.m.

We were met by Helen, our new guide, and we checked in the Grand Park Hotel. After a little bit of confusion about our room, we were given two adjoining rooms, and we spent some wonderfully peaceful time on getting organized. We have all of the baby stuff set up and ready to go, and the staff delivered her crib right before we left to pick up some drinks for our fridge. I think that we have everything that we need, but we'll soon see!

We ventured out into Kunming which, by the way, is every bit as beautiful as all of the travel books said that it would be. The temperature was in the 70s today, and the flowers are blooming, and the grass is green-much like southern California :) In the midst of a local market, we discovered a Walmart! We went inside, and it was nothing like any Walmart that we have every experienced in the States. Employees called out to people to buy products, much like in the urban market area. The store was really, really packed, and we were elbow to elbow with other shoppers as we struggled to get into line to buy diet coke and water.

We were so hungry when we left Walmart so we headed back to the hotel to drop off the drinks and to get a cab. We had heard about a Pizza Hut, and we were eager for something familiar. However, blessedly, the cab dropped us off in the wrong spot, and we discovered Pizza da Rocco. It was soooooo good!! We even took a picture with the girls and Rocco. It's a wonderful, locally-owned place near Yunnan University. As we were walking around that area, we marveled at just how much that Kunming resembles Athens. We're so glad that Ellie is from here :)

The younger girls were already asleep at 8:15 p.m. We have been going non-stop so we're all just beat but still excited. Britti and I were going to upload today's pics (including the one with Rocco), but we're both fading so we'll enter them tomorrow, if time permits, after we get Ellie. We know that everyone's eager to see what she looks like now so we promise to do our best to get pics from today and tomorrow up ASAP.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support! We are so grateful that we're going to hold our littlest girl in our arms in just around 12 short hours!! More very soon--

Christie