We Made It!!!!

After about 24 hours of travel, Mia and I finally arrived!!!! We had a 4 hour delay in Chicago, on top of the 5 hour layover! We were pretty road/air weary once we arrived in Beijing. Mia did sleep most of the flight, which I'm not sure was a good thing or bad thing, since she only slept 3 hours last night! I slept off and on. The "Economy" seats were not nearly as nice as the "Premiere Economy" ones I had on my first trip over to adopt Mia. NO leg room....it felt like the person in front of me was in my lap when she was in reclining position! Once we arrived, we were whisked away by our guide to the hotel and had to immediately go to an Orientation Dinner....no shower, no changing clothes, no nothing. We were 30 minutes late and they are very concerned with staying "on time". We met the other families and it was very nice to finally put names to faces of many people we have been communicating with via e-mail. Mia was particularly excited to meet "Cat". Mia and Catherine were at the Gaozhou Social Welfare Institute and adopted at the same time and are the same age. Her mother, Deborah, and I have kept in touch off and on since then and we saw them a few years ago when our group met for a fifth reunion. Mia and Cat had been e-mailing one another. They met and became fast friends as though they had known each other for years.

After the dinner, we came back to our room and tried to get somewhat organized. Mia fell right to sleep around 9:15 p.m. However, she woke up at midnight and never went back to sleep. I did manage to sleep all night, other than when Mia was pestering me to say she was "bored" and "not able to go back to sleep". I just kept telling her she could read or play her DS Lite. Somehow she made it through the day with only a short nap on the bus.

This morning we went to the "Temple of Heaven", a holy place for the Emporer to visit. This afternoon we saw "The Forbidden City". That was very spectacular, but entailed a LOT of walking. As we expected it is very hot, humid and smoggy here. But we did fine overall. Tonight we had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and it was very good. Mia and most of the kids are swimming in the hotel pool now (always the highlight of staying at a hotel). They are so cute in their little caps. The hotel requires they wear these.

In one picture are all the kids from the five families in front of the "Temple of Heaven". The girl to the right of Mia is Cat. There are 17 total in our group, which is a good size. There are five girls age 10 1/2 to 12 1/2 and they are all getting along very well.

So far, other than fighting the jet lag, we are really enjoying it. Tomorrow is The Great Wall! M & m

Melinda