Let the Good Times Roll

We arrived in Guangzhou yesterday and, for many reasons, it felt so good to get here.

Our experience at the Chengdu airport yesterday was quite stressful.  We experienced God taking care of us in the middle of what felt like total chaos to us.  There was a lot of fog yesterday morning, so none of the early morning flights had gone out, which created quite a backlog of passengers.  In addition, although the flight info board at our gate had some information in English on it, the status of our flight and what exactly we were supposed to do to get on it were quite indistinguishable to us.  By God's grace, we learned that our gate had been changed and made it to the new gate just as the bus was loading to drive people out to the plane.  If we had missed our flight and been stuck in the Chengdu airport, I (Keri) would have cried a river of tears.  Even when we got on the plane, we still had to sit on it for nearly two hours before we took off, but Sarah took her nap and they served us lunch while we sat on the runway, and at least we knew we were on the right plane.

Our guide, Rebecca, met us at the Guangzhou airport, and just arriving in the city lifted my spirits.  The skies were blue, the air was clean and fresh, and the scenery was beautiful.  We drove about 45 minutes to get to the island where our hotel is located.  We are staying at the White Swan hotel on Shamian Island in the middle of the Pearl River.  The hotel is amazing, the island is walkable with all kinds of fun restaurants and shops, and our room looks out over the river.

We had a good time in Chengdu, but most importantly, we got Sarah, we registered our adoption of her, and we got her Chinese passport.  Now it feels like we get to have a little vacation together before we come home on Thanksgiving Day to unite our family and introduce Sarah to her big sister and brother (as well as her MaMa and PaPa, who have now taken over the responsibility of holding down the fort while we are here, for which we are so grateful).

We had to take Sarah to the medical center this morning for a brief check-up.  Since our paperwork was logged-in in China prior to the Hague Convention, Sarah did not have to get any shots.  Hooray!  The doctor looked at the roof of Sarah's mouth and said it looked like her surgery had been done perfectly.  We obviously are waiting to hear what the specialist back at home has to say about the situation, but it was still nice to hear.

Sarah continues to do well and is bonding nicely with us.  She has a very sunny personality and a laid-back disposition.  She loves it when her daddy kisses her toes and flies her through the air like an airplane.  And she seemed to think she was a VIP when we put her in the stroller that our guide let us borrow for exploring the island.

I am so thankful to God for this sweet time in Guangzhou at the end of our trip.  After Sarah went to sleep last night, we celebrated our arrival here with a Magnum bar (my favorite ice cream treat from my time in Hungary -- what a fun surprise to find them here).  Earlier in our trip, when I was not having a good day, I had jokingly told Scott that he was going to have to bring Sarah back for her heritage tour by himself.  Now we joke that we'll all come, but we'll just stay in Guangzhou the entire time.
Even though we love it here, we are nonetheless greatly looking forward to coming home.  Thank you to everyone who is praying for us and loving on Hannah and Micah for us while we are gone.  It takes a village to adopt a child.  We are so thankful for the people in our village!  We love you very dearly.