I'm back!!! It is 4:00 am in Guangzhou, China as I start this post. Too busy during the day....too sleepy at night. Here is the recap of the past few days.
Friday 10/28/16 continued
Our driver, Cindy, arrived at our hotel at to transport us and our luggage to pick up Milo. We ended up waiting in the lobby for quite some time because they came in a car instead of a van. The drive was about an hour to Morning Star which is located on the north side of Beijing. Morning Star is the healing home where Milo has been living this year. He is not actually from Beijing but from Yangchun in Guangdong province. After his first open heart surgery at 2 months of age, he was transferred to his first healing home, Little Flower, which is also located in Beijing. These homes have been so amazing for him. They have medically trained staff, loving ayis (nannies), and a small ratio of children to caregivers. I can not thank them enough for the love they pour into Milo and the other children there. Morning Star is located in a gated community. Looked very safe and well cared for. We were SO excited as we walked up to the house. Milo and the other children were outside in the courtyard playing with their ayis when we arrived so we didn't have to wait long to see his beautiful face. We spent around an hour there getting medical instructions, getting at tour of the home and visiting with the other babies. I have had the opportunity to connect with many of these sweet children's mamas online. They are working hard to get to them so I got some pictures of their babies to send on to them while they wait. Milo reached first for Dakota so that thrilled her! Milo is super-attached to his ayi so goodbyes were hard. He wept for a bit in the van as we drove off from the world he knew. Finally he slept peacefully.
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| Guards at the gate of the community were Morning Start is located |
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| Outside Milo's home |
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| There he is! Waiting for us! |
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| Dakota gets the first hold |
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| Visiting with the babies! |
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| Milo's sweet bed |
Now we were on a mad rush to make our sleeper train. And by mad rush, I mean sitting almost still in traffic. We went 9 miles in 2 1/2 hours. This is normal for Beijing. 23 million people. So many people. The train station was insanity. I mean just craziness. There are no formal lines in China. Whoever gets to the front is first in line. So that was interesting with all the kids and our luggage. Milo took it like a champ though and seamlessly fit in with our family and our craziness. We bought tickets for "soft sleepers" so we could all be in a compartment together. If you get hard sleepers, you are in triple bunks in a dormitory type environment. No thank you. We were starving by the time we got to the train station so we fumbled around trying to find food and finally settled on a fruit stand for grapes and bananas. Once we got settled in our compartment, we found out how to order food on the train and got some noodles for everyone (think ramen meets cup-a-soup). It filled us up nonetheless and everyone slept remarkable well. Our train left at 7:30 pm and we arrived in Nanchang (Jake's hometown) around 8:00 am.
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| The train station waiting area |
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| Bottom bunk of the sleeper train |
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| top bunks of our compartment |
Saturday 10/29/16
Our new guide in Nanchang is Shirley. She picked us up from the train station and got us to our new hotel. It is the Holiday Inn Nanchang Riverside. I had enough points with IHG to book our room here as well and only had to pay for the breakfast. They gave us a studio suite with a whole entire wall of windows overlooking the river. It is an amazing room. They even let us check in 5 hours early and offered us complimentary welcome drinks in the cafe. So accommodating. We didn't really do much Saturday. We were exhausted and felt like Milo needed some downtime in the room. So we just relaxed until dinner. It was a short walk to a nearby mall where we found a Pizza Hut for our first taste of American food since our arrival in China. The waitress was so disturbed when we ordered a pepperoni pizza and a cheese pizza. She repeatedly told me "not delicious." I tried to convince her it is MUCH better than Peking Duck pizza to no avail. They laughed at us the rest of the meal I am sure. We are hugely entertaining to everyone we come across.
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| Chillin' in the new room in Nanchang |
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| First bath! |
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| Can you tell who Milo's buddy is? |
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| On our way to dinner |
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| This is what happens when Dakota takes his fork. Bless. |
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| Cried himself to sleep in Pizza Hut. |
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| About to eat our delicious non-peking duck pizzas |
Going to have to leave you hanging for now. I'll try to post again tonight (your Friday morning) and let you see Jake!!!
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