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The best $25 we spent was on the baby bassinet for the long flight home from Guangzhou, China on China Southern Airlines. (note to waiting families – you have to call at least 24 hours in advance for this to get the bulkhead seats and for them to put the basket on the flight) Nadia slept about 10 hours of the 13 hour flight which was a great blessing. Now of course it’s 4:14 am in LA and we can’t sleep. We got Nadia to bed about 15 minutes ago since she woke up at 1:40 am ready to rumble because it was day time to her and she slept so much on the plane.

So we are hoping to get a little more sleep before my mom shows up at the hotel in the morning to meet Nadia. We may all fall asleep on her! We are also hoping to get a late check out, but they say they can’t tell us until after 8am. Our flight to DFW leaves at 5 pm and we should land at 10. Then home to our comfy bed (you can’t BELIEVE how hard the beds are in China) and so that we can have food that is normal. I was just relieved tonight to be able to use the water at the hotel without fear.

Once we landed in LAX and went through immigration Nadia was an AMERICAN citizen. WOO HOO!!! One more flight and we are home!!! Thanks for all your prayers, and to Jen – thanks for your sweet welcome home call. We love you! Louanne

P.S. To the Hatchers if you see this before you leave – Nadia was very frightened at the beginning of the flight and we could tell that she was really nervous. We fed her and changed her before the flight and had Gerber graduates on hand to give her as a distraction. Once she got sleepy we put her in the bassinet and she seemed like she felt “safe” in there. She really was snug as a bug in it and they have a little flap that they ask you to secure over the baby in case of turbulence if you fall asleep. Most of the babies did well, but there was crying off and on throughout the flight because of all the babies on the flight. Good Luck and I hope the strike doesn’t affect you guys.

This is Michael holding Nadia just before we left China. Michael is the guide provided by our agency, Great Wall China Adoption. I don’t know what GWCA pays their guides, but it he earned every penny of it. He was invaluable every step of the way. Not only did he get all of us wherever we needed to be at any moment, but he managed all of the many procedures and bureaucracy that we had to go through while there, constantly getting the appropriate documents from us to translate them if necessary and get them where they needed to be…and he even found time to take us on tours, order pizza for families when they wanted it, take me on a funny two-hour adventure to get a Chinese laptop, and a host of other things. We are definitely thankful for his help and don’t know if we could have got through it all without him.

Mike

In a couple of hours we will be leaving for the American Consulate and then the airport to come home, but I thought I’d leave you with this glimpse of the comedy and horror that is apparantly a tradition of adoptive families at the White Swan. There is a red couch in a picturesque area of the hotel where groups of adopting families take pictures of their children. How this horrific and torturtous tradition started I’ll never know…after watching the spectacle my guess is that it is something the Emperors used to torture the children of disobediant slaves. In any case, everyone got through it without any apparant permanent emotional scars. To set you all at ease, I’ve included a few photos we took after getting Nadia back to the hotel room…so you can see she is still happy.

See you all soon, back in America!

Mike

 

Hi all. Today we had to hang out in the room for a couple hours while our guide Michael went to the American consulate with all of our documents. Once we were cleared we went out and did some more shopping then came back and ordered lunch while Nadia took a nap. Right now I am taking a break from packing to get ready for tomorrow.

It should be an easy day, we have our bags out by 2 pm. Leave the hotel a 2:45 and have our consulate appointment at 3 pm. From the consulate we go directly with 3 other families to the airport to catch our flight home.

I ask you now since you are all just waking up to please pray for us that Nadia is able to sleep tonight so that we can too. We are 13 hours ahead of you and she is having her night-time bottle right now with Daddy. She has a little cold and we were up and down for hours at a time last night because she was just feeling sad and miserable. We got enough sleep to function today, but we really need a solid amount of sleep before tomorrow. Our flight leaves at 9 pm, then we fly for 12 hours and arrive in LA. So we will arrive in LA at 7 pm on Tuesday and will most likely be beat up! There are 3 other families on the flight with us, so at least we won’t have the only crying baby.

Getting through customs takes a couple hours I have heard and then we have a reservation for a hotel in LA. So thanks to all who are willing to pray for us and our travel adventures getting home. I don’t know if I will post again before we are home.
Love, Louanne