Thursday, July 18- Friday, July 19 - -Travel Days!

Our day started at 4am, our flight from Memphis to Chicago left at 6:56am. It was the smallest plane I have ever been on, it only had three rows of seats. I was a little uneasy about this, because you know I hate flying. However, the flight only lasted an hour and 25 minutes and it was okay, not too bad turbulence. We arrived in Chicago about 8:30, their airport is very nice and huge. I was hungry so I got some breakfast at McDonalds and Dustin ate a famous Chicago dog. Our flight from Chicago to Beijing was agonizing: 13 and a half hours! That was the longest flight ever. We were about ready to get off the plane after 6 hours. However, the plane ride was smooth. The food wasn’t that great. We did get lucky and get the exit roll so we had plenty of leg room and was by the bathrooms. I watched 4 movies while was on the plane, 3 of which were new releases so I was able to catch up on some movies. Dustin did some reading and watched 3 movies and 2 documentaries. And in between movies I slept and Dustin tried  to sleep. We landed about 2:40 pm (Friday) in Beijing, 1:40am your time. Baggage claim took forever, customs was quick, but when we got to the Open to the Public area (lobby) it was crazy madness. We then knew we were in China with massive groups of people. We later found out it was National Holiday (vacation) and the kids are out of school. So, like I said it was crazy madness.

 We were finally able to find our guide and it took us an hour and 20 minutes to get to our hotel (our hotel is only 20 min away from the airport), that is how crazy the traffic was. Our guide “Sabrina” (the Chinese tour guides pick American names to go by) talked the entire time and I couldn’t tell half of what she said, she talked fast and gave a lot of info.  We finally got checked in at 6pm. We did some exploring around the hotel and about one block down from the hotel. I didn’t want to be too adventurous in eating on our first night here, so we ate in our hotel restaurant which was a buffet. I had plenty of choices, Dustin was a little more adventurous at the buffet, he ate a raw octopus. After we ate, we were so tried from the long flight that we just went back to our hotel room to relax. We did Skype my mom and David Ryan. It was heartbreaking seeing our son cause he told us to come get him, but he did ask for Sophie. He didn’t quite understand why we didn’t have her yet. We also skyped with Dustin’s mom. Then, we went to bed because we were so exhausted

The night before we dropped David Ryan off at my mom’s. He did well because my sister, niece, and nephew were in town and he was so excited to see them. I had a hard time leaving, my goodbyes took a while. I didn’t cry in front of him but I did shed a few tears on the way home. But, I am so glad my sister was in town, it made it so easy for him. Later, that night my sister sent me a text saying they were all giggling in bed. That made me feel better about leaving him.