Dear Friends and Family,
I am a bit late on our daily e-mail, or as Dave calls it, "The Daily Chenning." :-)
It has been a rough 24 hours!
Yesterday morning we met Jian at 10:00 am to go to the Embroidery Museum in Changsha. The Ramellas (ha - I finally know the last name of our beloved traveling buddies John and Judy) came with us. The embroidery museum was very small and simple, but it had stunning embroidery artwork that you could hardly believe was embroidered. In Changsha, their specialty is embroidering tigers. There was a piece of embroidery that took 2 people 2 years to complete - and it was incredible. You could see the directionality of the tiger's fur, and the eyes of the tigers were intense and realistic looking. The boys found the museum pretty interesting as well, but they were getting bored at the end :-). The docents and souvenir store attendants were admiring all of our children. Some would come up and hug Aaron, or pick up Gracie (Judy's older daughter). Neither of the kids was too pleased with this. It is a different way - personal space in China is kind of unheard of. The other day at KFC, I nearly got run over by people behind me in the ladies' room line. I had three kids with me and the lady behind me was seriously trying to push ahead of me. I wanted to say, "Can you see that I have 3 kids with me who need to pee? Please don't push ahead of me. They really REALLY need to go!" When the door opened to the free stall, I literally dashed in with the three kids before the lady behind me could. It is hard not to get upset, but I have realized that this is just the norm here.
In the afternoon, we tried to eat up all of our snacks, and then let Lily have a nap. We finalized our packing as well, as Jian was coming at 4pm to take the Ramellas and us to dinner and then to the airport for our flight to Guangzhou which was at 8pm. We went to Pizza Hut, and it was probably one of the nicer dinners we have had here. We had pizza and pasta. Jian was playing cards with the all of the kids. We left for the airport at 5:40 and arrived shortly after 6:00pm.
This is where the craziness began.
When it was our turn to check in, Jian brought out passports up and there seemed to be a problem. The ticketing agents took forever, and then Jian had to take our passports to the supervisor. We were worried that there was something wrong with Lily's passport that we had just received that afternoon. Thoughts that we could be stuck in Changsha and miss all of our appointments in Guangzhou swirled in my mind. Finally, they tell us that by law there is a limit to the number of lap baby tickets they can sell on each flight. For this flight, the limit was 5 - and they sold 7! Guess who was left in a lurch?
It was very frustrating. The agents kept calling people and discussing among themselves. Jian kept on them. But we were in the dark as to what was going on. We could not believe that China Southern did this! And of course it was a full flight, so there was not even an extra seat for them to give us. Our friends, the Ramellas, were waiting and praying for us. They did not want to get on the plane without us. Their daughter, Lily, is over 2, so she had a seat that they purchased. They didn't have the same problem as us. Finally FINALLY, it was decided that the boys, Lily, and I would get on the flight. And Dave would give his seat to Lily and he would take the high speed train to Guangzhou. Matthew and Nathan burst into tears. They were so distraught. Matthew said, "But I will be so worried about you, Daddy! What if something happens to you?" Poor guys. I was fuming! We had an appointment the next morning in Guangzhou at 8:30 to take Lily to her medical exam. We HAD to get to Guangzhou. We prayed for Daddy, and went through security. The agent who escorted us said that when the boys started to cry, she wanted to cry, too. Yeah, me three.
I don't want to get into too many details - but our flight was delayed, so Dave ended up arriving at the Garden Hotel in Guangzhou where we are staying just 5 minutes after we arrived. The flight was 1 hour (and it was a teeny plane), and the train ride 3 hours. But with the delay and so forth, it ended up being nearly the same. We staggered into our rooms at about 12:30am. The boys had slept on the short flight, but not Miss Lily. She was into everything, and starting to throw herself backwards and rocking back and forth and in general making me very tired and wishing we were on terra firma. I think she was stressed out a bit (who wasn't) by the whole ordeal. Thank the Lord for John and Judy! Of course even the seats for our family were not together :-(. Don't get me started. So it was me traveling with 4 children and only two of the seats were assigned next to each other. Thank the Lord that together we were able to maneuver things so that Matthew and Nathan were behind John and Judy in row 5, and Lily, Aaron and I were just a couple of rows back in row 7. At one point, the steward was wondering if he could have Aaron sit by himself somewhere else. I looked at him like, "You have GOT to be joking." I said, "He is 4 years old. I HAVE to be next to him." Aaron was asleep when the plane landed, so I had Lily int he Ergo (still awake, mind you), and then I had to carry Aaron down the plane, onto the transfer shuttle, and through the terminal to the baggage claim :-(. John and Judy were helping so much already by keeping track of my other two, and they both had their hands full holding their sleeping children. It was a bit nuts. We lost one of Aaron's shoes on the way - and there was no NO way I could go back and get it.
Suffice it to say, we will not be flying China Southern anytime soon. And also, at the end of the day - I am just thankful for God giving me John and Judy to be there to help with the kids. And also that we all were safely reunited with Dave in the lobby of our beautiful hotel. I thank the Lord that we were able to get to Guangzhou all in one piece and not have to miss any of the appointments. God is good!
The kids went straight to bed. We had to request a rolling bed from the hotel staff, and then Dave and I turned in for the night as well. We had to get up this morning and meet everyone in the lobby by 9:00.
I am very late in this update, so I will stop here.
Please continue in your prayers. We are in the latter half of our trip. We will be flying back on Tuesday night!
We still have some appointments to go to. I will try to write tomorrow about the medical appointments this morning.
Lily is playing in the trash can right now :-). Taking stuff out, putting it back in. It's all good. I took out everything disgusting.
The kids are in PJ's and bathed.
Sorry, no photos tonight. I am too tired and I can't find the cable to connect everything. Hopefully tomorrow!
Love,
Chenning
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