Monday May 21, 2007

Today was a travel day. We woke up at 6 am to eat some breakfast, pack and get ready for a 8 am bus ride to the airport. We got to the airport a good two hours before our flight delay, gate change and 40 minute wait on the tarmac. Peng waited pretty patiently the whole time and then it was the moment of his first airplane ride take-off. As we started speeding up he was just glued to the window until finally just before the nose came up he turned with a great big grin. He seemed to really enjoy the flight and the food on the plane until he fell asleep just before landing.

We had a van waiting to take us to the hotel, The Victory Hotel, on an island in the downtown section of Guangzhou. We had thought that perhaps this was the same place that we stayed when we adopted Sarah but upon entering it was clear that it is not. The number of westerners has dramatically increased since Nanjing, all here adopting children. There are 5 families just from our adoption agency that we will meet with tomorrow and fill out US Visa forms. Yea! Last time, the “filling of the forms” with multiple families took four hours.

After checking into our room we got on line and discovered that there is an Ikea Store here in Guangzhou. If you are not familiar with Ikea, they are a Swedish modern-style furniture store with a lot of other housewares and a cafe in each location. We often stop in the one in Virginia or Atlanta when we are traveling. The thought of Swedish meatballs for dinner sounded really good so off we went. We had planned to take a taxi but it turns out that Ikea is right outside the last stop on the subway line that passes a few blocks from the hotel, so we dropped our laundry off on the way to the metro and took a train to dinner at the Ikea Cafe. Ikea here is pretty similar to those in the states—maybe a bit smaller and with a better chopstick selection. Most of the items looked familiar and prices were very similar to those in the States.

Back at the hotel we had a quick Skype call with Zion and called it a day. Peng seems to be a very sweet boy and started calling Heidi “mommy” today. He is very helpful, always holding doors and offering to carry bags. Tonight he made coffee for us in our room from the little drink bar. Trying to be appreciative but not really wanting coffee, we poured out most of it and left a small bit in the bottom of the cups like we had just finished drinking it. He noticed we were out and promptly made us more. I guess if you were going to pick a problem to have with a newly adopted son, him being overly helpful would probably be a good problem to pick. We have no complaints.