on the ground, safe and sound in Beijing

It was a pretty surreal day.  We started at 4am in State College, drove to Harrisburg, flew to Chicago, then flew on to Beijing.  We thought we’d have the same set up on the 13 hour plane ride–individual tv monitors in the backs of each seat.  No such deal.  We had to tough it out by all watching the 4 movies that United provided for us.  The upside was that they fed us almost non-stop for the 13 hours.

We made our way through customs, baggage claim and found a man waiting for us with a sign that indicated he was with America World Adoption Agency.  We met one of the other families who arrived with us, and after a short bus ride arrived at the Radisson in Beijing.  Miss Sherry was our Beijing last time, and she remembered us!  She got us settled into our rooms and explained the details for the next couple of days, then sent us upstairs to our rooms.

We expected to have adjoining rooms, with a door between the rooms.  I took the first one with Levi and Sadie.  When Kim entered her room, there was a couple already in the room!  Oops…frowny face.  After a trip back to the front desk, we got Kim and the rest of the team squared away down the hall from us.

We grabbed a quick meal in the hotel restaurant, then decided to call it a night.  It’s a little after 10pm here, 10am on the east coast of America.  All the other members of Team Sublett are soundly asleep.  My mind is mushy.  We’re learning new words on this trip–words like bleary and sleep-deprived.  We’ve got a full day of sightseeing scheduled for tomorrow, starting with a walking tour of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  I’m excited to be able to share this with our children, and think that this is going to be a redemptive trip for Josie and Annabelle.