Traveling to Guangzhou: June 17th

On Wednesday of this week we packed up and our entire group flew to Guangzhou. Guangzhou is the last “have to” stop for the US Consulate to issue visas for our Ella to enter the US. The travel day itself was long, and tested all of our patience. Ella is still scared to death and uncertain with any little move. So you can imagine that she spent a lot of the day crying as we were hustling about. And Ava had one of her roughest days as well. I was holding Ella in the carrier and Ava wanted me to carry her as well. Everywhere Ella was, Ava wanted. My sweet, tenderhearted girl is loving her sister but having a really hard time adjusting to sharing our attention. I'm glad Matt and I saw this coming and were somewhat emotionally prepared for it. And thank God Matt's parents are here to help! Don't think we would have made it through the airport without them!!

Us with Echo

As we were trying to get through security in Wuhan, the security guards slowed our line way down and then started taking our electronics to another area. We were freaking out! Kim thought maybe they found something on her computer that they were looking into. They had taken Ava's blanket to go through the xray machine even though we were stalled and Ella was just scared and crying. We did have one person in our group who could speak Mandarin and they were able to find out that the issue was that their xray machine stopped working and nothing to do with us!! They switched us to a different line and got us right through all while apologizing for the inconvenience. I appreciated that but goodness!

Once we were on the plane, things calmed down for a while. I held Ella and Ava sat in the seat next to us. We ate a lot of snacks and treats that I had brought. In fact, I think half the bag was empty before we ever took off, but everyone was happy!! On the flight there were lots of laughs and fun. Ella seems to be doing great as long as there are no changes or movements going on. Hard to limit all the movements on a travel day ;) We finally arrived in Guangzhou after what seemed like an eternity.

We made it out with all our luggage and everyone in the group. Success!! And then we stepped out into the very hot and humid air of Guangzhou. But we were here. Home sweet home for the next 8 days. We were definitely ready to be in one place for a while.

That evening we headed to a restaurant in the hotel that served steaks. Boy did that sound good...good until we saw the prices!! $100 a steak; yeas dollars not yuan! I don't remember ever walking out of a restaurant but tonight we did just that. By that time the girls were done and so was this mama. We opted for room service and night time.