We've come as far as we need to go . . .

9:30 pm, Tuesday, August 9, 2005.

Well, we arrived in Guangzhou today, our last physical stop on our journey to Mae. We've come 7,000+ miles to get our daughter and now here we are, less than 24 hours to the big moment. She will now be making the 300 or so mile bus trip to us tomorrow, and we'll finally get to meet one another at around 3:00 pm or so and we'll get to hold her in our arms at last. This really is BIG. Up until now, she has known nothing but the nannies that protect her, the other babies in her orphanage, and the building she has lived in almost since she was born. Everything beginning tomorrow will be new to her.

We got up early this morning, left our Beijing hotel at 7:00 am in the rain to the airport, and then took off at 10:15 without much fanfare. There was a lot of turbulence once we got to cruising altitude, but other than that, it went pretty well. Two and a half hours later, we arrived at the Guangzhou airport (very large, modern and clean), and then a van took us to our hotel. It's very tropical here and reminded me of my time in south Florida -- palm trees all over the place and real balmy and humid. As we drove in, we were amazed by the site of highrise after highrise after highrise, for miles and miles, of very modest apartments, right on top of one another. Seeing things like that and being in the city streets almost makes you understand the mind boggling number of 1.3 billion people that live in this country. Then we got into center city and the architecture changed to more colonial in style. We got settled in, went up the street for a mid-afternoon snack of french fries, garlic bread, onion rings, soda and beer, settled a little more (including preparing a crib for Mae!), then had dinner in an Italian restaurant here at the hotel. I ordered a margherita pizza for Melissa and me, and the waitress looked at me and said "Bread olive. Okay?" And I said, "Oh, it's made with olive bread? Okay, no problem." And the waitress said, "No. Bread olive, Okay??" And I think my next response was something like "Ohhhh, there are olives in the pizza dough, right??" And she just repeated, shaking her head, with a smile, "No, bread olive." So I finally said "Okay, bread olive. That's fine." Bring it on, whatever it is, I'm thinking. Turns out, it was basically a cheese pizza with olives mixed in with the cheese topping. Fairly good, no less.

So then we came up to our room, got a deliriously tired little boy ready for and into bed, unpacked, got ready for bed, and pulled out the laptop. Amazingly enough, we didn't take any pictures today. I did, however, shoot a little video. There will be a lot of both tomorrow, though, so stay tuned. Should be interesting to see how we sleep, given the amazing event that will take place in the afternoon.

Until tomorrow,

Rich