We got to Isaac's province of Guangxi, and were to meet him on March 24 in the city of Nanning. It always takes awhile to clear passport checks and immigrations, but then they had to xray our bags as we LEFT, not sure what that was all about. :) It was around 45 minutes to our hotel from the airport. Our guide met us as we came out of luggage claim. We had been told we were having the same guide we had with the girls, (Elsie) so were surprised to have someone else approach us and ask if we were the Lanz family. I guess it was kind of obvious?
Our guide, Sara, was very nice. She tried to get us to go somewhere with her to eat or at least go to Walmart and buy some groceries. At that point all I could think of was that we desperately needed sleep, so we did something we've never done and ordered room service. Let's just say that the crackers and peanut butter we had last night was better, and I actually left just about all my order mostly uneaten and got the crackers out again! Nanning is apparently in a spicy food area and I just really couldn't take the burn!
We stayed at the Marriott in a super nice suite type room
since we have an eleven year old girl AND boy. With medical needs a second bathroom was also necessary. We had a large bedroom, a living room where Tikvah slept on the couch, an office area where Isaac had a roll away, and a small eating area with a table. Adoption trips are so
stressful anyway without having half the family sleep on the floor. In spite of the extra cost, we made a wise decision.
I did manage to get out a blog post on the actual day that we got custody of Isaac. It is found HERE..
There are fewer adoptions in this province than the one where the girls were from, and not as many of the staff spoke English. One of the funny things that happened, was on the actual adoption day, Isaac was sleeping on and on and we were running late. I attempted to order breakfast from room service. This is what I requested: oatmeal, danish and apple juice. They called me back twice to ask again what it was that we wanted and somehow translated it to an omelet instead of oatmeal. The staff had me spell it and that helped. Then she wanted to know if we wanted milk, and since my attempts to tell her that two milks would be plenty just confused her more, I said, "Yes, four milks." So we did end up with the juice, the oatmeal, too much milk -- and we got croissants. I called it a win!
We did get some shopping done near the hotel after this, and were able to make breakfast in our room after the first day.
I loved the turrets on the apartments there. This is a view out our hotel window. Note: We were told Isaac was from a rural province and much smaller city. Defined that means there are ONLY seven MILLION people in Nanning!
I did manage to get out a blog post on the actual day that we got custody of Isaac. It is found HERE..
There are fewer adoptions in this province than the one where the girls were from, and not as many of the staff spoke English. One of the funny things that happened, was on the actual adoption day, Isaac was sleeping on and on and we were running late. I attempted to order breakfast from room service. This is what I requested: oatmeal, danish and apple juice. They called me back twice to ask again what it was that we wanted and somehow translated it to an omelet instead of oatmeal. The staff had me spell it and that helped. Then she wanted to know if we wanted milk, and since my attempts to tell her that two milks would be plenty just confused her more, I said, "Yes, four milks." So we did end up with the juice, the oatmeal, too much milk -- and we got croissants. I called it a win!
We did get some shopping done near the hotel after this, and were able to make breakfast in our room after the first day.
I loved the turrets on the apartments there. This is a view out our hotel window. Note: We were told Isaac was from a rural province and much smaller city. Defined that means there are ONLY seven MILLION people in Nanning!
Because there aren't as many Americans visiting this province, we
were stopped several times to have our picture taken. As Ethan put it,
"They do exist, and I've seeeen one!" At this point when this lady
(who spoke no English) grabbed me and then kept calling other family
members to get in the picture (this wasn't all who eventually were in
it) I totally lost it. I was giggling like a mad woman - too little
sleep and too easily amused I guess. I'm sure they went away thinking
that Americans must be the most cheerful people in the world.
Next up: Visiting Mount Qingxiu (Ching shoe)
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