One More Day... AAAAAHHHHH!!!

We made it safe and sound to Nanjing! We met the other families in the lobby. It was exciting to see the others and briefly talk about our adoptions. We are looking forward to meeting back up with everyone in Guangzhou when we all have our children! We were the latest flight, so we were not as panicked as the others when things seemed to take a long time. The drive between terminals was crazy long, I guess getting her so late at night all 3 times we have flown in didn’t give us a chance to see how huge the Beijing Airport really is. I was very impressed with the plane, it made the short flight very easy. There were some turbulent spots, but nothing too scary. Grace was with us, so we didn’t have to worry about finding where to go or figuring out what to do. That was nice! She has really opened up since we have her to ourselves and we had some great conversations. She is friends with Veronica, our guide with Reagan’s adoption, and they traveled to America together last summer. She told us that Veronica is having a baby! We are so happy for her, there will always be a special place in our hearts for her. Grace talked a lot about working for Great Wall and also her feelings about what happened to us in August. While it validated a lot of what we felt, it was also sad to hear her talk about some things. I am not going to share what she said because I don’t want to cause problems like I feel like we did for Jane (our guide in August). Grace knows Jane and said that she would call her and let her know we are back for Ethan. I wanted to tell her that we appreciated everything she did for us during that horrible time. Once we got to the hotel and checked in, we had lunch at Pizza Hut. It was great! The only complaint was that Tim got water to drink and they brought hot water. I was nice and shared my coke. We took a really long walk and enjoyed seeing all the little shops and all the people. This is so different from Beijing. It’s like the Branson Landing China style. There are a lot of young couples walking around like they are on a date. Our hearts skip a beat when we see people with little kids, knowing that tomorrow we will be toting two of them! I’m sure that is going to get some looks! We met Grace at 3:00 in the lobby. She is not staying in our hotel (not by her choice) so she had to go find a place to stay. We walked to a bank to exchange all of our money that we will need on Tuesday. What an experience that was! So, now have 6 times the amount of bills that we came with. That is a huge stack, let me tell you! There was a lady that helped us. Since she has an account at the bank, she got the money and then we gave her our money. She got a better exchange rate or something. Grace worked it all out and it ended up saving us around $50 and we didn’t have to do an hour of paperwork. So glad Grace took care of all of that! And for $50 we can eat at McDonalds 9 times! I attempted to arrange the room and unpack to prepare for the little ones, but we are very limited on space. There is no dresser, so our clothes are staying in suitcases and there’s not many places to put them. The cribs take up a massive amount of space. I think I got it figured out enough for now. We also went to the grocery store and got a few things. It seemed like things were expensive and it’s just hard to know what to get for the kids. We wanted to have some snacks for them in case its too hard to go out right away. We got bananas since we know how cute Ethan is eating one from the video we got! The plan for tomorrow is to meet Grace at 10:00 and go to the Civil Affairs Office to meet the kids at 10:30. It doesn’t seem real and I am surprisingly calm. Grace said she would help with the picture taking, so hopefully we will be able to capture both Gotcha moments! Well, this blog is pretty boring, but tomorrow will be one worth reading, or at least seeing the pictures. Thank you for continuing to pray for our family. I am so humbled by the amount of support we have received and we are so thankful so many people have had a part in bringing us to this day, it truly does take village to adopt a child! Please pray that Ethan and Reese can feel how much we love them right away and that they are not scared. They will only have a few minutes to get used to the idea of us, when we have had years to prepare for Reese and over a year to prepare for Ethan. Also, please pray that we get all of Ethan’s medications that will last until we get him home. He has his appointment with Dr. Tong on the 21st, so we need enough medication to last until then. Half the Sky was supposed to work this out with the orphanage, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that it will not be an issue. Check back tomorrow!