We finally made it to China! We landed in Beijing our yesterday
afternoon(Monday) and met our guide, Maggie who told us we wouldn't get Joseph until Wednesday afternoon, now!! We were supposed to get him our Monday, your Sunday, but because of the weather delay and missing the flight, we have to wait 2 days. I (Lynley) was trying to hold back the tears, when our guide, for some reason, proceeds to tell us how much Joseph has been crying because he doesn't like the orphanage. I don't know what else she said, I stepped off, I didn't want to hear anymore.
We met Robin Hill at the Beijing airport to give him 3 large suitcases full of medical supplies that were given to us for the Hope Foster Home for special needs children that he and his wife Joyce run.
Joseph was under their care for several years. That is where Steve met Joseph two years ago. Joseph was sent back to his original orphanage about 5 weeks ago, which is part of the adoption process.
The blessing of missing our flight was that our next flight to Shanxi was not for another 5 hours, so Robin took us back to the Hope Foster Home. There are probably about 50 kids there now. We were able to visit with Robin, Joyce and Katie, their daughter who is about Graham's age. Graham, Katie said, "Hi!" and was disappointed that she didn't get to see you, and says she misses you! They made us a delicious dinner, we even had special HUGE potatoes that are especially grown for McDonald's fries. Half of one of the potatoes is bigger than our large potatoes. They also gave us some of Joseph's "school work", where they had made him some books, and he had done some writing. Oh, it is so hard to be here and wait for him!
This is Crystal, Joseph's nanny. She is standing to the left of his crib.
Robin and Katie took us back to the airport. We took a domestic flight from Beijing to Tiayuan, the capital of Shanxi, the province Joseph is from. Joseph is 6-8 hours away in Lin Fen City. At the airport we were totally on our own, and the only white people around.
We were glad when we landed in the right city, but a little leery of finding three young guys waiting to put us in a van. It was a little scarey, especially when we had $10,000 cash hanging around our necks.
This is Gerome, our new guide, here in Tiayuan, in front of our hotel.
Here is $7000 changed into RMB, which equaled a little over 47,000RMB, for our orphanage fees. That was fun walking that down the side streets back to the hotel!
This is one view from our hotel window, 16th floor.
Our blog is blocked here. We cannot access it, so we are going to try to email a friend to post it for us.
