Greetings from China!

It's Sunday, 3:00 pm here - 3:00 am for those of you at home, sleeping on the East Coast. Thea just went out for a nap and Steve is upstairs babysitting.

Our flights went surprisingly well - starting with the limo drive and the biggest stretch limo I've ever seen. Even Thea said "Holy cow" when she looked out the window at it. Thank goodness we got this free upgrade just by luck, the standard car Steve had arranged for wouldn't have held it all. The driver, Deen, got us to Newark in record time. The worst part of the whole morning was going through security and retrieving all the bottles of Thea's juice and tubes of butt cream and whatnot to put it in baggies. The double stroller with ride-on platform for Thea was fantastic, she could sit or stand, the front part (at least until tomorrow) could hold her precious Tiger and Brother Tiger and the diaper bag.

The flight to Beijing was good - although we were seated amidst a group of college-age chorus members who were going to some sort of international gathering of choral directors. If the bim in front of me whacked my knee one more time, I was going to strangle her with her headphone cord. In Beijing we sailed through immigration formalities, retrieved our luggage and walked from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 in record time, so much so that we moved our flight to Wuhan to an earlier one. Thea only slept two hours out of the 13, so she was a little fried and passed out even before the flight to Wuhan took off, and stayed that way until I woke her up to take her off the plane.

And our chance to get to Wuhan a little early was when we found out that Steve's Blackberry cell phone didn't working Beijing. We had to call Eric, the local adoption agency guide in Wuhan, and Steve couldn't get the Blackberry to receive a signal. Fortunately a complete stranger with cell phone let Steve make a call on his phone, and Eric was able to pick us up at the airport in Wuhan with a minivan. The tiny taxis here would not have cut it for three people and three large bags.

Wuhan is a furnace, with humidity that is so above and beyond anything I've experienced. Hot doesn't even begin to accurately describe it. I was amazed that upon meeting Eric at the airport he was not even perspiring, had some sort of industrial strength hair mousse to spike up his hair a little and seemed completely unbothered. I'd carried Thea on my shoulders through the airport until we could retrieve the stroller at baggage claim, so I was a puddle. I've lost seven pounds in the past 48 hours.

At the hotel, which was chosen for its proximity to the government offices where the adoption will take place and not the number of stars, we got a room on the 12th floor, the "baby floor" - a scary place with rooms decorated with Snoopy fabric down to the curtains, and cartoon decor even in the halls. The room had two slightly oversize single beds, so we made the change today, out of the baby ghetto and onto the 10th floor. And into the Teahouse of Cruella DeVil. Imagine a room with gigantic Dalmation-print fabric everywhere: The floor to ceiling curtains, the bed, the chair covers. The room looks like it doesn't know whether to bark or moo. But it has a king-size bed, slightly more floor space and doesn't resound with the sound of a dozen or so children wailing (French and Spanish adoptive parents come through Wuhan for their consular appointments the way we have to go to GuangZhou for the last week of our trip to get Micah's visa).

We ventured into the blistering heat this morning for a walk to Carrefour, a French department store whose layout had to have been done by M.C. Escher. We could not find the ramp upstairs for the first fifteen minutes - and the grocery store part was on the third floor. Anyway, other than looking like lost sheep - and already a walking advertisement for adoption, we survived. Thea isn't quite up for the sort of in one's face, totally different concepts of personal space, and overall noise level in China.

Anyway, 8:50 Sunday night - EDT, be thinking of us. It will be Monday morning and we're getting picked up at 9:00 and will be meeting Micah at 9:30. Tonight, now that we're settled into our room, Thea and I will be putting together gift bags for the various people who facilitate the process.

I'll try to post pictures of the room, it is a hoot. I got a bunch of photos over Greenland, too. Not exactly National Geographic quality, but decent.

We're all doing great, so whoever is offering up good wishes and prayers to the deities of their choice, please keep it up - it's working.