I wanted to share with everyone how our China adventure came to a close...
Our last "day" began at The White Swan. Cameron and I got up early and went out to the park together before breakfast. We wanted to take pictures and video of people exercising.
This is how many people in China begin their day, and it's fascinating to see so many people out in public together.
It was a beautiful morning on the Pearl River
And there were people fishing...
and even swimming in it!
After breakfast the 2 big boys and I adventured into downtown Guangzhou via taxi to find a music store outside of the tourist district to shop for cymbals. The music store we went to had both western and traditional chinese instruments...
You see people on bicycles in Guangzhou
But there are way more motorcycles here...
Then we napped and packed, and spent the last of our pocket money on a few more trinkets from the merchants on Shamian Island, before heading to the airport. We flew out of Guangzhou at 9:00 PM Wednesday night, and arrived in Los Angeles at 6:15: PM Wednesday night after a 12 hour flight.
Based on our first flight with him last week, we thought Hui-Hui would do better than he did. But he wasn't happy about being belted down for take-off this time, and we just couldn't find his rhythm. There were a number of things working against us. The seats we were in had armrests that wouldn't fold down, and Hui-Hui doesn't like to be held while he sleeps. Ultimately Tina and I took him in shifts and let one another try to sleep while the other of us held him. He did get some long sleep spells in, and was better for the second half of the flight. On landing he was asleep.
if you look out the window you can see the ground approaching. The moment the wheels touched down, Andrew Kai-Hui Ocheltree became an official U.S. citizen!
We landed in L.A. a little bit early and got through all the customs and immigration stuff. We rechecked our bags and got our boarding passes. Our flight in had made good time, and they told us we could actually get an earlier connecting flight to Seattle. This meant we had no wait at LAX. We checked our bags and immediately got on the plane and flew to Seattle. An amusing bit here was that as we were clearing the last security checkpoint the guard looked at our boarding passes and held one out, "Who's this?" he asked. I looked at the boarding pass and saw that it said "Danghui" on it. "That's this guy here," I said holding up Hui-Hui for him to look at. He looked back at the boarding pass with a puzzled expression. "Why would they do that?" he asked. "What," I asked anxiously. "He's been selected for a random search," the guard told us. We all started laughing at this. Welcome to America Hui-Hui! He pointed to where we needed to go, but they didn't actually put him through the process, in fact it was a pretty easy security check for all of us.
Tina let me sleep the whole flight since I would be driving when we landed.
This flight went easier for Hui-Hui, and we were all so happy to be back in Washington State! Amazingly I was able to find where I had put my car keys in my carry on bag, and we remembered what hotel we had left the car at. You may think I'm joking about this, but I'm not.
We finally got in the front door of our home at about 2:00 AM. Which was (and felt like) 5:00 PM China time. We unpacked, and checked out the house.
Tina, Cam, and Ben and I were all pretty funny. We were trying our best not to overwhelm Hui-Hui with all the cool stuff we wanted to show him in the house. Tina gave him a bath then we showed him his room. Right now his crib is next to Tina's and my bed in our room, and will be for a while. So his room is just a playroom right now. He was very interested in checking out all the things we had prepared for him...
The last time Ben played at this table he was the little brother!
Our cat was at the back door meowing for attention. When Hui-Hui saw this he confirmed what the people at his S.W.I told us. He is extremely frightened of dogs and cats. This is not good news. The cat is an outdoor pet so she's not a problem, but our dog, Daisy, will be home from the kennel on Friday. hopefully we will be able to make a smooth adjustment with her for him. He wasn't happy with the stuffed animals we had in his room and in his crib either, but for some reason the stuffed Winnie-The-Pooh seemed to be a good thing, and was put to use as a "lovey".
Cam went to bed "early" at 4:00 AM because he wanted to head to school for the afternoon and catch up with friends. The rest of us didn't go down till nearly 5:00 AM. We woke up at about 10:00 AM and began to understand what "jet lag" is. We got Hui-Hui up about noon and we are hoping he'll go down okay tonight.
Our new life together is really just beginning now. I'll try to keep you posted as to how it goes.
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