Travel to Guang Zhou

Things have been happening so quickly, but I just really want to keep
the events in chronological order -- just for me, even if no one else
cares about all the details!!  One day Emily might want to know all
about our trip to get her, and I probably will have forgotten half of
it by then!!
   Since we left Atlanta at 1:00 am, we really didn't have much trouble
getting sleep on that flight.  I'd been really busy up until the last
minute getting everything squared away at home, and Dan and I were both
tired enough when we got on the plane that we literally were asleep
before take-off.  We woke up to eat, and then went right back to sleep.
   It was a 14 hour flight to Korea, and we arrived a little late, but we
met up with our friends, the Thiessens, and spent as much time as was
possible with them.  In fact, when we looked up finally toward our
gate, everyone else had boarded.  They had not made a final boarding
call, but the plane was not crowded at all, and everyone else had
boarded quickly.  So, we took several pictures, said fast good-byes,
and headed off to Guang Zhou. Getting to spend that lay-over with them
was so incredible! Naturally it had gone by way too fast, but what
a blessing to see them after these years!!
   We were met in Guang Zhou by Miko, our guide.  She gave us a quick
run-down of the schedule on the way to the hotel.  By this time, it was
Sunday afternoon.  We had eaten on the plane, but she was hungry, so we
got checked in, and Miko took us down a near-by street to show us some
good places to eat.  She stopped to get her lunch, and we headed back
to the hotel for a little while.
   About an hour later, we met up with Miko and another family who is
adopting from the Guang Dong province, too.  They are also from
Alabama, and we had a great time getting to know them and their
biological son who is traveling with them.  Our meeting was to go
through all of our paperwork for the process, making sure that we had
everything in order for the coming days.  We organized it all at
Miko's direction (she's got it down to an art!!), paper clipped each
day's necessary documents together and filed them all away in our big
envelopes to wait for each step of the process.
   Back in our room, we unpacked everything and got our clothes back in
order.  We'd made sure to pack a portion of each of our clothes,
Emily's clothes, and her toys and other items in each of the
suitcases, just in case one of the pieces of luggage didn't make it
all the way with us.  But with it like that, I couldn't find
anything -- so we straightened it all out so that I could easily get my
hands on what we needed when we needed it.  Miko already had written
out on the schedule what gifts we needed to have with us and at what
time to give them, so I separated all of that, too.
   Then it was suppertime, and we headed to a Thai place that Miko had
recommended.  Although we hadn't planned it, we actually met up with
the other family from AL and ate together.  We went to bed early
enough, but of course with being out of whack with jet lag, we woke up
around 2 or 3 am and decided to Skype with the kids back at home!!
   A few hours later we were able to get a little more sleep before our
big day to come on Monday!!