We are in the Same City as Sophia!

Today was a day of packing driving and unpacking. Nothing really that special, except that we are now in the same city as our daughter. Just typing that still feels so strange. We have been on this road to her for over 9 months now. Nine months at looking at the same pictures(until 1.5 weeks ago), Nine months of reading the same pages of information about her, hoping that I would cathch something new. And now we are only about 12 hours away from meeting her. It almost doesn't seem real, like this whole thing is not real. We are going to have a new daughter tomorrow! My stomach is just at the light stages of butterflies and even Russ finally said, that he was getting very anxious now that we are here.

So just a quick recap of the day. We got up around 6:30 did our normal routine. Met a fellow adoptive mom that has the same agency and talked to her for a little while before she flew off to her province. We then had to kill time until 1pm. We were traveling to Tianjin with another mom, who got in the hotel at about 2am, so we were giving her more time to rest. IT was hard for DOminic because we had been on the go so much and now, we were just sitting in the room. So at 1pm we met Mary and our new guide and driver. Drove to Tianjin in a little over two hours with a van jam packed with suit cases. Once we get the girls, it is going to be really tight to just fit us all in the van. You tell we are not in Beijing any more. There are still many skyscrappers and a few million people that live here, but we seem even more of a minority than when we were in Beijing. THe hotel staff speaks very little english, so our guide did all the check in for us. He is staying here in the hotel also, so that is good. WHen we first pulled up, we saw a group of people at the front of the hotel holding some sort of colorful tubing and something laying on the ground. We quickly realized that there was a wedding reception about to start. It wasn't 2 minutes after we entered the hotel that a huge blast of fireworks went off( the something on the ground)! They were extremely loud, glad we made it inside before that happened. And then the bride and groom appeared in a cute little red convertable. THat was fun to see. We then went to our room to unpack. For dinner we went with Mary to walk around at the local Carrfours(walmart like store) and look for something to eat. Well in the store, we kind of got stuck because you can not go in and out of the same door. So we had to try to find the exit - which was on the floor below, and then find the line that let "NO PURCHASES" out. THe store was packed so that was not easy. But we finally made it out and went to eat at Pizza Hut. We were all very thirsty and ordered the large drinks. Of course the waitress did not speak any english, but thankfully the menu was pointer friendly. Well to our surprise when she brought our drinks to us, we had one full glass( DOminic's) and three empty glasses( ours) and 3 PITCHERS of Pop!!!!. We all had to laugh at ourselves, no wonder the waitress kept trying to repeat the order!

Oh the fun and crazy things that happen when you are in another country( and don't speak the language). Well all I am off to bed. I can barely keep my eyes open. Took a Tylenol PM to make sure I was good and tired so I would sleep through the whole night. SO here is praying that they butterflies stay away until morning. Good night on the last day we are a family of 6!