June 9 - Travel Day and Happy First Birthday Lilianna!!

Oh, Happy First Birthday Lilianna

We started off kind of early with finishing the packing and getting all the luggage out the door for 7:40 am.  We raced down for some breakfast and then on the bus for 8:30 to head to the airport and travel to Beijing!

The airport was big and modern and we were quite the spectacle as five families with tonnes of luggage and our little babies in strollers and snugglies!  We caused a big fuss at the ticket counter too since not a single baby was tied to the correct parent ticket!  One of the babies was on Latifeh's ticket and another was on Jasmine's.  Lilianna's name was attached to the ticket of someone else and another child was attached to Ali's ticket too.  The airline staff were not amused and took a long time sorting out the situation with all of us handing over our child's Chinese passport to another parent so that the ticketing could get sorted out.  We then had to be escorted through passport control (I know!...even though we were not even crossing an international boarder) so that we would not get stopped for having the wrong names on our tickets!  We breezed through security and began  the long treck to the departure booth.  We caused much amusement and wonder for the rest of the passengers.  We were all distributed variously around the plane so I (Sue) was sitting with Lilianna in one section of the plane with a very unhappy buisiness man beside me.  He thought he had the right to both armrests and even some space in my ribs for his elbow but I sorted him out quite quickly.  Lilianna sent a few kicks his way too so he settled on the window side of his seat...sortoff.  He got a few more reminders throughout the almost four hour flight!

We landed in Beijing airport and were met by our new guide, Cissy and were led to a bus.  Two families had to pick up new documents at the CCAAA building so we stopped in front of their office tower for a few minutes.  Hallowed ground for those of us waiting to adopt for so long long and this is the government arm that decides on the matches so it was interesting to at least see the outside of it!

We then were driven to our new hotel, the Novotel Hotel that is only 1 km away from Tianamen Square and one block from the Wangfujang shopping street.  It is not as grand or roomy as our last hotel but we are in the home stretch.  We walked into our room with two twin beds and crib but we quickly rearranged the room and put the crib between the twin beds and put the chaise/sofa against the other outside twin to accomodate Lilianna and Jazzy too.

It was dinner time when we landed so Lisa and I headed off to find a grocery store but ended up not finding it and found a Pizza Hut instead so returned to the hotel with dinner for the hungry hourds.  With food in our bellies we ventured out again as I had spied a Hagen Daz store and there we celebrated Lilianna's first Birthday in style.  We ordered very fancy ice cream creations and gave some to her and she loved it!  We had a candle with us for the celebration but we did not light it in the restaurant.  

Wholey satisfied we headed back to the hotel where Lilianna practiced her walking some more.  We decided that we should try to teach her how to crawl so Jazzy and I got down on our hands and knees and crawled the length of the room.  

Well, Miss Lilianna thought that was one of the most hilarious things she had ever seen since she started laughing but then low and behold, she started crawling towards us!  She took a few pauses to sit and clap and then started crawling again.  She loved it.  She sure is a fast learner this little Lilianna!
Beijing is much more pleasant temperature wise than Guangzhou was as it is a little cooler but a lot less humid!