Day 2 - Zhengzhou, China

Joe and I were up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 4am.  Good thing our wake up call was scheduled for just an hour later.  Ah, the joys of jet lag.

Afterward, it was a crazy mad dash to the airport to catch our plane to Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan Province were Liam is.   Alison has truly mastered the art of zig-zagging throughout the crowds.  You should have seen the 4 of us trying to keep up behind her at the speed she was going.  I would have loved to seen a video of moments like the one when Audrey wiped out an entire set of line barriers trying to cut a corner with her suitcase in tow.   Picture a bunch of crazy Americans stampeding through mass chaos with the Mission Impossible theme song playing. Yup. That was our morning.

We made it to the gate with no problems and hopped on a 2 hour flight to Zhengzhou.  Audrey sat across from me and was greeted by a very friendly lady who immediately wanted her picture taken with her.   Maddie, on the other hand, thinks that she can somehow miraculously navigate through the language barrier and strike up an English conversation with anyone she meets and then wonders why they just blankly stare back at her.   The girls are sort of enjoying the attention from the paparrazi for now.   We were given a drink and some sort of mystery-meat-hotdog-looking-thing for breakfast on the plane.   I'm not sure if I'm just slap happy or what, but between the pasty white "hotdog" and Sumo-wrestler-looking guy in a business suit snorning next to me the entire flight, I had a severe case of the giggles .

Upon arrival , we were greeted by air pollution that you could practically cut with a knife along with our new guide, Cindy.  On the way to our hotel, we stopped to get some bottled water and tickets for the train on Tuesday when we will travel to Liam's home city to apply for his passport.     What??!!   Are we really here?  Are we really meeting our son tomorrow?!   In less than 24 hours??

The rest of today we plan to hang in our jammies, order some room service, and get some much-needed rest.    Cindy said that tomorrow morning after breakfast we will go to the Civil Affairs office to fill out some paperwork.  Then we will come back to the hotel and wait for the orphanage staff to bring Liam here.  Cindy said he should be arrive by 1pm!  (that's 1am for all of our friends back home!)  So while you're sleeping Sunday night, know that some pretty exciting stuff is happening on the other side of the world.

I'll leave you now with a photo of the view from my bed.  Ready.  Set.  Go bring me my boy!