The new picture of Samantha is actually 1-2 months old and was taken for her travel documents. There are new pictures from today further down in this posting.
Ok, on with today’s adventures. We both got a fairly good sleep, which is probably a good thing. Breakfast at 7:00, on the bus at 8:00 and on the road to Qianjiang. Everyone’s really excited, but then again this is at the beginning of our 360km trip.
Now here’s where everyone gets confused – 360km, should only take 3-4 hours. Well, that’s not what the locals say. The first 100km is on what we would consider fairly good highway. After that, construction and falling rocks take a big toll, as well as the small towns and cities that we go through. To say that these are secondary roads would be generous. It is also a rainy, foggy day which doesn’t really slow us down, but does make the scenery a bit less vibrant – and the scenery is very beautiful with lots of lush green and waterfalls created by the recent rains. This also turns the Yangtzee River into churned mud.
So, including a 1 hour stop for lunch, the whole trip took us about 8.5 hours and ended up at the orphanage.
The orphanage director actually drove out to the edge of the city to guide us in to the orphanage. When we got there all the babies were waiting for us in the lobby. One by one our baby's Chinese name was called out and we were finally introduced to our new daughter. She is absolutely gorgeous, and no matter how much the nannies in the orphanage wanted to give her one last hug, they weren't getting her. She's ours now, and she already seems to know it. Once in our arms she had no desire to leave them. We are both over the moon and are already deeply in love with her.
We had a couple of pieces of paper to sign, and then to our hotel. This is the best hotel in Qianjiang, and the lobby would lead you to believe it. Once in the rooms you see the age of the hotel, but outside of the normal stains and wear and tear it seems to be very nice. Plus, it's only for one night.
Samantha has been extremely good, and she seems to be a very inquisitive girl. Her head keeps spinning back and forth as she makes sure she doesn't miss anything. She also seems to be checking out all the cute guys working in the hotel - a habit we're going to have to break her of quickly. She had a bit of a crying spell just as we got here, probably noticing that things aren't what they were supposed to be. It only took a couple of minutes to calm her down and all has been well since. It's extremely warm here and the hotel has no airconditioning. Tonight is going to be pretty uncomfortable for us, but Samantha probably won't even notice. We gave her her normal 7:00 bottle and expected her to go right to sleep, which is her normal routine. Unfortunately that wasn't her plan, and she now wanted to play. Of course we were more than willing to spend more time with her and we soon had her giggling. Probably not the best thing to be doing, but who cares. We'll have lots of time to enforce rules in the future - or not. She finally went down about 8:50 and is now out like a light.
We're putting together what we need for her midnight feeding, which we're told she gets every night. Everybody else in the group seems to have gotten their kids to sleep and the halls are quiet.
Just when the peace and quiet was settling in the fireworks began. As we mentioned in previous postings the Civil Affairs office is closed today and tomorrow for the 10 year anniversary. This is the 10th year that Chongqing has become an independent province. At that time it incorporated the surrounding area, approximately the size of Austria with a population of 30 million people. The city of Chongqing itself has a population of 6 million. So, after 10 years, they are doing it up right, with an extremely loud fireworks display which we can't see from our room. Whatever, Samantha is sleeping through it and that's all that matters to us right now.
Hopefully we'll survive the night and give you an update tomorrow about our return trip to Chongqing.