Bring on the Baby, Baby!!!

Oh baby!

We are 1 hour and 45 minutes away from Oliver.....

so close....so close.

Emotions are high - fear, anticipation, sadness (for Oliver's loss, and his birth family), excitement, pure joy, love...did I say love?

So many emotions.

We leave the hotel in 1 hour....1 hour....1 hour.

We are beside ourselves.

Our son is on his way...

We're coming darling...we love you, we will always love you.

See you soon.

From years, to months, to weeks, to days...

To hours...

As I sit here in our hotel room in my son's province in Southern China, it is merely 44 hours and 45 minutes until we meet Oliver....wow....

It is merely HOURS until we have our son in our arms, and the 7+ year wait to kiss and cuddle and smooch our child is over...as is Oliver's 8 1/2 month wait for his forever family. 3pm on Monday afternoon is when it's all going to happen....wow.

Unfreakingbelievable!!!

Our trip from Hong Kong was great - we shared the journey with 3 other couples who are in our "batch"of 6 couples. There was a lot of nervous tension in the air on that plane!

Our hotel in Nanchang is called the "Galactic Peace"...ambitious (no, let's not just go for world peace, let's shoot for the stars people...Galactic Peace!!). We have a suite which is great as we have a little extra room for the moo-ster to hang out with us in. When the housekeeper wheeled in a little white cot yesterday afternoon and placed it in our bedroom we got really choked up...

Last night we all met for an early dinner, checked out the local brew and the "Great Wall" red wine (not bad...but to be honest I would have drunk firewater last night!). We all had a relatively early night, and a relatively uncomfortable night's sleep on the rock hard beds (why oh why does every bed in Asia need to feel like a concrete slab?).

Today we headed out with a local shop owner called Tiffanie, who owns "Lucky Tiffanie's", a shop stocking all sorts of souvenir-type stuff. Tiffanie is associated with a small school about 50km out of Nanchang, where local children come to learn English, calligraphy, and music. The taxi ride to and from the town was terrifying.

As most of you know, P and I have done some pretty extreme travel over the last decade and a bit....from undertaking a torrential glacial river crossing in Patagonia and finding that a couple had slipped during the crossing and been killed there just 3 days before, to being abandoned by our guide and left with no food in the middle of the Amazon jungle, and surviving on eating pirhanas for 2 days (sorry mum - had I told you that already or did I choose to keep that quiet?), to nearly going off the side of a cliff in a bus doing hairpin turns in the dark with no headlights in Peru, to crazy taxi drivers in Bangkok, Rio de Janiero, Beijing and Zanzibar....but never, ever have I felt so afraid as I did in this taxi today. He was crazy. We clocked 140 miles per hour (P says for the record it was only 120 miles per hour....whatever, but it was bloody fast) on the wrong side of the road, going UP the offramp for the freeway, with other cars coming straight at us. I have never been so convinced I was going to die, and actually made P promise to fight for the right to still adopt Oliver on Monday if I was killed and he survived. It really was that scary.

I'm shuddering just thinking about it!!

Anyway, back to the nice stuff....

Once we made it to the small town (my legs literally gave way as we stepped out of the taxi) our group of 4 couples were the star attraction for the children who attended the local English school. They have not had foreigners visit them before, and I suspect we were the first non-Chinese people they had seen in the flesh. The children were shy to start with, but slowly practiced their English with us, and posed for photographs (they just loved seeing themselves in the playback of the digital cameras!). They were so lovely. Their music teacher gave us a beautiful demonstration of the zither, and then we all had a chance to have a quick lesson with him. The calligraphy teacher then taught us ""calligraphy 101" and we practiced writing our own names which was fantastic.

We headed back to Nanchang after about 2 hours at the school (different taxi driver, still crazy...offered to pay him double if he went slower....he didn't) and hit Walmart (or perhaps mor correctly., Walmart hit us...hard!). How to describe Walmart...um, overwhelming. Fantastic, but pretty noisy, smelly (they have great piles of dried fish on display and a million other things in the meat department that will fuel my nightmares for many weeks to come!), crowded and bustling! I tried to take a sneaky video just to try and capture the sheer chaotic-ness (is that a word?) of the whole place.

Relaxing it ain't!

So that brings us to now....we have changed hotel rooms (first one was on a smoking floor and stunk to high heaven so we changed to nonsmoking this arvo...a pain, but worth it) and are now sitting and doing nothing. We are pretty worn out after today's adventures. We have a bottle of "Great Wall" and intend on doing nothing more than drinking it, ordering room service, and counting down the hours until we kiss our baby.

44 hours to go....

T xxx

Langham me Baby

A glorious massage, a facial, a comfortable bed, my darling husband, French Champagne, sleep ins, handmade chocolates, finding out that dear friends have gotten "the call" about their children in Thailand and China, a pillow menu, hours of time to really talk an connect with P, cable TV, a hundred belly laughs with my husband and our darling friends (and batch-mates), winning the fight against a new laptop gone bad, a good book, 2 x afternoon naps, stunning views, buffet breakfast, quiet reflection on impending parenthood, a rain shower, dreaming and talking and contemplating our son, Skype-ing my family, and unlimited snacks and drinks.

A snapshot of the last 2 days in Hong Kong.

Perfection.

China...we're ready. See you tomorrow.

T xxx

Meet you at The Club....

Well, we are finally in Hong Kong....8 hours closer to our baby boy, and a million miles away from the stress of packing, repacking, and getting ready to leave.

We. Are. EXHAUSTED!!

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror this morning (I've been avoiding them of late) and wondered who the spotty-faced panda was in our hotel room....ahh yes....that's me. Bags under my eyes big enough to pack a week's worth of clothes in (if only we had the weight allowance available!!). Just quietly, P is not looking much better....we looks like Ping and Pong, the zombie pandas!!

We're hoping that the 2 days of rest and relaxation we have planned in Hong Kong (Honkers for the Aussies out there) will go some way towards fixing our panda problem...and the sore throats we both have.

We are staying in the most magnificent hotel room ever - at the Langham Place, in a Club room. Bloody hell this place is nice!!! We selected a lavender pillow from the pillow menu last night (or the "dream menu" as they call it here in Langham Land), and slept for 7 hours straight. Can you imagine it?! We have access to a club room here that provides complimentary food and drink all day, massage chairs, and magazines etc. I don't think we will step outside the hotel until we leave for China...

Decadent? You betcha!

Time to go and enjoy breakfast, then perhaps a swim in the rooftop pool....and enjoy our last few days together as a couple.

Jealous?

Txxxx

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Don't know when we'll be back again (not just the John Denver song...quite seriously, we don't know when we'll be back!)





Well...we are packed...finally. Initially packing weight was 11kg over our limit...eventually, at 3am this morning, we reached weight limit. God knows what we threw out of the cases in the end - we were so tired and hungry we couldn't think straight (I wouldn't let P eat until we got the suitcases sorted 'cause once he eats he does his little "homer simpson" act and is useless for the rest of the night!! treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen I say!!). Sorry...got sidetracked there!

We're hoping that we might get extra weight limit once we get Ollie....which I fully intend to use purely as "shopping weight". Oh yes, I'm looking forward to shopping in China - one of my batch buddies (yes YOU Princess SarahB) is known throughout the land for her shopping prowess..I am a mere beginner but I look forward to learning from the best.

So, we are heading to Hong Kong TOMORROW and will have 3 nights there (sleeping. eating. sleeping. getting massages. sleeping) before heading to China on Friday the 17th. We'll then have a couple of days to find our way around before

Meeting Oliver

on the 20th (don't know what time yet).

Still all feels so surreal...maybe because we are so sleep deprived that we can't think straight! I think I will be the first mother in history who gets more sleep after the baby comes home than before...

Hopefully we will be able to update this blog from Hong Kong and China. We have our lovely new (small) laptop, so internet connection willing, you will hear more from us soon.....

We are also on email and T's mobile will hopefully be able to send and receive texts....we'd love to hear from you!!

Love,
T and P - the soon-to-be weary travellers xxxx