We made it to Nanning!

We’ve made it to Nanning, which is the capital city in the province where Olivia’s orphanage is. Her orphanage is actually in Cangwu, and the orphanage workers will be bringing the babies from the orphanage to us today by train, which should take them about 6-8 hours.

The original flight in from Guangzhou to Nanning was cancelled, so we had to wait around in the airport for several hours. It wasn’t bad, but the air conditioning in the concourse where we were wasn’t working. Nik, one of the other dads, and I went to a restaurant in the airport and had a big bowl of romaine noodles. Of course, we both remember those from college, but this was quite different. Our interpreter, Doris, got us to get up and watch the chef actually make the noodles from scratch for us. It was neat!

The plane ride over here was only about 1 ½ hours, but it was pretty full. They showed an in-flight movie, in Chinese, but it had English subtitles. It was nice to hear a lot of the Chinese folks laughing along to the same things in the movie that we were!

Some of you have been asking how China is – one of the things that you notice most are the smells. Getting off the plane in Nanning was like we do on some planes in Mobile, where the steps are pulled up to the plane’s exit door, and you walk down the steps to the tarmac, then into the airport terminal. Every one of us noticed the sudden and overwhelming odor of dog mess the second we stepped off the plane. Doris asked and was told that it was the smell of the rain, but we’re a little skeptical.

Our hotel here in Nanning is nice, and the weather here now is very rainy. Lucky we brought an umbrella along!

At dinner last night, Doris was giving us some instructions for this morning, and we caught her saying “y’all”. It was SO funny!! She’s been working with Children of the World for many years, and she’s picked up on some of our good old Southern charm. She made sure we were good at the restaurant, and then she went out, on her own, at about 9:00pm, to what she calls “the food street”. It’s sort of like Chinatown in New York City, where they have rows and rows of traditional Chinese restaurants. She hasn’t been to this city in a while, so she was checking it out for us for later.

I can’t believe that in about 6 hours, Christine and I will be parents! We are all so excited about this, and our next updates will include pictures of our little princess Olivia!

The first picture at the top is a scene from Nanning; we saw a lot of people riding on mopeds and motorcycles, carrying two, three, and sometimes even four people. This man evidently took a break from his ride and decided to have a seat on his motorcycle. The second picture is Olivia's crib, which was already set up in our room when we got here. Soon, there will be a baby in that crib!

Michael and Christine