Wednesday, September 6th was the big day. Everyone was up by 4:30 am and we were out the door and headed to the airport by 5:15 am. When we got to the airport all was well until Joe stuck his hand in his pocket and discovered his pocket knife. Needless to say, the pocket knife ended up in the trash and no one looked back since, in the whole scheme of things, a pocket knife was a small loss compared to the journey facing us.
We boarded our United Airlines flight to San Francisco, and a little over two hours later we landed. After a wait of a couple of hours, we boarded our next flight to Beijing, China. A flight of 13 hours or so doesn’t seem like it should be that big of a deal, but it sure seems like a long time when doing it. All of us agreed, though, that it was a great flight, all went without a hitch, and we met many nice people. The general Allen family consensus was that it was hard to imagine that any airline could have possibly chosen worse movies for a flight. Six movies were shown, none appropriate, in our opinion, for human viewing. Thus, books were read, cards played, meals eaten, and we just hung out until landing in Beijing.
Our arrival in Beijing went well. We are always thrilled when all the luggage we check actually shows up at our destination, especially undamaged. We collected our luggage, made it through customs, and, had great fun visiting with our friends TingTing and JouJou during our layover. TingTing and JouJou are friends we made during our last trip to Beijing and they met us with gifts and snacks and were just great in helping us maneuver from the international to the domestic terminals, finding China Southern, checking our bags and getting our boarding passes. We had a great visit. It’s amazing that even when friends don’t speak the others language, it doesn’t really matter since communication can happen in spite of language differences. They were such a help to us and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. We hope we’ll see them again soon, but we realize that it’s not often we’ll be in China, nor they’ll be in New Mexico. We will be back, though, because we love China, the people, and the culture.
Our last flight was on China Southern taking us from Beijing to Zhengzhou, the capital city of the Henan Province where we would receive our son, Ezekiel. We arrived in Zhengzhou, a little late, at about 11:30 pm. After collecting our luggage, we met our guide from All God’s Children International, Leila. She escorted us to the hotel shuttle for an hour ride to the hotel. Well, needless to say, we finally got to bed Thursday night (actually Friday morning) in China at about 2:00 am. We haven’t taken the time to figure out how long the trip actually took, but we’re thinking in excess of 35 hours. We were a little tired, but we have to say that traveling that far, with four children, ages 13, 12, 8 and 3, could not have gone better. The kids did just great and never complained, although we knew how tired they had to be.
Note that before we left New Mexico, we let all our family and friends know that we were to meet Zeke for the first time on Monday, September 11. Well, as we told the kids the last time we went to China, and before this trip, expect the unexpected and go with the flow. On our ride from the airport to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Zhengzhou, Leila told us that the plans for Zeke had changed. We were not going to get him on Monday as planned. Rather, he’d join our family tomorrow, Friday (September 8) at 4:00 pm. Yikes! Here we were thinking we’d have three days to get everyone on the right time zone prior to meeting Zeke. Plans change, though, and we were ready.
Please note that our delay in posting was a result of the change of plans, being a little tired, etc. We’re trying to catch up now, though, after getting a little rest with our new son.
