Update! (Day 3)

OK, for some reason I have a good connection right now!! Today was another good day with Sarah. She is reaching out for me to pick her up and actually prefers me over Ike (our guide) now! Ike talks to her in Chinese and she understands everything he says. He can't believe how smart she is for her age. She is also learning some English words. She can say "baby" and "ball". And "mama" sometimes, too. She chatters all the time.

We did some more adoption stuff this a.m. and went swimming in the hotel pool this afternoon. Sarah loves the water and giggled and kicked and had a good time. This hotel is very nice. I need to take some pictures. The staff here literally bend over backward to help and rush to open doors for us, push elevator buttons, get a floatie for Sarah in the pool, show us where to go, etc. etc. They all speak a little English, some more than others. They like to try out English phrases like, "Good afternoon", "Welcome to our hotel", etc.

I will try to answer a couple of your questions. Thank you SO MUCH for posting comments. We are starting to feel a little lonely here and the comments are so great!

The flights over here were all good. I am actually pretty pleased with myself :) that I handled my flying anxiety so well. The flight to SFO was delayed for about an hour and a half due to weather. By the time we finally arrived in SFO we only had about a half hour to make our Beijing connection, which was in a huge international terminal (gate 99 out of 100 gates!). So we literally ran thru the terminal and were the last people on the plane. I have never been on a 747. It was HUGE and was so smooth in the air. I slept for quite awhile on the SFO to Beijing flight. It was 12 hours and very long. We watched a couple of American movies and some Chinese movies, too.

The real challenge will be the flight home with little Sarah. She is BUSY and can be very stubborn if she doesn't get what she wants. (imagine that!!) We are going to try to get a bulkhead seat to give her a little more room. Plus it's a night flight, so this should help quite a bit. She is a really good sleeper. Hurray!

OK, my curling iron blew up this morning. I plugged it into the power converter for Dave's laptop and it popped and blew a puff a smoke! Scared me to death! So the curling iron is officially out of commission, but it is so humid here my hair is doing all sorts of new wavy things! :)

We went to a famous, very old tower this morning (from the Tang Dynasty) and while we were there this older gentleman kept talking to me in Chinese. He kept pointing at me and then at Sarah (in her stroller). I kept shrugging my shoulders but apparently he couldn't understand why I didn't speak Chinese because he kept talking to me.

It was frustrating for both of us. He wanted to know why we had a Chinese baby. I finally pointed to Ike who was standing a little ways away from us (so he could ask Ike) but he assumed that this meant that Sarah's was Ike's baby, and this satisfied him!

Justin, Evan, Logan, and Jason-- we LOVE YOU and MISS YOU so much!! We will try to set up Skype this week if the internet connection will hold. If not, we will probably have better luck in Guangzhou. We really want to see all of your faces and let you see Sarah. Time is starting to drag a little bit here in Nanchang. We are looking forward to being done here in Nanchang so we can get to Guangzhou and get HOME!

Suffering from a little (ok, a lot) of culture shock and homesickness today. Just kind of tired of smoggy streets, lots of cigarette smoke, dodging the traffic, and feeling like a "stranger in a strange land." Overall we are having a good experience, and I am trying to remember to keep my sense of humor!! :)

Wow, this is the longest I've had an internet connection! I am usually frantically trying to download pictures before it crashes in about 5 minutes! I have added captions to the first set of pictures if you didn't see them the first time!

Well, I'll try to post some more pictures. Please keep the comments coming! :)