6 months (can it really be?)

It's hard to believe but just 6 months ago we met Lena Yi Yi Turgeon for the first time in a hotel lobby, at almost 10:30 at night, in Lanzhou, Gansu China.

After a nightmare of a trip to get there we both remember it was very surreal. I never did tell much about our trip to China. Things were relatively smooth until we went to get on our overseas flight in Los Angeles. They had overbooked and although we had reserved seats together they didn't have any plans on seating us together. We started the flight and about 30 minutes into it a woman Brad was sitting with struck up a conversation with him. When she found out we were flying to China to adopt and that we couldn't sit together she volunteered to change seats with me. Considering it was a 13 hour trip we were both very thankful for that. Even more amazing is we were on a Korean airlines and not too many spoke English. Brad just happened to be sitting with two people who did. The women I was originally sitting with did not speak English. (I tried)

After that flight things were ok until we got to Guangzhou to make our connection to Lanzhou. Then the real travel nightmare began. We did get our luggage ok and made it through customs and immigration with no problems. We went straight to our next airlines. Or we attempted to. We had printed off something that had the emblem and name of the airlines in English and Chinese. We showed it to 2 different people and they told us there was no airline by that name instead we should go to 'so and so' airline. Of course this was all done in broken English and our total lack of Chinese. When we finally went to the airline where we had been told go, we were informed that 'yes' this was where we were supposed to be. But.........when we got to the counter to check in our luggage they told us it wasn't where we supposed to be. They sent us in another direction. Same airline name totally different location. We finally got to it and were told that they had just closed our flight and we'd have to go back to the original airline (the one we were first told didn't exist) to have our flights changed. After wandering around for another 30 min. we found that place and they did change our flight. To the next day.

Ok, so now we know we're going to have to spend an unplanned night in Guangzhou and aren't really sure how to get to a hotel, get a cab or anything. We couldn't even find out how to get outside of the terminal. We tried an information desk, we tried a janitor, we tried many people. No one could speak English. Finally, very thirsty and tired we just sat down to ponder what to do next. You can't drink the water in China and they did have various places you could get water to drink (that had been sterilized) of course neither of us could figure out where we had seen one of those places and couldn't ask anyone. We couldn't find an ATM and only had American cash. We tried a store but they wouldn't take anything unless it was larger than a 20 dollar bill. Didn't have that easily accesible.

About that time my eyes fell on a tall pole near where we were sitting and there were telephones on this pole. Pay telephones. Brad and I felt as if we'd just discovered gold. I'm not sure why since we didn't know how to use the phones and did not expect the instructions to be in English. I went to the phone and found, in small, tiny print, instructions in English. I nearly fainted from joy (or maybe thirst, I don't remember). I knew it was the middle of the night in the US but didn't really care at that point. I called our agency and they helped us get a hotel room and told us where the cab stand was. They couldn't tell us how to get out of the terminal building however. And we couldn't find anyone to ask. So we figured going downstairs to the lowest floor and heading for the light might be a good idea.

We probably looked quite pathetic when we finally did see all the cabs but could not find a door to get out to them. Lo and behold right then a caucasian couple with a small Chinese child was heading down an escalator that was right by us. They had a guide with them. We did our best not to dance with joy or kiss her hands. She got us out of the terminal and all we had to do was say the hotel name in English and the cab driver knew what we wanted. He couldnt' speak any English but he smiled a lot during the trip and really did seem to be a nice man. had a picture in his cab of what I assume was his family.

We completed this amazing task all while dragging around 80 lbs. of luggage, a laptop, 2 backpacks and my overstuffed purse.

Once we were at the hotel nearly everyone spoke some English. So after that long adventure, (we spent 3 hours in the airport trying to figure out what to do) a night in Guangzhou and having the woman who would be our guide during our time inGuangzhou, help us, we made our flight to Lanzhou.

We arrived very late and had an hour drive to the hotel. We were nervous and more so when we told we would be getting Yi Yi that night. We planned on discussing this with our guide but Yi Yi was waiting with an 'auntie' when we walked in the door of the hotel.

All the craziness was worth it. Looking back on everything it seems quite humorous now.

We've been very blessed to have Lena Yi Yi join our family!! She has made our life much richer indeed!