Chaos.

We should probably begin these posts with who is writing them. This is Mike.

Yesterday (Saturday) was a very different day from start to finish. Dana and I started the day by waking up to Juliette having a bloody nose at 1am. After she went back to sleep, we didn't. That is actually when I wrote the previous post. All the girls were awake by 3:30 am as their little bodies are struggling to adjust to the 14 hour time difference. 

We spent the early morning taking showers and packing up our things for the flight to Nanchang  which was to leave at 11:30. This was the flight we were most concerned about because each suitcase could only weigh 44 lbs. We got out our digital luggage scale and moved some things around, but finally made the numbers work. We enjoyed another delicious breakfast at our Crowne Plaza hotel and then met our guide, Cindy, and driver, Mr. Fao, out front.  

The ride to the airport was again quite chaotic. It seems that in China when there are painted lines for driving lanes, rather than use those as guides to keep everyone going the same direction, the goal is to see how many times you can cross them and how sharp of an angle you can get your car. I am pretty sure we switched lanes at an 15 degree angle multiple times. However, we arrived safely at the airport. Cindy walked us in and helped us get our bags checked. She took us all the way up to the security checkpoint and then said "bye-bye".

I think it is fair to say that is when things got a bit hairy. We were those people that held up the security line because we didn't know tablets or battery chargers had to be taken out of our bag. We each went through medical detectors, got frisked, and then Dana had to sit in a chair while they ran her boots through again. We made it though. We walked to our gate and the flight was on time (hooray). That meant we only had about 15 minutes to kill before the boarding process started. The plane was a normal sized  Boeing 737 with three rows on each side. The seats were ABCDE and "J". Ok, we'll just go with it. Our seats were spread over two rows and across an aisle. Dana and Eliza sat in a row and Juliette and Anya sat in a row right in front of them. I was across the aisle in the "J" seat.  Almost everyone was on the plane when all of a sudden the man in seat J in the row right in front of me jumped up and started screaming at the person putting something in the overhead bin. Apparently he was not happy that his satchel might be scrunched. It escalated very quickly as he grabbed the others' neck and started pushing up his sleeves preparing for a fist fight. The 105 pound stewardess was trying to hold one of the men back. Luckily, the confrontation ended with no blows and Mr. J52 returned to his seat. The flight takes off and during the ascent water starts dripping from the overhead bin onto the boy that was next to Anya and Juliette. The flight attendants came running and opened the bin to investigate. Luckily it was just something from someone's bag. They cleaned up the mess and then went back to their jump seats to buckle in for a few more minutes. Once cruising we couldn't really figure out if we were allowed to have tablets or cell phones turned on. The flight attendants appeared to be walking around and telling people to turn their cell phones off. The girls appeared to be ok to turn on their tablets. So they did and we settled in for the 2 hour plane ride.

As the plane began its descent we hit some pretty severe turbulence. The plane was almost bouncing its way down through the thick clouds. Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that the lady that was two seats over from me was hacking and spitting into tissues the entire trip.  We finally landed and de-boarded "flight 18-culture shock". 

The airport was very small. We stopped at the restroom for about 5 minutes. When we got to baggage claim their was almost no one left and three of our bags had already been taken off of the conveyor. We found them all and then went to meet our new guide Elsie. Elsie and our new driver Mr. Fu helped us to the car and squeeze our suitcases in the back. There was plenty of room, but in my opinion the bags were not stacked efficiently as was needed. Either way, we got on the road to Nanchang. It was raining pretty hard and visibility was low so we really couldn't take in too much of the landscape. We crossed a beautiful bridge over a river into Nanchang and that is when Mr. Fu decided to turn the road into his own personal video game.  He put Mr. Fao to shame with the level of lane changes. I even think at one point we may have been driving backwards down a sidewalk...it was all a blur. We squealed our way into the hotel round-about and stumbled out of the van. 

We walked into our hotel, The Galactic Peace, and it was quite beautiful. Elsie helped us check in and took us to our two rooms. They were supposed to be right next to each other because they were rooms ..01 and ..02, but remember the ABCDEJ scenario from above. The same non-logic held true in this case. They are on opposite sides of the floor. We decide to go ahead and keep them because Elsie said they are bigger than the normal rooms. 

Inside one of the rooms was a crib for Mr. Magnus. Oh yeah, that is why we are doing this! This small room was to be where we would try to begin to show our boy that we will keep him safe and that he is now part of our family.  

Not much time for sentimentalism because we were to meet Elsie down in the lobby to go to the grocery store and get supplies. We grabbed our umbrellas and went out to play "Frogger" to cross the street and get to the other sidewalk to get to the store. It was about a 10 minute walk. We were clearly not in Kansas any longer. In Beijing many people spoke a little bit of English, but here it is clear that we are deep in the heart of China.

We arrived at the superstore which should have represented less chaos than the busy street. Nope! Turn it up about 3 more notches. Elsie moved us quickly through the maze of vendors yelling at the top of their lungs to get people's attention. Finally we arrived at the food section. The first thing on our list was to get the formula that they told us he is drinking. Nope, didn't have it. Elsie is going to "see what she can do" to get us some. We then grabbed a few other items to get us through the next couple of days.The poor girls were exhausted having woken up so early that morning. While waiting in the checkout for about 30 minutes, Dana was scolded by a woman for not layering the girls in umpteen layers of clothes. She was concerned about the girls health and pointed to her grand daughter who could barely move in all her clothes as an example. We were a complete spectacle. Everyone in line kept trying to speak to us in Chinese even though we made it very clear that we couldn't. One man kept tapping Anya on the shoulder and saying something. Elsie said they were asking if she went to school. Very odd. 

We finally made it through the checkout. Elsie suggested that we just grab some McDonalds for dinner to keep it simple. That sounded like a good idea to us. We got our food and with hands full and trying to keep the kids safe, we hustled back to the hotel.  When we arrived as we got in the elevator Elsie stepped out and said, "meet you in the lobby at 4pm tomorrow. He will be brought here". The doors shut and Dana and I just looked at each other  and thought, what just happened. 

The plan was to go to a civil affairs office to meet Magnus on Sunday. Well apparently plans changed. As of right now we don't really know what to expect.  Will Elsie prep us for anything? Will he just be dropped off without much of a chance to ask questions to an orphanage worker?  Will we have formula to give him? What about the baby aspirin that he takes every day that we couldn't get in the US?

As we ate our McDonalds in a bit of a stupor, the girls started falling asleep. It was only 5 pm so we needed to keep them up a bit longer to get them on the right schedule. We said we would take them to the pool to go swimming. That got them going. The girls had fun in the pool. I thought it was cold, but they seemed to be enjoying. After swimming for a bit we got them back to the room for a quick shower and into pjs. We decided that Dana and Anya would sleep in the other room tonight. The girls fell asleep about 7:30. That should be close enough to get them on a normal schedule. 

Right now it is 4am of our Family Day. In the adoption world many people call today "Gotcha Day". We prefer to use the former and will celebrate it as a Family holiday moving forward.  A lot of emotions running right now. We really do appreciate and feel everyone's protective prayers. Please focus your prayers on Magnus today as he will be going through another tragic  loss of familiarity, friends, and what he knows as family. We will do our best to help him through the process and begin to realize that as a song says "your world is not falling apart, it's falling into place!" 

Today we meet our son! 

Love,

Last Day Duff Family of Five

P.S - I have figured out how to get some pics posted. I will include some on yesterday's blog.