April 2/05 ~ Leaving Hunan

We literally stuffed ourselves into a bus to travel to the airport. The Chinese don’t see anything wrong with packing people into small places. Thankfully the ride wasn’t very far. I can tell you that we are now used to traveling with crying babies. We don’t seem to notice the noise anymore, but I don’t know how others on the plane will find it. We arrived at the airport only to discover that our flight was delayed by 3 hours. So we all hung out at the airport restaurant. I had my first experience of changing Sophie in a public restroom. They don’t seem to believe in baby change tables here so I had to change her on the counter between two sinks. It was a bit of a balancing act and I had spectators once again. The cleaning ladies (usually there are more than one) stood and watched. When I was finished they smiled their approval and went back to work. I guess they wanted to see if an English woman could properly change a Chinese baby’s bottom. It’s funny that our group conversations have changed to discussing our babies bowel movements. There seems to be an occurrence of "diaper blowouts" that have been happening with a few of the babies. Fortunately for us, Sophie has been having what Jamie calls "a playdough factory". We finally were allowed to board the plane and take off for Beijing. We took a friend’s advice and boarded the plane last and were able to get 3 empty seats at the back. Otherwise we would have been sandwiched in the middle of the plane. Sophie fell asleep after we took off and we placed her in the empty seat between us. She did great on the 2 hour flight and woke up 15 minutes before we were to land. Only a couple of the 11 babies had screaming episodes. We now have arrived at our hotel and checked into our room. At first we were placed in a room beside the elevators but then Jamie asked for another room and now we are in a nice corner unit. Sophie had some difficulty falling asleep. There are just so many changes happening to her over this past week. She had spent 10 months of her life with the same routine looking at the same four walls and now she is becoming quite a traveler. All these changes are hard on these little ones but they seem to be coping well. Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall of China!
Last picture taken in our room in Changsha, Hunan.
At the airport.
Waiting at the airport.
Airport restaurant.
Sophie's first flight.
"Good-bye Hunan!"