Day 4 - Nanjing

We woke up in Beijing (at 3am, saw 4am and gave up trying to sleep at 5am) and will be going to sleep in Nanjing!. We arrived in Nanjing this afternoon. Our guide met us at the airport and after changing money - we loaded up the van and headed to our hotel.

Our room here is bigger than in Beijing and nice. Except for the the carpet! It is really gross. I have declared that no one walk around the room in bare feet. Socks are required!! Yes, I have issues with yucky things.. Unfortunately, I may be passing these on to Bennett.      

With our guide, we walked over to the supermarket to buy some water and other essentials and took a walk around the block from our hotel. Nanjing Normal University is directly behind the hotel. Our guide pointed out some restaurants that looked interesting, but we figured that on this trip we should stay away from restaurants where the kitchen is out on the sidewalk!    

Nanjing is not as clean as Beijing and it does not have the wide sidewalks. Also missing are the English subtitles on signs. We did find a good restaurant to eat dinner and as usual, we ordered too much food. The "simple noodles" for 10RM ($1.50) was a HUGE bowl of noodles in broth. Enough for 4 + people. After many attempts at feeding Bennett with chopsticks, we finally broke down and asked for a fork. Mark did an excellent fork charade! A fabulous meal of noodles, scallion pancakes and sweet and sour ribs. Bennett chowed down on the noodles and pancakes before he fell asleep with a big smile on mommy's lap. He did wake up, ask to sit on daddy's lap - only to finish daddy's noodles.   

Tommorow is THE BIG DAY! We will be picked up at the hotel at 10:00 and our appointment to meet April is at 10:30. We are nervous and excited and taking bets on whether she will come to us willingly, scream her head off or shut down. My money is on the screaming because she is 5 and has been with the same foster family for many years. On top of that - she will have gotten up early and traveled for 3-4 hours in a van before meeting us. Her entire world will be turned upside down. We are hoping that the orphanage has prepared her for meeting us. 

Please keep us in your thoughts!