We made it!!!

We finally made it to Zhuhai, China. 30 straight hours of travel, and our first “flying to China experience” with Savannah went better than Joe and I both could have hoped for!

Getting up at 4am to leave Cleveland wasn’t the most pleasant experience in the world!  ESPECIALLY after not getting to bed until after midnight the night before!  Savannah wasn’t too happy about being awaken that early either!  But, we gathered our 9 large-to-be-checked bags, car-seat, stroller, 3 carry-on bags, 3 “personal items” for carry on, coats and passports, and we were on our way.  We were picked up by a large van (needed the space for the luggage!) and then made our way to the airport.

After getting scolded by the ticket agent for not checking in “early” enough (evidently need to be at the airport and checked in at least 2 hours before an international flight – even if it is the first flight out for the day and is a domestic connection…  Joe pointed out that Cleveland to Newark wasn’t an international flight…  That didn’t seem to help our scolding any) we made our way through security and to our gate.

Our first flight-to Newark went great. Savannah sat like a big girl in her chair. She took out the plane safety manual and was very interested in it. She seriously looked like she was reading it!! Possibly the first time ever either of us has ever actually seen someone look at that card when instructed!

The 2^nd flight was the long one to Shanghai-14 hours.  She played, watched lots of movies and slept for about 6 hours total.  She didn’t want to sleep in her own chair (even though it went all the way down to a bed!) So, I tried to get some sleep while cuddling with Savannah.  I only got a few hours-maybe 3 if I was lucky!

We made it through customs and immigration quickly, claimed our mountain of bags, and made our way to re-check into our domestic connection.  One bag had to be “open bag screened” by security during our re-check – a process they would only do with one of us present while they looked in the bag.  Once that was cleared up we made it through security and spent the remainder or our 3.5 hour layover in the lounge (a quieter, easier-to-contain Savannah area with free drinks and private bathrooms)

The 3^rd flight was delayed about 45 minutes. Once we finally took off---Savannah hit a wall and was out cold. She slept the whole (almost 3 hour) flight. Joe and I were so tired we just passed out at times, but the people around us were very loud.  We landed about 9:30pm, claimed our mountain of luggage (again), found our driver/van, and finally got to the hotel around 11:00pm.

The hotel is pretty nice.  Our room is a suite – very sizeable but unfortunately only one “big” room with the bed on one side and an open area with a portable-crib on the other.  The fold-out crib the hotel had for us was much bigger than we expected (VERY PLEASANT SURPRISE – all the cribs we’d seen on our house-hunting trip in the stores were much smaller than her crib at home!) – but still there is no way to separate Vannah from us when it’s time for bed…  It really is a nice room – but a hotel room none-the-less!

Our first night was exactly what I expected….Mommy and Daddy want to sleep, Savannah wants to play!  She only slept from 12am-2:30am (not in the crib) and was up playing with letters in bed in between Joe and I.  Then watched a movie (I don’t even remember what movie at the moment!) and ate an entire bag of her yogurt melts!

We had breakfast in the hotel this morning- which was pretty good. Savannah filled up an eggs, potatoes, and strawberries.  After breakfast, Joe had to work for a few hours so Savannah and I got to take a nap. She was asleep quick. I had to wake her up after 4 hours just to try to get her adjusted to the time difference.  So hopefully we can attempt to go to “bed” at a some-what normal time tonight even if it isn’t through the whole night.

While Joe was out this morning, he was able to locate the closest grocery store, Mc Donalds , KFC, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut. We went to the grocery store to get a few things and had lunch at Pizza Hut. The speaker system at the grocery store and inside the shopping center was VERY loud – as Joe put it “evidently mid-afternoon shoppers are partially deaf – or at least the store managers think their customers are deaf!”  Savannah was extremely happy to have “PA” (which is what she calls pizza). She was attempting to talk to a little boy at Pizza Hut and seems to be very interesting in little kids.

Now its late afternoon – and all three of us are struggling to stay awake.  Joe keeps pretending he’s just “resting his eyes while thinking”…  I keep yawning…  And Vannah has some VERY sleepy eyes.  But if we don’t stay awake until something ‘closer’ to bed time we’ll all be up at 3am playing with letters and watching movies…  again…