Zhengzhou

Today we flew from Beijing to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. It was a nice flight - it's fun to get a bird's eye view of China. We passed over lots of gorgeous mountains. We arrived at the hotel, converted some money for all the notary and adoption fees, and then had some time to unpack.

Tonight we had a bit of an adventure! We were on our own for dinner, so we asked our hotel concierge for advice on some good, authentic Chinese food. He recommended we take a taxi to a noodle place down the road. Before I knew it, we were piled into 2 taxi's and we were off. The taxi ride alone was exciting - traffic here is a lot like playing the old video game Frogger, and so far we had only experienced it from a bus. On taxi level, well, let's just say we felt a part of the action.

When the taxi's let us off, we had no idea which restaurant was the one recommended. We had to show the card the concierge gave us to a local man and he pointed us in the right direction. When we got to the place, we were the only non-Chinese people there. The manager helped us to a table, then pointed us towards the front of the store. She showed us a display case full of small dishes and we could tell she was asking us what we wanted. There was a lot of of pointing and gesturing, and we finally choose about 6 small dishes. Two of them were meat, so we assumed they would take all this to the back and cook it for us. However, as we sat down, they brought all the cold dishes to our table. Thankfully I had a book of words and phrases, so we were able to at least ask what kind of meat we were eating. We had everyone in the restaurant watching us, so we began eating some very unusual and mostly not so good dishes. Josh wouldn't even try anything, and to be honest, if I was a kid I wouldn't have tried anything either. Our teens were good sports about the whole thing, but I think Bill's mom was a nervous wreck. After about 10 minutes, they brought out 6 HUGE bowls of noodle soup. This was actually pretty good. The manager showed us how to eat it - cut the noodles, use chopsticks and even dip the meat in a sauce, and then use spoons for the broth. The manager was very kind, but I'm sure they all had a good laugh when we left. We've decided next time we'll just ask for P.F. Chang! At least we have a fun story to remember about the night before we got Michelle.

Speaking of which, tomorrow is the big day! There are 12 families in our group, and 7 of us get our children in the morning, 5 in the afternoon. We walk to the notary office at 9:00 a.m. and Michelle should be there around that same time. I can't wait! It's hard to believe after more than 2 years we will finally have our daughter!