Shanghai!

We made it to Shanghai on Thursday, November 30th. The 14 hour flight from Chicago with a three year old was as miserable as you might imagine it could be. We had hoped for the best but alas she was very unhappy for most of the flight and only slept for maybe 3-4 hours. She kept wanting "out" and "outside" and "got go"... It didn't help that she'd been woken up at 3 in the morning and Walter and I hadn't gone to bed. We were all exhausted.

The flight had some other drama as well as they handcuffed a guy about 5 or 6 hours before our arrival. We think he might have been drunk. We saw a flight attendant scolding him and I could hear her saying "this isn't your seat". We think he came from coach into economy and planted himself in an empty seat (that was actually occupied but the guy was in the restroom). He wouldn't leave the seat willingly so eventually they cuffed him and brought him back to a seat closer to the back.

A little later a call came over the loud speaker asking for anyone on board who might be a doctor or an EMT! We never found out what happened there.

The drama of the plane was mellowed by our experience on the way to the airport though. It was about 4:20 a.m., and Eliza was saying "fun" (or as she pronounces it "pum") when I noticed a car moving really close and was thinking "where does he think he's ...." and then it hit us. Our driver maintained his cool and kept us on the road but the other car careened off our front bumper and launched into the air turning end over end somewhere between 4 and 8 times. It was surreal. When the car stopped and our driver moved off the road I started to freak out about the driver, "help him..help him" I was saying as I was clawing at the door to get out. I couldn't get the door open and Walter finally yelled at me to stop and demanded I stay in the car. He got out and with the assistance of a trucker who had stopped they were able to get the woman out of her car.

She had been hanging upside down by her seatbelt and crying for help. I couldn't believe it as they helped her to her feet and over to the van, that she was visibly uninjured. They put her into the van and I was rubbing her back asking if she was OK. She said she thought she might have broken some fingers. She seemed to be in shock but maybe she was intoxicated or medicated, we couldn't tell. She said she had been on her way to work.

When the sheriff arrived he asked her what happened and she said she had been writing down a note. He asked, "while you were driving?" (he didn't look pleased!) and she said, "yes...there wasn't much traffic". But the truck driver had told Walter that she had been driving erratically for some time and he actually in the process of dialing 911 when she hit us. The police think she fell asleep (or maybe passed out?).

Jet lag is worse this trip than last time probably because of Eliza. She is being very good but has had some big meltdowns about wanting to go home, especially when she is tired. Yesterday we woke up from a very long nap and she was having a nightmare, it looked like she was trying to run and she kept saying "home home". When she finally woke up, she didn't seem to be truly awake and she was inconsolable. Nothing was helping, she kept going to the door and saying "home".

It makes me worried about RoRo. If Eliza is this homesick and her loved ones are with her, what will it be like for Ro, being taken away from her home and her foster family? I am praying hard that it won't be as bad as it could be, for her sake not ours.

Yesterday was our 1/2 tour of Shanghai. Our guide's name is "Chris". She is very sweet and took us to old Shangahi and new. Shanghai really became the city it is (of 23 million) only in the last 25 years. Before that it was a fishing port. But now it is a very modern city. It was colonized in the 19th century so a lot of the "old" buildings are very European.

More people speak English here than in any of the other cities we've visited. Now that we have been in five large Chinese cities we can safely say that Beijing has the worst driving conditions! Shanghai is much more civilized. Eliza was good on the tour but right at the beginning she spotted a kiosk that must have reminded her of the popcorn stand at our zoo because she kept asking for "co-corn" after that. She eventually settled for a hot snack that looked like pretzels but was actually sweet and tasted almost like a doughnut.

Today we will take the bullet train to Nanjing! Silver, our same guide as last time, will meet us at the station. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Aqua City hotel, a different hotel than last time. I heard good things from other families about Aqua City and it has a pool that kids can swim in (unlike our last hotel) so that was the main driver. It's also attached to a mall so it will be good to be able to entertain the girls with walks through the mall when they get restless.

Time to pack for Nanjing! Hopefully we'll have good luck getting online as we have had here. Thanks once again to Marquette's VPN which is the only way I've been able to connect to this blog and Facebook too.