Day-10: A Narrow Escape

Warning: If you are planning to travel to Zhengzhou in the near future and you are at all anxious or fearful about it, you might want to skip this blog entry!! (Did that pique your interest? :)

We had an eventful day. We began by going down to the lobby ready to get on the bus at 8:40 as we had been instructed. There was only one problem: the bus wasn't there. After lots of heated phone calls to the bus driver by our guide, the bus finally arrived. This put us on a tight schedule to catch our plane. Our guide had our passports in hand ready to help us through the security checkpoints at the airport. She was telling us that we would need to hurry when we got there when all of the sudden, a little old man carrying lots of cabbages on his motorbike basically ran into the side of our bus! I watched it happen. The bus driver tried to swerve away, but the little man just kept coming. He flew off the bike and landed on the ground. The cabbages went everywhere. The driver and our guide jumped off the bus. We watched as a crowd gathered. Our guide stood in the road with all of our passports in her hands shouting at the people in the crowd who were (I guess) giving the bus driver a hard time. On the bus, we agreed that we would probably miss our plane. We were trying to keep the kids calm. We watched as a police car drove right past, then a military officer bicycled past, then another official looking vehicle drove past. None of them stopped. The crowd stood around but it didn't seem like anyone was giving attention to the poor old man laying in the street. Finally an ambulance came and they loaded him up. Another bus came and the men in our group shifted all of our stuff to it while the women shifted the kids. We hurried off the airport. Because we were late or because we were Americans with Chinese kids (who knows), the security people decided to give all of us an extra hard time. They held the plane until we all finally got on. We made it!! The stress level in our group was quite high, but we all arrived in Guangzhou in one piece. We were sure glad to be in a new place. Zhengzhou is an interesting place. I think it will take us a little while to process everything that we experienced there. We will always remember the place of our daughter's birth and we feel privileged to have seen it for ourselves.

We have a different guide here, Grace. She seems to have everything well in hand. We are hoping for an uneventful time! Shamian Island, which is where we are staying, is a fascinating little area. It has a lot of British influence with architecture from the late 1800's. There are large banyan and palm trees everywhere. The consulate is here, so every adopting family must come here before going to the United States. There are lots of little souvenir shops that cater to the adoptive families. Tonight we ate dinner at a restaurant called "Lucy's" that specializes in American food. They were playing American music and had American movie posters on the walls. It was a refreshing change for us! The White Swan Hotel is beautiful. The rooms are clean and bright...not smokey like our last one was. We are looking forward to a wonderful week here before heading home.

Moriah did ok on the plane ride. She was a little fussy, but after about an hour she fell asleep. On the bus and the plane she wanted to eat lots of snacks. We think it is her way of trying to find comfort when she is stressed. Once we got to our room here, she played happily for quite awhile. We were able to borrow a stroller from one of the shops for the time that we are here. She really loved riding around in that. She is sleeping peacefully now.

Tonight we are so thankful for the Lord's protection over us in so many ways today. We should also note that our guide in Zhengzhou has been doing this job since 1995 and she said nothing like that had ever happened to her before, so it's not as though it's a common occurrence. The traffic is insane, though, and I'm sure there are many accidents every day. Most of the time, it is more entertaining to travel about than scary, but there are those moments...