Update #5: Day 5

Day 5 – travel to Nanjing, settle in hotel

 

We were up early to travel to the airport.  Our host helped us process through until we had our tickets and checked baggage turned over for loading in the plane.  The Kung Fu souvenirs set off their sensors on the checked bags.  They suspected a firearm of some kind, so I had to show them what it was.  The bags were then re-scanned and passed through to us in Nanjing.

 

Hannah attracted a lot of attention in the airport!  She had a little group of kids around her in the play area.  She has a gift for making other children feel welcome!  We drew attention from the parents, too.  Lynette was able to share why we are pursuing adoption, why we homeschool, and about faith.

 

The plane flight was pleasant.  The seats are made for smaller people, so my head was above the seat!  Even though the flight was 90 minutes, they fed us lunch.  Nice!

 

Needing to use the restroom after the flight, Hannah and Lynette took their own toilet paper, as is recommended.  After washing her hands, Lynette looked around for paper towels.  Shake and air dry is more common.  She was happy to see paper dangling from a wall-mounted container on the wall near the garbage can.  Oops!  It was a common toilet paper dispenser.  Trying to extricate her hands from the now wet toilet paper was not so easy.  J  Oh, and there were real paper towels in a dispenser just above the garbage can, just like we have in the U.S.

 

We arrived and met Nancy, our government representative in Nanjing, who helped us get to the hotel and check in.  We ate in our room and in the hotel at a Chinese restaurant.  Our experience at the restaurant was a bit difficult.  The wait-staff seated us promptly and gave us a couple menus to look at.  We decided on our order and closed up the menus…and sat…and sat…and sat…waiting for one of the wait-staff to take our order.  We would make eye contact and smile; they would smile back and just walk on by.  It was not busy in the restaurant.  In fact, there were about 5 waitresses just standing around.  It was awkward.  We had no idea what to do.  Finally, Lynette beckoned to a waitress and told her that we needed to order.  The waitress looked confused, repeated “meat order” to herself a couple times and wandered off into the back of the restaurant to consult with the other waitresses.  A couple waitresses came to our table and Randy was able to express our desire to order with the use of a Chinese phone app.  Phew!  We were getting seriously hungry!