How was the Train?

CJ 11.20.2010

Saturday – Train ride!

We left for the train station at about 9am… after maria had her bowl of rice congee and noodles and hardboiled egg and fruit… by the way… just for the record, I think rice congee (soup) is nasty… ick… but she LOVES it! She gets soooo excited when she sees it! She starts saying mmmmmmm and laughing and smiling (at least for me). Those four foods are apparently her favorite so we have been sticking with that for now. Poor girl, once we leave China, I am afraid there will be no more rice congee and no more Chinese noodles that taste like these over here… I wonder if she will like Ramen noodles… I hope so… since those are simple.

Yesterday I forgot to prepare the tips for Charlotte, and Belinda, so this morning I handed Crystal envelops for each of them with some money and a thank you note. Then we forgot to give the driver a tip when we got to the train station, we were in such a hurry to get out and not get run over that we forgot! We felt so bad! Apparently these tips are a big deal to them. Personally I hate tips… it always seems to be a reflection on either how much money you have to throw around or how stingy you are… the receiving party can’t always tell the difference! Sometimes people just plain forget. Why don’t people just charge the amount they need from you in order to do their job… I mean we don’t get tipped from our customers… they pay us to do a job, that’s it. Its all silly. :)

Anyways, we went to our gate and waited, Crystal was able to come with us to the train, since we had 4 tickets. That was nice. She helped us find our compartment and room. We had booked a full sleeper room – 4 tickets, that way we didn’t have to share with anyone… We are so glad we did, not that we wouldn’t want to hang with the Chinese, but with Maria needing to nap and all our luggage, it was the best option!

We got settled in and Crystal left. Pretty soon our train was pulling out! So exciting! Apparently we are the first adoptive family that any one of our team had ever worked with that wanted to take the long train! Our ride was to be 21 hours long! Changsha, here we come!! Kimi – Here we come!!!

So we got our luggage put away on the top beds, and we sat down to enjoy the scenery for a while. We played and took some pictures thru the DIRTY window! We fed Maria some Cheerios and some crackers. She liked those! She finished her bottle. Then she took a little nap on mommy. She loves to sleep on my chest! However… she sweats! Like crazy!

The scenery was cool… the occasional city where we stopped to pick up people or drop off people. But mostly farm land! Not farmland like in the US… it was divided into smaller areas and you could tell it was worked by hand… I think we saw two tractors all day and they were small! The greenhouses were the coolest ever… you will see them in the pictures. The apartments are the tallest, too! They are building SOOOO many of them!

Finally we were hungry… Jerry went to check out the food car. He came back and said the food was on the table! Stir-fried cucumber and some brown stuff… I am sure it is a “fungus” of some sort. Jerry refuses to believe it! He thinks its cabbage, because it is kind of crunchy and in crinkly. Anyways it tastes pretty good and adds quite a bit of flavor to the food. Rice and a scrambled egg dish with green onions. It all tasted good, Maria ate a bunch too! Then off we went back to our cabin… we played some more and took another nap. It was quite a leisurely day. Jerry read and I snuggled with Maria. Like I said… she is very docile, she will hardly move. She would play with one toy all day! We are always trying to get her to get up and move, but she just won’t yet! So I make her stand up, but pretty soon she is leaning against something, because she is too tired to stand on her own! Seriously this girl is floppy! A few hours later after it was dark out and we could no longer see outside we went back to the dinner car and had some more of the same lunch… we had to make sure it was vegetarian… so we had the same thing! haha! The lady was pointing to the different meat… and all I could think of when she pointed at the cow was “moooo!” Nope… I couldn’t eat it! Hahaha!!

Oh the restrooms… haha! I went in the train… yes a squat hole in the floor. But you can flush it. The second time I went… I went int the other one because the first one was occupied… oh yay!!! And Western potty!! They even had seat covers! The third time I went… was in the middle of the night and after waiting at least a half hour just to use the western toilet I finally gave up and had to us the squat! Yuck! Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t visibly dirty, but I was just sure I was standing in pee. Gross! Needless to say I cleaned off my shoes well afterwards! Make sure you bring your own toilet paper… I measured out lengths… the longest I thought any of us would need… then folded it up and put like eight of those in a zip bag, I carry it in our “diaper” bag. You need it at any public toilet. I smashed the rest of the rolls and put it in the suitcase in case we need to refill our supply. Has worked well this trip.

So we decided to sleep. We are worn out from all the moving around. We put two comforters on the floor in between Jerry’s and my cots. We put Maria down there to sleep. She didn’t mind. She just laid there until she fell asleep.

We were so glad they turned the heat off… they had it on so high earlier in the day that we were just sweating and sweating! Gag! It was like a sauna! So it was pretty comfortable in there… the cots got kind of hard later in the night… my hip bones started hurting from lying on my side! Ha! So I did a bunch of tossing later in the night. Plus my half hour trip waiting for the potty! We started waking up about 5 am. By then we could hardly wait to get here! Anyways we passed the time getting dressed, cleaning up putting things away and feeding Maria cheerios again!

CJ 11-21-2010

Getting off was a madhouse!! We had all four luggages and baby! Maria was at least in the bjorn so Jerry’s hands were free. There were soooo many people! I guess more than one train came in at the same time!!! We hauled our luggage down the stairs and joined the herd! Seriously! There were so many people coming thru! And they all had luggage they were rolling behind them! It sounded like a stampede!!! Whoa! We have to show our tickets when leaving the train station as well as getting on. Funny, huh?

So our new Guide in Changsha met us out front, Amy. We will have her all week as well as the same driver! She brought us to our Hotel. The Dalton. A five star beautiful hotel! Our room has two beds and they brought in a crib for Maria. We are on the 31^st floor. On the 30^th floor is a little playroom for kids. There is a pool and gym as well as some other stuff too. There are few restaurants in the hotel too.

Amy went over the plan for the next couple of days. Tomorrow we will receive Kimi at about 10:30. So we will meet Amy at 10 am downstairs. We will just get her tomorrow and then nothing the rest of the day. Tuesday we will sign everything and do all the paperwork. Yay!!! We will have to exchange some money tomorrow for Tuesday. They are going to let us give them the orphanage donation in US dollars, then we will pay for the passport etc with Chinese yuan. So that is nice.

Amy is going to work out the details to hopefully go to HengYang on Wednesday or Thursday to see the city. We are hoping to meet Kimi’s Foster Family. I want photograph the Li River and the mountains there! Sigh. I can’t wait. I hope it is not too foggy! It rained here all day today, apparently it hasn’t rained in a long time, so everybody is pretty happy for the rain. We didn’t mind. We stayed in mostly today. I unpacked and got things organized and washed out some clothes. I need to find a cheaper way to get some laundry done… otherwise I will just wash things myself! Its 5-6 dollars just to wash a shirt! You can buy a shirt for that! ;) Anyways, Jerry took a nap, maria had a fit and then took a nap, we had lunch. Maria had lunch and dinner. I journaled. Jerry explored outside the hotel and had a massage… non-relaxing, so he was rather disappointed again. Crazy guy! Jerry and Maria tried out the pool. Not me… too cold! I took pictures.

Now we are going to get things ready to meet Kimi and got to bed early… well… Maria and I will… I am not sure what Jerry’s plans are, since he had a nap.