It was time to say goodbye to Fuzhou, Fujian. I was sad to leave the place where Ruby was probably born(we will never know this for sure unfortunately) and where she had spent the last 16 months of her life. I knew we would be back someday when she was older but it was such a strange feeling to take her from there.
We headed to the airport in the late afternoon along with our new friends that had been in Fuzhou adopting their little boy at the same time. All families have to complete the second part of the adoption process in Guangzhou. It is basically the American side of the adoption process.
Another flight- another anxious John. Ha! Airports and catching planes really stress him out- especially on this particular trip. Plus we always had several pieces of luggage to worry about.
It was sad to say goodbye to Maggie, our guide- she was really great and she had been with us through all the important events of the past week.
This picture of Ruby cracks me up!
After farewells with Maggie, our whole group headed to eat supper at McDonalds before boarding our plane. It was Ruby's first time! We let her try a fry but she didn't seem to like it. I got a Big Mac but it didn't taste the same. Plus, ironically, this would end up being one of the most expensive meals we would have on our entire trip to China.
Seated on the plane and ready to go! Oh how blissfully unaware we were of what was to come...
Ruby would scream literally the entire flight- 1.5 hours. A lady behind us kept insisting we give her a hard candy to suck on(for a baby!?!?) and then at one point she asked to hold her so she could try and calm her down. Ha! I told her sorry but we just adopted her so we aren't supposed to let anyone else hold her for awhile. She didn't seem pleased about that.
Here is our first glimpse of The Garden Hotel. I have to say that out of all the (really, really nice) hotels we stayed at on this trip, this one was definitely my favorite. It was SO GREAT! Many adoptive families stay here so right off the bat it feels different because there are others in your same situation all around that you can talk to and relate to. We met some really neat families during our stay there.
Here we are walking down the hallway to see our room for the first time.
Unlocking the door in anticipation...
Oh my goodness. We couldn't believe how great it was. We had what is called an executive suite(because there were so many of us)- it was a better, less expensive solution to having 2 rooms. I forgot to take pics of the bedroom but that was just a room with a king size bed. There were 2 bathrooms. This is the main, master bathroom. Crazy!
The toilet seat was actually heated. I'm not even kidding. And there was a TV in there too.
This was the office off the master bedroom. We used it for Ruby's bedroom. There were doors that closed between our room and her's and we figured out after a bit that we could turn a fan on via the thermostat. All of this was more for me than her since she could sleep through ANYTHING.
Then between the office and the master bath was a dressing room/closet.
More master bath: (sorry, the pics got out of order).
This was in the living room:
There was a big couch in the living room that Mary Beth slept on and then we had a queen size air mattress delivered to the hotel and waiting for us by Ann from Red Thread. The boys shared this on the floor of the living room. They had a TV in there and we had another one in our room but we never used ours. The kids watched Boonie Bears on theirs every evening(in Chinese). They loved it.
I have many more pictures of the outside of this hotel to come!
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