The journey

We departed St. Louis on June 20th, spent a relatively uneventful night in a hotel in DC and then departed for Beijing, via Chicago, on the 22nd. We had a delay on the ground in DC and then a few hour delay in Chicago and then were on our way.

The boys did very well on the 13 1/2 hour flight. Tom, Jack and Jed sat in front of Huck and me. Jack and Jed red, played, drew and watched dvds. Jack slept about 5 hours, Jed slept about 2 hours. Tom took care of them and listened to his ipod and read. Huck was pretty good. He colored, listened to books, played with toys and watched dvds. He slept off and on, restlessly, on me, for a couple of hours and only cried for about the last half hour.

We all watched out the window as the plane descended. For me, it was overwhelming to be hit with the reality of our arrival for a 3 year stay in the People's Republic of China. There was a visible haze of pollution, making everything seem a bit foreboding.

Our arrival was smooth. We were met at the gate by one of Tom's coworkers. He led us quickly through customs and immigration, we retrieved our bags and met an embassy driver. While we waited for the bags to be loaded, several teenage girls giggled and gushed over Huck. The boys got many stares throughout the airport.

The drive from the airport to our temporary house took about
20 minutes. We live in a gated neighborhood of villas. Ours is pictured above. We were met at the house by Tom's coworker's family and our Ayi. Ayi means auntie and it's what we call our nanny, household helper, safety net. More on her later. They provided us with dinner and had staples in the cabinets and fridge. We were able to eat, unpack a little and go to sleep.