Hallelujah!

Hello, everyone! We have much to celebrate tonight.

First of all, we arrived safely in Guangzhou today. Little Ting Ting did just fine on her first airplane flight. We were worried because of her ears, but she chowed down on Cheerios the whole time, begged our neighbor for food and posed for photographs like a champ.

We checked in to the Victory Hotel, and it is amazing. Michelle I., you wouldn't believe the difference in the last few months. We're in the newly renovated section of the hotel and everyone in our group is raving about how beautiful the rooms are. Ours is smaller than the one in Changsha, but it is gorgeous. The bathroom has a big tub and a separate shower. And they have a new water filtration system so the water is SAFE TO DRINK! We can brush our teeth with it instead of buying bottled water!

And when we got to our room we also discovered that each room is equipped with a computer, hooked up to the internet. The computer even has a card reader. And they have wi-fi, which means Lance can use his laptop while I'm on this desktop. He's over there cleaning up some photos right now, and he's going to put them on a card and plop them into this one so I can post. Hallelujah indeed! I was getting embarrassed when our friends and relatives started commenting on our travel mates' blogs because they were not finding any info on ours! That is changing right now, believe me (of course, you still should read about Chuck and Lynette and Dani and about Jacquie and Mickey and their daughter Tabitha for other perspectives on our trip -- for example, Dani's first flight was not as smooth as Rachel's, unfortunately for her daddy).

Best of all tonight, we're so grateful that little Ting Ting is feeling great. She's asleep in her crib right now (and believe me, that is a HUGE improvement -- just ask Lance, who served as her bed for the first few nights). We're seeing more of her personality these days, and it's delightful. She's a little stinker, trust me. Today she greeted each passenger that came on the plane after us by holding up her hand to give them high fives or offer them a Cheerio or giving them her happy high-pitched greeting of "dah!" We're going to see if we can get her a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart over the Christmas season. She is not quite as clingy with her daddy these days, so I can hold her and play with her and even comfort her sometimes, which gives him a big break and thrills me no end. And this morning while we were packing our suitcases, we put her in her crib with her toys and she stayed in there for a couple of hours, pulling herself up into a standing position and shouting "dah!" at us and singing. That little grin of hers is absolutely delightful -- she has several teeth on top, but for some reason when she grins she juts her jaw out so that all you see are the two on the bottom, which are cute as the dickens.
Do I sound like a happy mama? Well, I am! Later I'll go back and fill you in on some of the things I have missed, but I think we're back in action, at last. Enjoy our cutie.