Ting Ting goes bye-bye

On Saturday, we left Changsha. I was eager to get to Guangzhou, but I was a bit sad to leave Ting Ting's home province.

All Americans adopting from China have to visit the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, so local businesses cater to the new parents. That's great for shopping purposes, but it does kind of take away from the authenticity of our experience. But it was time to get going with the adoption process, so we said our goodbyes and headed to the airport.

It was to be Ting Ting's first plane flight, and we were a bit worried that her ears would not take the trip well. But she did great.

The sight of 21 Americans with 10 Chinese babies created a bit of a stir in the airport. I saw a lot of cell phone cameras being used to capture the sight and even one video camera running on us as we sat in the waiting room wiping noses, preparing bottles and discussing the best place for a diaper change.

No, Lance did NOT photograph THIS plane (at least to my knowledge).

Lance and I had the aisle and middle seats of a row, and a very nice man was at the window. When we first got on, I figured he was probably really aggravated to have us come wedge ourselves in between him and freedom, but that wasn't the case at all. He took photos of Rachel with his cell phone, made her laugh and fed her pieces of his dried kiwi (that's what they served on the flight instead of peanuts). Lance took a couple of photos of him with Rachel, and he handed me his e-mail address so we could send him the photos later.

I had planned to give Ting Ting a bottle on the plane to help her equalize the pressure in her ears, but she got whiney for it earlier and I gave it to her as we waited. So on the plane we fed her Cheerios nonstop. Lance was very concerned that her ears would hurt her and she would scream, but she didn't seem to notice anything at all. Instead she showed her two bottom teeth to everyone who came by and tried to high-five all the other passengers.

Oh, and she got caught up on her newspaper reading (unfor-tunately, her favorite newspaper --the World's Greatest -- was unavialable).

All in all, it was a smooth flight, and I hope it was a good omen for our long journey home. Something tells me, though, that a 13 1/2-hour flight will be altogether different.

I'm calculating Cheerios consumption right now.