Arrival

We are pleased to announce we have arrived in China! After a long flight, we are happy to be on the ground and see our new home. I was a bit nervous about the 14 hour flight as it was the longest flight I had ever been on. My anxiety only heightened when we walked to our seats and noticed we would get to share our 14 hour flight with the two year old sitting next to me. Oh how lucky we are. After the mother told me that the child likes to hit, I was really wishing we had paid the $2000 to upgrade our seats. I have read plenty of posts about other people who lead our lives to know that most parents try everything they can to keep their children calm on flights to do my best to give the mother some sympathy and ignore the arms flying in in my direction. However, after a meal where I just narrowly missed wearing both my dinner and my drink multiple times and the mother doing nothing, I decided she didn't deserve our sympathy. Long story short, after being hit, having to hold down anything on my tray table, and a few hours of screaming, the kid finally fell asleep and slept for about six hours, saving our sanity a bit.

When we arrived in Shanghai, we had to pick up our bags and go through customs, which was surprisingly easy. For the first time in my life, we got to use the "special" line at customs and get through in a quarter of the time. Finally, those black passports came in handy. 

After five gate changes in Shanghai, we were finally on our final flight of the trip, bound to Guangzhou. Our goal was to try to stay awake so we could go to bed as soon as we got to our new home. It was a bit difficult, but we stayed awake for most of it. Our plane decided to land in the cargo terminal next to the FedEx planes, so we hopped on a bus, hoping it would take us to the airport where our sponsor from the consulate was going to meet us. After waiting for over half an hour, our luggage finally decided to make its way to us and we were able to leave the secure area and meet our sponsor J. She lead us out to the consulate's minibus and we were on our way home. It was great to talk to someone on the ground living the life here and get a better sense of what we were in for.

Our new housing- unreal. Completely, 100% unreal. We are living in a five star hotel. It is amazing. We walked into the building and were shocked. All our lights and window shades are controlled by remotes. Our closet is massive. And our shower, is the size of our entire bathroom in DC. 

We know we are going to get spoiled living here. We have doors opened for us, doormen who will take our shopping and deliver it to our room, and the other night we had a lady in a ball gown waiting to push the up button on the elevator. Life is good. We couldn't be happier to be here.