We have our Joy!!!

Sunday, 7/20/08 at 6:00 PM, Zhengzhou. - We flew from Beijing today and arrived in Zhengzhou at 1:20 PM. Jenny our guide picked us up at the airport and informed us that at 3:30 PM we would be recieving Joy Minrui in the lobby of the hotel. We arrived at the hotel about 2:30 and by the time we checked in we had about 30 minutes. After going to the lobby they brought her out to meet us. Rui Rui (pronounced Ray Ray) as we are calling her right now, allowed herself to go right to Meg and sat on her lap. No crying, just her sitting and taking it all in almost very knowing. She is a little bigger than we expected and as cute and as perfect as can be!!! Jenny whisked us off to get pictures for our meeting tomorrow, and then across the street to a department store and supermarket. I am sure it was quite overwhelming for Joy, but you would not have known by how easy she was. I ended up carrying her through the stores for about an hour (my forearm strength is coming back). She & I along with Mac & Jake goofed off with her while we tagged behind Jenny, Meg, & Melissa as they shopped ahead of us. She smiled and pointed a couple of times with me at things, and then gave me eskimo kisses. She is precious and already stolen our hearts. She cryed briefly as Meg and Melissa got her out of her clothes and changed her. Right now she is snuggled back against Meg with Melissa on the bed watching some show that looks like "China's Got Talent"; it looks like it was enough to put her to sleep. As you can see from the time on this blog alot has happened in less than three hours today. We have ordered room service and are in for the night.

Joy just woke up when the food arrived. She sat on Meg's lap and ate noodles off of Meg's chop sticks. She loved the noodles & rice and ate plenty. By the way she recievd all the stuff we had sent her back in May and was dressed in the dress we had sent to her. All of the items were in the backpack we sent and was handed to us with her. It looks like we will be going to the orphanage on Wednesday. We will keep you posted.

Enjoying China!!!

Saturday, 7/19/08 at 9:20 pm, Beijing. - We had another great day of touring the area. Beautiful day with lots of sun. We have done the two day whirl wind tour and have seen alot! Went to the Great Wall today... some in our family climbed farther than others... there seemed to be direct correlation to age. Today we had people from the US, Japan, and Israel in our group. It has been fun to meet and connect with people from such diverse places. We even ran into the family we met last night at dinner at a tour stop today by the Great Wall. It has been really fun to meet others on their adoption journey here. We all hope to meet up again in Guangzhou in a week.

The people of China are absolutely incredible and very nice! A bit crazy when it comes to driving but it seems to work for them and surprisingly you see very few accidents. The whole experience so far is very different than what we expected (in a good way), and we love the people and have felt that Beijing is one of the safer cities we have ever been in. I think we all agreed that it is a place we would come back too!

Tomorrow morning we head to Zhengzhou! We can hardly wait to get Joy!!! We are counting down the hours. We know Zhengzhou will be a very different than Beijing but we are looking forward to it! Maybe next time we post we will have Joy with us.

Thanks for your prayers!

We're in China!!

Saturday, 7/19/08; 7:10 AM Beijing. - Yesterday was quite a whirlwind... We went to the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Tieneman Square and the Pearl and Silk Factories. We got caught in a rain storm like we had never seen before. Our guide said it was man made rain (yes, this is true, Mac saw it on the news before we left) and it poured harder than we have ever seen!!!
It seems amazing to be here. We were with a couple yesterday who is also adopting and it was so great to make a connection with them. Then at dinner sat next to another family whose consulate appointment is also at the same time. They will be at the consulate the same day we are in over ten days. We will all have our new daughters with us!!!

We're on our way !!

We will be leaving on Wednesday July 16th and will plan to return with our new precious daughter and sister on Wednesday July 30th. Our plan is to try to keep this updated while we are in China so you can share in our adventure (and most importantly, keep us in your prayers!)
Love to you all!!

JOY MINRUI ANDREWS