From Beijing to Harbin, Day 8, February 12, 2008

Well I guess we will have to pass over a few days just to get to where we all want to go. I will try to post more about our last day in Shanghai and three days in Beijing later. Needless to say it was all in amazing time being in Tian’ an Men Square, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and on the Great Wall. Many thanks to our guide there, Jennifer.

Today we laid low in the morning prior to departing for Harbin at 4:30 in the afternoon. We met up with two other Gladney families in Beijing. Both of them are traveling to the south to pick up their children. Please keep the Landy family from Ft. Worth and the Cotter family from Tennessee in your thoughts in prayers.

Our Harbin guide Lynn greets us at the airport

The flight from Beijing to Harbin was uneventful. We met our guide easily and are now checked into our hotel. The temperature is around 12 degrees F right now. It will range between 20 below and 15 above F most of our 7 days here. We can feel our excitement building as tomorrow approaches and we meet our daughter. David is trying to brush up on some Mandarin phrases like “We are your mommy and daddy,” “don’t cry” (just in case), “You are so pretty,” “Can I pick you up,” and “I will always be your daddy.”

We did have a chance to sit down with the guide and go over tomorrow’s events. Everything seems to be in order with a few exceptions. We can find no indication that we were supposed to bring two additional passport photos of us, which apparently we were. Secondly we should not have listened to those that said it was no longer necessary to bring only crisp new $100 bills. Our hotel here will not change ours into the Chinese currency that we need for some fees and our guide is not sure if the orphanage will accept them for our donation to the orphanage. Now these are not beat up bills we are talking about, a few creases here and there. Fortunately our guide is confident both issues can be overcome with a trip to a bank and a trip to a photo store. Hopefully the bank is more forgiving than the hotel. Just needed to stress a little more about something….

In any event we are ready to meet our lovely daughter sometime tomorrow morning.

Just a quick request for some positive thoughts and prayers on one other matter. As we write this David’s dad is undergoing a surgical procedure back in Houston that will require an overnight hospital stay. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers as well.

Hope to post some new photos of us with our daughter tomorrow!

Thanks to everyone for all their good wishes. Ann and David