The Adventure Continues

Our main goal in Shanghai: purchase train tickets for Nanjing. I'm happy to report that ticket-buying was wildly successful. See?

Sometimes when you're traveling in foreign country, things just happen that you will never understand. Like the man who approached me, showed me the generic envelope that they give you to put your train tickets in, and asked ME what the meaning of it was. He kept pointing to the picture of the ticket on the envelope and saying, "What does it mean?" (in Mandarin, of course) and I just kept saying, "I don't know." I'm still confused about why he approached ME, the confused foreigner trying to figure out what line to get in to purchase tickets, thinking I could answer his question which seemed like, I'm sorry to say, but a dumb question. Then there was the very old woman who kept waving us over to a different line that we were sure we weren't supposed to be in. She almost convinced Mark, but thankfully I stood firm and continued to suggest he not follow ANYONE who was waving him ANYWHERE, no matter how old and innocent they looked.

And then it was lunchtime and I was tired from the train ticket adventure. We wandered into a dumpling restaurant and after staring at the Chinese menu, that I could not read, for an undetermined amount of time, I looked at Mark and said, "I'm scared, let's bust out of here." So we ended up here:

After a short nap, we did some exploring. We took the subway to the shopping district and walked around.

It was rush hour and we were wondering how we might fit on the next train that came along...

My goal was to find Chinese food for dinner, but jet lag hit again and my motivation to search dissipated and while we avoided American fast food, we didn't avoid fast food altogether. At least Japanese fast food is a step closer to Chinese food, right?!

When I start thinking about the fact that we are 2 days away from getting Luyana, I get very overwhelmed. I mostly feel nervous, which is not what I expected. I just don't know what to expect. I don't know if she'll like us. Will she be scared? I'm sure she will be and that will make me sad. Will she be overwhelmed and sad? Yes, probably, and I don't know if she'll let us comfort her. I hate the feeling when I see Camden sad, hurt, uncomfortable, etc., so I think that's what my issue is here. While I want nothing more than to go get her, I also know that this is something that will temporarily be not at all what she wants. I don't want to hurt her and I feel bad about that, but it's what is necessary in order to give her what is best: a family that loves her to pieces. I just hope it's sooner, rather than later, that she realizes how much she is loved.