Trek to Nanjing

This morning we left our hotel early to catch the train to Nanjing. This was probably the most adventurous, and by adventurous, I mean somewhat scary, part of our trip so far. I read somewhere that the Shanghai train station is one of the nicest in China and I believe it. It was extremely easy to figure out how to get on the right train, there were English signs and English announcements. The building itself looked a lot like an airport; I was impressed.

When we got on the train, we were trying to find places to cram our luggage and Mark said "Where's my green backpack?" (The one pictured above, which held our video camera amongst other things.) I just stared at him and within seconds he was running off the train because it was still sitting in the spot pictured above. He was gone in a second and I sat there freaking out. The biggest fear being that the train would pull away leaving me sans husband, passport and money (passport and money were attached to said husband). I bowed my head, prayed, looked up, and he was walking back on the train with his backpack. BIG HUGE GIGANTIC SIGH OF RELIEF.

When we arrived in Nanjing, it was not much like Shanghai at all. I all of the sudden did not feel safe; I'm not sure why. We had a hard time getting a taxi - well, a hard time getting an honest taxi. We had several offers for rides from non-taxi people (no, thank you) and one offer from a taxi driver who told us to pay 10x what the ride should have been. We continued to drag our luggage through the city until I could finally flag down a taxi. A good taxi with a regular driver that didn't try to rip us off - we gave him a nice tip at the end. Thank you, Mr. Taxi Driver Man, for being honest and nice! Halfway through finding this taxi, Mark had to use the facilities. Really I am just trying to figure out a way to weave this photo in the story:

ANYWAY, so we got to our hotel room and it was pretty small and there were no sheets on the bed and it hadn't been cleaned. We threw our stuff down anyway and headed out for lunch. When we came back, the room still hadn't been made up, so I called the front desk. They were mortified when I really couldn't care less. They insisted on giving us a new room and showed up a few minutes later to escort  us to our new GIANT room with a GIANT-ER king size bed. We were very happy to have a little extra room for a certain little someone to play. Speaking of a certain little someone...she is about to sleep one more night in the only place she has ever really known. Please pray for her heart. She will be taking a long ride to the Civil Affairs office tomorrow morning where we will meet her at 10:00 a.m. (9:00 p.m. Sunday night U.S. time - EST). The past few days I have been nervous about this first meeting, but now I am just over-the-top excited. I cannot wait to see her in person, hold her, hug her, tell her how much I love her. I can't wait to see what God has in store for her because I really believe He has something special planned. The next time you hear from me, I will have WAY better pictures than Mark standing in line for the bathroom ;)