The Horst Family is Growing by 4 Feet: Day 7 - Travel from Beijing to Lanzhou

Sunday, March 19^th – Travel day from Beijing to Lanzhou

We had to leave our hotel a 6:30 AM which is not an easy feat with three teenagers that like to sleep. We managed to get them moving and we made it to the lobby in time to grab our bagged breakfasts and meet our driver. It was now time to head to our 3^rd province in China – Gansu. There were several other adoptive families on the flight – all anxious to arrive in their child’s province as well. Our flight arrived midday. We met our guide, Lili, and then we had an hour-long ride to downtown Lanzhou from the airport. This is an extremely mountainous area and during the drive we even saw a gentleman and some of his sheep on a very steep side of the mountain. It was like something out of a movie. We also saw a building that looked like Greek architecture and then a replica of the Sphinx. We were totally perplexed as to why these would be in China. We found out that there is an amusement and water park being built outside of Lanzhou and these structures will be part of the park. There is tons of regular building construction going on as well. Our guide told us that the downtown area of Lanzhou is in a valley and there is no more room to grow. Therefore, they are building outside of the city and will call it “New Lanzhou”. Unfortunately, Jeff was sick during the entire ride to the hotel and could not enjoy the scenery or chat much with the guide.

Once we arrived in Lanzhou, we checked into the Crowne Plaza. We were happy to know that we once again had adjoining rooms. They even told us that we could enjoy the executive lounge access on the 29^th floor each day for tea in the afternoon and dinner & desserts in the evening. This will be a huge blessing because breakfast is already included and being able to eat dinner in the hotel each night means that we do not need to try to order at a local restaurant. Lanzhou is a big city, but there are not western type restaurants here like there were in Jinan and Beijing. Our rooms are extremely nice again and to see a crib in the room is a big reminder that tomorrow our lives are going to change a lot. Adding Wen to our family was like when we added Andrew. We already had children the same age as Andrew, so nothing really changed with our daily lives. It was a smooth and fairly easy transition when Andrew joined our family. Wen is an amazingly resilient young lady and she is at the same level as Madeline in terms of maturity (this is often not the case when people adopt an older child), so we are grateful for that. We are already in the preteen / new teen phase with our three older children, so adding another daughter the same age was very comfortable for us. However, a little one in diapers – we haven’t done that in a while! Tomorrow we will see if it all comes back to us!

Can’t believe we will have our second family day tomorrow! Being so busy with our newest daughter and our other two children has made the time go quickly between both family days.