July 6, 2005
Gotcha Day!

3:00 pm - It's only about a half hour now that we leave to go pick up Tyler. We're very anxious and trying to relax in our room at the White Swan hotel in Guangzhou. The flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was terrible. It was packed and for some reason the plane didn't have controls to adjust the air. We were burning up. Alana was hoping to get some sleep on the plane, but the heat and anticipation killed that idea. She only got 3 hours of sleep last night, waking up at 2:30 in the morning. She wasn't the only one. It seemed that everyone in the group didn't sleep much. Well, except for Bill. It seems his little trek up the Great Wall was just what he needed in order to knock him out.

The White Swan hotel in Guangzhou is a 5 star hotel and it is definitely much nicer than the hotel in Beijing. There is marble everywhere in our room and little extras here and there. We're still trying to figure out what's included and what's not. The service is impeccable and we even got a free crib for Tyler when he arrives. Our room has a view of the Pearl River and the city. It should make our week here much more bearable.

Well, we're going to log off for now. As soon as we have time we will post pictures of the "Gotcha" moment. Wish us luck!

11:12 pm - Well, we made it to the Civil Affairs Bureau in Guangzhou by around 4 pm. We traveled with 8 sets of parents to the Bureau all expecting to receive their little bundles of joy. During the bus ride to the Bureau, Alana and I were told that we would be the first to receive our baby because the orphanage was only 10 miles away and all the other families were receiving babies from orphanages which were several hours away so it was likely that their babies had not yet arrived. It turns out that Alana and I were the last ones to receive our baby as the nanny transporting Tyler to the Buerau got caught in rush hour traffic. We watched as each couple received their baby and it was not until roughly 20 minutes after the last person received thier baby we received Tyler. This was the longest 20 minutes of our lives!

One of the challenges we had was getting someone to take video and still camera shots while we received Tyler. This may not sound like such a difficult task when there are 20-30 people in the receiving room however, because we were last, we had to convince one or two of the parents to take a break from fawning over their new daughters and take a few frames for us. Thanks to some generous parents, we were successful in capturing this terrific moment to cherish and share with friends and family (pictures below).

Tyler was very calm and appeared to be overwhelmed with the whole process. He was quiet and only cried once during the time spent at the Bureau. Once we got him back to the hotel, Tyler seemed to open up a bit. We let him play with his toys, fed him dinner and then took him with us to get dinner to bring back to the hotel. Tyler, true to his sleeping schedule, fell to sleep right around 9:30 pm. A perfect ending to such as terrific day!

More info on Tyler tomorrow.

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