Day 4 with Samuel!

Samuel came out of his shell today.  We thought we had the most laid back child on the planet.  Not sure what I was thinking since I know that the first few days a child is with you they are usually shut down.  He went from a snuggle bug, to a wiggle worm in a matter of minutes. He is still the happiest baby boy on the planet and so affectionate.  We can’t get enough of that smile and how his eyes disappear and these cute little dimples appear.  ADORABLE!!!

Today we traveled from Tianjin to Beijing by train.  An interesting experience to say the least.  Our guide showed up at our hotel this morning to take us to the train station in a 7` passenger van, with no cargo space.  There are 9 of us, plus our guide and the driver.  So she got 2 taxis to put the luggage in, had Daniel ride in one, and she rode in the other.  When we arrived at the train station, we easily found the guide, but could not find Daniel.  After waiting at the drop off point for some time, we had to move to this area that looked like a parking lot but was for people, not cars.  Our guide headed off to try and locate Daniel but to no avail.  She asked for help from some police officers and they called other officers, and before long there were police officers looking for him all around the complex.  In the mean time, we missed our train.  While we were waiting in this one area, and our guide had set off to look inside the building (she didn’t want us to go inside in case we missed him outside the building) a man came up and was trying to get David to follow him.  After some charades and hand motions, we thought he might have found him, so David headed off inside with this man.  And yes, he had found Daniel – sitting inside waiting for us at the terminal for our train.  The police officers that had been assisting in the search and rescue, gathered our luggage and belongings and helped us into the building and thru security and waited with us until our train came.  So basically, after 2 lost episodes in a week, we now know that Daniel has an anointing for getting lost.

The train was very nice.  It went close to 200 miles per hour but you could barely feel it move.   And the van ride from Beijing to Tianjin took us well over 2 hours, but the train ride only took half an hour.  Of course we spent almost 2 hours looking for our son, so all in all, it was about the same amount of time.  I think the van ride might have been slightly more relaxing, but the train experience was a bit more interesting.

We will be in Beijing until Sunday, and then travel to Kunming to meet Benjamin.  Four more days!