4am, DENVER COLORADO TIME!!!!!!!!!!

It's 4 am, and I'm sitting on my couch, in my house, eating homemade chocolate chip cookies and milk with Hope and watching Baby Einstein. To say this is a little slice of heaven right now would not even come close to saying how we feel to be home. Safe, sound and together. We arrived in Denver at 4:20 PM and was greeted by a warm welcoming comittee of my Claire Bear, my Sister Marie, Mom, Mary Talmadge, Matt and Dan, balloons waving and tears flying I finally got the moment I had been dreaming of for the past two weeks. Claire hugged her mommy and daddy and then we introduced her to Hope. She went right up to her, rubbed her little arm and gave her kiss. It was another Gotcha moment forever preserved on our brains.



For those of you who have not heard through the grapevine, my health deteriorated even more when we left for Guanghzhou! (Ha! as if!) We had gone to the Counsulate and swore Hope in as an American, and we rushed to the train station to catch the train to Hong Kong. It was about 150 degrees in the station, but I had chicken skin, I had chills. I asked our friends, aka my drug dealers at this point, if they had any more Tylenol or Advil, but sadly, no, I think I had tapped them out. It's the things like this that were just driving us crazy in China!! You are out of Tylenol, or baby food, or God forbid toliet paper, and you just can't go buy it! Any way, to cut to the exciting part of the story, all along the train ride it seemed as we rode each track my temp spiked. I thought I was going to pass out, but I just tried not to move. When we arrived at the station and survived the massive shoving off the train - for this is the way any person in China knows how to depart any public transportation - by shoving -I walked up the plank, and my deepest darkest fears came screaming out of my head. There in the background was a little white curtained partion - the ones you saw in MASH all the time - and a doctor, holding a thermometer. You guessed it. It was like in the movies all time and sounds stopped as he pointed his finger right at me and with his black beady eyes and short, curt words, he summoned ME. He shoves the thermometer in my ear, yells something in Chinese and demands my passport. I try to look all healthy and bewieldered as to why on earth he pulled this sadly disheveled, pasty white American girl aside for a temp check! Why, I felt fine!! He took down my passport number, name, everything and said I have high fever 102.5! STAY HERE. I was certain he meant the exact spot I was standing in, so I froze like a statue. A pregnant woman dressed in black with a white jacket came over and asked me if I had been ill, vomiting, etc... No! I've been great! I lied through my teeth. At that point one of the women from our group, Rebecca, who is a gynocologist in Miami, was standing next to me and she "vouched" for me. The doctor seemed to like that she said that, and then warned me about the dangers of the Bird Flu, and it's very contagious and wouldn't it be just awful if I had it and gave it to these billions of people? A little alarm went off in my head. OMIGOD> I'm going to die in China from the damn Bird Flu!!!!!!!!! She let us go, thank the sweet lord, and we hurried into our customs line. I held it together enough to get us through customs and then collapsed in tears in the cab and went to the hotel. With a lot of prayers to every saint and dead person I know, and some Chinese Advil which David had to go out into the Hong Kong night to scrounge up, and a lot of blankets, the fever broke around 3 am and I was fine for the trip home. Even my back was better. Huh.

Although a good point was brought up by my sister, Marie, that she was thinking about it, and maybe, just maybe I had passed a kidney stone! In China, without morphine. Top that labor story. I dare you.


OK, Hope just faded into her cookie oblivion, and I'm going to try and catch some sleep (it's 5:22 am). Tomorrow I will update you on the BEST homecoming we could have ever, ever, imagined or hoped for. Thank God for sisters and Moms. Also we'll add some new pics from the trip.


Oh, and by the way, Hope was 100% an angel on all of the flights, and it dawned on me as we all crawled into bed earlier this evening, and it hit me it was all finally over, and we were all fine. Hope's been telling me this all along. The only words she speaks at all in Chinese are: "Ha Ma", translated it's a soothing phrase meaning "It's OK, everything's fine. Yes, Hope it is, it's all OK, everthing will be fine.