Arrival at Newark

Customs at Newark airport was relatively smooth--we went to a normal "US citizens" line, handed our packet from the US Consulate in Guangzhou to the customs officer (Mr. Ferrari, who was very nice to us), then were escorted downstairs to a secondary area, where, after waiting about three minutes, another customs officer looked us and Juliet over, then handed us back her US passport. She's apparently provisionally a US citizen, although she still has a Chinese passport. There's still one form (N400 or some such) that we get to fill out to complete the process.

When we got out of the customs area, Audrey and Ralph Farnsworth (that is, Nanny and Grampy) were there to meet us!






We spent a little bit of time blundering around Newark Terminal C before realizing that it has no restaurants outside the secured area. So we took the monorail to Terminal B and found ourselves five seats at Chili's. Staring at an American fast-food menu. Joyce and I split a mushroom-swiss burger, which turned out to be just about right. I was very happy that we got to spend time with Linda, Ralph, and Audrey before Linda caught her flight home to Boston.

Have we mentioned that it was wonderful to have Linda along on the trip with us? Of our many wonderful, talented, and delightful friends (and Linda is all three), Linda gets my vote for "most calm". She's also an experienced baby caregiver by virtue of having twin nephews and a niece. All of which added up to a third pair of hands, a lot of sage advice, and a calming presence in panicked moments throughout the trip. Joyce and I thought that the combination of one experienced and two inexperienced caregivers worked out nicely--we could learn on the job and still have backup for the hard situations.