Ready, Set, Gone!

One positive aspect of waiting two years for Catherine's adoption to materialize is that Cheryl had plenty of time to put together helpful packing lists. She was able to focus on Catherine's needs for diapers, formula, clothes, accessories, while limiting our family's need for clothes to the basics. We did exceed United's 50 pound weight limit on "big black" (the suitcase loaded with diapers, baby food, and clothes). We easily transferred the extra weight to the thirteen other suitcases - just kidding - we only had four suitcases for our family of "five" to be. We scheduled an ealier flight into LAX so that we could check in well ahead of time for our international flight. We found the China Southern ticket desk (colocated with Delta in Terminal 5) at around 6PM and discovered that check in would begin at 7:30 PM so we just hung around in some nearby, but limited, standard aiport seating.
We boarded our flight at 11:00 PM and were in the air by 12:10 PM. The flight took fourteen hours instead of the fifteen we were anticipating - not that an hour makes a lot of difference on an unbelievably long flight. Curved neck pillows are an absolute must - we learned the hard way. {Big Lesson Learned: this is probably a no brainer for most people, but we found that each passenger, including children, must fill out a Chinese immigration entry form. We were sent to the back of the line to fill out additional forms for Truman and Andrew.} Thoughts of the long flight and the immigration delay faded as we departed the newly constructed Guanzhou air terminal for the 30 minute ride to the White Swann Hotel.

We were seeing China for the first time. Ten million people inhabit Guanzhou, many living in what appearances suggest as squalid, high rise tenement structures. We drove by a wall to wall arrangement of these buildings for a good six miles before seeing any appreciable difference in the quality of living conditions.

Tomorrow is "gotcha-day" for Catherine. Cheryl and her new friend Pam will head off in the morning with some of our group to a local shopping center to purchase baby food - a mix of powdered milk and rice cereal, while my new friend Steve and I go to the bank to exchange our US dollars into yen and then take the boys swimming. We depart the hotel at 2:30 PM for the Adoption Center and our first moments with Catherine. Gratefully, our in-country coordinators Elsie and Simon provided all the detailed information necessary to accomplish the upcoming administrative steps.

Please pray that Catherine will bond with us quickly and our family to know best how to meet her needs in our hotel.