Travel Plans

Here is our schedule for the trip. Can't believe its finally here.

Day 1-Depart for Beijing
Day 2-Arrive Beijing
Day 3-Tour of Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, and Summer Palace
Day 4-Church Service and a vist to the Great Wall
Day 5-Forever Family Day
Day 6-Civil Affairs Appointment
Day 7 & 8 - Sightseeing
Day 9-Travel to Guangzhou
Day 10- Emily's Medical Exam
Day 11-Consulate Paperwork
Day 12-Consulate Appointment
Day 13-Oath Taking Ceremony
Day 14-Get Emily's Visa
Day 15-Travel to Hong Kong
Day 16-Arrive Back Home

Almost Packed! Ready to Go!!

Sherry has been working really hard for the last couple of weeks getting everything ready and packed into suitcases. Sounds easy, right? Well just try packing for 2 weeks in a foreign country, having no idea exactly how big your child is now, and trying to keep each bag under 44 lbs. It is not something you just do quickly. Hopefully we've gotten everything we need and aren't carrying a bunch of stuff we don't. The flights are going to be long, but will be just a memory when we finally hold Emily. We're going to try to update this blog while we're there, but if we can't then we'll use our other website that is linked to this page or have someone post for us.

TA's, Tickets, and Packing

Friday we were surprised by a phone call from our agency informing us that our travel authorizations had arrived. We really weren't expecting them until this week but are glad that they showed up earlier than expected. By yesterday we were told that we had Consulate appointments and would be traveling around the beginning of September. As of this evening we have airline ticket confirmations and have most of our packing done. Emily here we come!

Final Preparations and Waiting on a TA

Well, it has been 3 weeks since our call and introduction to Emily. Hard to believe that time has moved that quickly. Since then we've had a lot of paperwork to complete. We've sent off our Visa applications and hopefully our Letter of Acceptance is in the CCAA's hands in Beijing. There are also quite a number of documents we have to gather to take with us. Who said that the paperchase is over. We've sent Emily a care package thru a group called Red Thread China. Ann sent us a photo of what is going to the orpahanage. We hope to get some updated info and photos from them as well. We're hoping to find someone with a power adapter set that we can borrow. If not then we'll just have to add it to our list of items we need to get. We did get a car seat this past weekend and now have everything we need to bring her home.