So...we received confirmation of our Consulate Appointment (CA) on 3/9 and were able to book our flights this morning! We also got our itinerary from the agency and this is what our trip will look like. We decided to go a day early since our flight was getting to Beijing so late:
2/24 - fly from Austin to Dallas to Tokyo to Beijing
2/25 - arrive in Beijing 9:30pm
2/26 - free day to relax and rest
2/27 - tour Beijing with agency travel group - Great Wall, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square
2/28 - fly to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia -- we will meet Hongyan at 3pm!!!
3/1 - Adoption Day!
3/2 - shopping
3/3 - visit Dazhao Temple
3/4 - visit Inner Mongolia museum (heard this is fantastic)
3/5 - fly to Guangzhou
3/6 - TB test for little miss
3/7 - sightseeing Chen Family Temple
3/8 - medical exam
3/9 - CA, guide will bring our docs to the Consulate
3/10 - Oath taking ceremony
3/11 - pick up Hongyan's passport with US visa and take the train to Hong Kong
3/12 - day in Hong Kong, meet up with cousin Stacey
3/13 - Home! Fly Hong Kong to Tokyo to Dallas to Austin. We'll land in Austin at 6:45pm
It's quite a bit of flying...don't know if I'll get Brandon back on a plane anytime soon after this trip! Obviously there were "easier" ways to get there, but we were able to use our miles to upgrade to business class on American flying this route. A must for Brandon and his long legs!
It's so nice to have the dates and flights confirmed...it's finally starting to feel "real"!
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Seeing your schedule in print is so exciting! It IS real....so so very close....less than a month away now from travel time. The countdown is on....
ReplyDeleteHave a great day, Melissa!
Tammy
Hi!
ReplyDeleteYour daughter is beautiful! We adopted our son in Hohhot in march 2009. I found your blog on the yahoo-group and this is where I read about the New Day Foster Home. When I looked at their website just before christmas, I found my son there. Turns out he stayed there for his surgery in 2008. We didn't even know he had had surgery before we saw his scar on the first day! New Day had devoted a whole page with several pctures of him and his fostermom. Very valuable to us since we had so little info! So in a way I have to thank you for leading me in that direction. ( his name is Lizhong)
Good luck on your travel!
Tone
Tone - I am so, so thrilled to have played even a small part in making that connection for you! Following the New Day kids online is what really led my heart to adopt a Waiting Child. They are a wonderful organization!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words - we hope you follow along while we are in China...in just a few weeks!
Of course I will follow your blog, and say hello to Susan for us, if you remember. Make sure you enjoy your travel. It is stressfull and challenging, but it is important to leave all expectations behind and just go with the flow.
ReplyDeleteI have followed some of the blogs and it seems to me that many of those who travel gets too preoccupied with cultural differences and don't enjoy themselves that much. We loved staying in IM and even for our five-year-old there were plenty of things to do, see and eat. We were quite happy with leaving our travel group for some days because it was easier to get around and deciding what we wanted to do. We didn't do the grasslands tour because it would take too long and we enjoyed walking around Hohhot so much.
We also split up every day so that I would have a couple of hours of shopping while my husband was with the kids, and vice versa.
It can be quite cold, mind you. We were there the third week of March and we had evertyhing from -10 to +19 degrees. That would be Celcius. But we are Norwegians, so we are used to the cold:)
Anyway...enjoy
Tone