Konnichiwa

On our way to Tokyo to make our connection to Beijing. Have about 3.5 hours in Tokyo and hoping my Japanese language skills carry us through. I know Konnichiwa and domo arigato mr roboto. I don't see the need to know anything more than that.

Right now we are in the Delta Lounge in Minneapolis and being serenaded by some man with a guitar. Kinda relaxing. Or, it could be the serve yourself bloody mary's.

So I hate to use a cliché like, "there's no turning back now" because really, since we first signed up with our agency and submitted our paperwork, there was no turning back. Once I decide to do something, for better or worse, I do it. (see: buy Alfa Romeo on EBay) This is just the final culmination of all these years of waiting and planning and researching and forms and etc., etc.

Not sure what I'm going to spend all my time on now

Feeling Minnesota

Woke up at 3:15 AM! Got all our stuff gathered, turned off the water, shut some breakers, heard knock on the door... Huh? Knock on the door at 3:45am?

It was our neighbors and Olivia's best friend who got up to say good by and see us off. What an awesome surprise. I know Olivia will miss her terribly over the next 3 weeks.

We used a car service to the airport. He picked us up in a mafia style car and took quite the circuitous route but since no one is out at 4am in Pittsburgh, we made it here in 1/2 hour. Quite the record to get to the airport.

Since we are flying business we got to breeze through the check in and security. I did have an embarrassing moment when I kept setting off the metal detector. I had done what I have gotten pissed at so many other people for doing. I forgot I had my cell phone in my pocket. In my defense, I have on cargo pants and lots of pockets. I also have lots of stuff in all my pockets, so I forgot. It did take me 4 tries to get through because I first thought it was my belt, then a clip on a money belt, then my Flip and finally the cell phone. Wish I would have found it before the strip search though.

Now we are just waiting for our journey to begin.

Note: my watch is apparently 1 hour off. Haven't worn it in some time.

You know you are planning a China Adoption Trip when

• Your gmail advertisement bar reads:

悠哉旅游网 专业贴心做肯尼亚旅游线路 上悠哉 游的High! 预订:400-000-8888

• You know what airports PEK and CAN refer to.
• You speak in lingo of LOA, PA, LOI, TA but still don't really understand what an Article 5 is.
• Your arms hurt from getting immunized against things you never considered a threat.
• You practice taking a shower without getting water in your mouth.
• You googled images of a squatty potty. I know you are wondering about that too, so let me do the work for you

Here come the tourists

Looks like I finally have all the travel plans worked out. We are in Beijing for 5 days and then to Guangzhou to meet Beatrix Nan Yu.

In Beijing we are staying at a fabulous looking hotel called Hotel G. Very trendy quirky place. The hotel seems really great and responsive. They are picking us up at the airport after our flight from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis, to Tokyo to Beijing arriving at 11:40 pm *yawn*

They arranged some tours for us to the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, etc.

We still have no idea of our itinerary in Guangzhou but we do know we can leave there a day earlier. This means we get 2 days in Hong Kong.

So, what are we going to do with that extra day in Hong Kong you ask?

The Name Game

We had a difficult time with choosing a name. As I said in a previous post, there are lots of considerations when you have a Chinese girl with an Italian last name.

Rejected were the likes of Matilda, Emma, Lucia, Prudence, Amelia, Violet/violetta, Ella, Stella, Fiona and Mia.

There were plenty others too. I did like Mia, but in the end it didn't make the cut. One name I liked more for the meaning than the names was Giada. Since her name now is Nan Yu, which means southern jade (I know, stripper name totally) i thought the Italian translation would be cool. Too Italian, but cool.it

IN the end we agreed on Beatrix. It is Italian, but has a bit of a oddness and I think works ok with the Chinese aspect. The "x" is prevalent in Chinese so it doesn't look and feel so strange on her.

So here she is, Beatrix Nan Yu:

Fly Me to the Moon

Because it would be cheaper. Holy cow is it expensive to get to China. And difficult.

My best laid plans for the past 4 1/2 years went to pot. I had planned to use my platinum credit card for Asiana airlines to get cheap tickets. They had a special that if you bought a business class ticket, you got one free. I figured we would use that or all the miles I racked up on my US Airways account. Yeah, not so much.

Last year, apparently, my Asiana card changed from offering a free club pass and the before mentioned business class bogo's to giving you $100 yearly rebate on airline tickets. Hm, not quite as good of a deal huh.

US Airways figured out pretty quick that I can't use my miles to fly anywhere.

So we were stuck with using cash. And lots of it.

My mother in law offered up her and my father in law's delta points, but there were not enough for even one of our tickets, however, delta had a special on purchasing points. You could get 50% more free. So I was able to cobble together enough points for 2 tickets and then purchased 2. The kicker is that while I was jumping around trying to figure out which, how, what and doing complicated math using imaginary numbers (and imaginary money) that the cost of the tickets jumped. Luckily I had asked a travel agent to quote tickets and although she got a slightly higher price then i did, hers were on hold while mine disappeared. So we had to buy hers.

Add to this the cost of the in-China flight from Beijing to Guangzhou. It was actually pretty cheap in comparison. Then I used the US Air miles to upgrade. I was not going to be denied using those miles somewhere on this trip.

whew!

Things really started flying for this adoption. I had hoped and estimated that we would travel by the end of February. People said I was crazy, my agency said it was unrealistic, the forums said there was no chance based on the data on how long each step took, I proved them wrong.

Like clockwork our I-800 was sent and processed before the end of December, our approval was sent to the National Visa Center and cabled to the consulate in the first week of 2011, 2 weeks later our Article 5 was ready for pickup. That was the predictable part.

I was beginning to doubt that we would get our Travel Approval and be able to go in February. In fact, I had given up on it and thought it might be the second week of March. People were reporting that the consulate appointments for February were take, however, all we needed was one in the 3rd week of March and we would be good.

Then Chinese New Year was looming. The government office would be closed from February 2 to February 8. (Nice vacation!) Our Article 5 was ready for pickup on January 24th. This meant that it had to be delivered to the Chinese authority on a Wednesday and there would be less than a week to get Approval when statistically it takes at least 2 weeks. But we got it! February 2!

I was having a really bad day at work and at the worst time of the whole day my cell phone rang. Which was odd because no one ever calls me and certainly no one from a 301 area code. It was the Agency to say we got the Approval and that we could travel as early as Feb 25th, my birthday. Happy birthday indeed.

We opted for the 28th due to logistics and flights and such, but there we were, leaving in February. Yea!