Itinerary

Next week at this time we will be touring Beijing! Which brings me to our itinerary for the week. What exactly will we be doing all of those days in China?
Thursday
We fly out of Fort Wayne at 9:00 am and then depart from Chicago to Beijing around noon. It is a 13 hour 45 min flight, which seems much more doable after flying to Africa..but, I am sure it will feel long.
China is 13 hours ahead of us, so with our flight we will arrive on Friday around 3:40pm.

Saturday
We will be touring the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, and anything else that we can possible squeeze in!

Sunday is "Gotcha Day" We fly out of Beijing in the morning for our approximately 4 hour flight to Lanzhou in the Gansu Province. From the airport we will be taken directly to a Civil Affairs Office where we will meet and be handed our daughter. She will have made a 6 hour trip to this city as well, so we will all be tired. We don't know how she will react or how we will "feel" but, we do know that feelings aside this little girl was meant for our family. I wonder if she will cry and try to get away from me like Eli did. I wonder if she will bite me like he did..many times. I wonder if it feels the same being bit by a cleft palate child. I wonder what to expect since she has been in foster care, I wonder what the attachment process will look like, I wonder how her grief will show itself. I wonder is she will have any hair. We don't expect to see her real personality come out for at least a couple of days. We have been told to keep her in the outfit she comes in for at least a few hours possibly overnight. As this is the last thing she will have from "her world". So we go into this with a lot of wonderings, but, very few expectations.

Monday - Friday
Will be filled with Civil Affairs appointments and passport, Visa appointments. Have I mentioned how much more paperwork is involved in China adoption verses, Ethiopia? A lot! Our days will also be filled with sightseeing. Unlike Ethiopia  it is considered safe and acceptable to be out and about with our daughter. So we are looking forward to seeing all that we can of the province Adalynn was born in. Oh yea, and it will be cold..really,really cold.

Friday morning we will fly out to Guangzhou where we will be until Tuesday
This is in southern China and a big city, we are told there is Starbucks, and Pizza Hut, we are staying at a Marriott..so no we won't be roughing it too much. We will be very grateful for the 70-80 degree temperatures. In Guangzhou we will have an appointment at the Chinese Consulate, we will have a US visa appointment and a medical exam for Adalynn. We will have a US appointment and we will pick up her Visa. And, yes, hopefuly lots of sightseeing and shopping.

Tuesday
We will pick up Adalynn's Visa and depart for Hong Kong

Wed morning we leave Hong Kong at 11:10 am on Dec 12th...and we arrive back to Chicago at 11:05 am on Wed Dec 12th!!! Which I am grateful for since it means I am not loosing another day before we get to unite our family!
We arrive back in Fort Wayne at 3:40, and we will be so ready to see Landon, Alydia and Eli, and our family waiting to meet our new little Adalynn Yuanke!

Not sure if these will work or not. But, here are 2 videos that we had received a couple of months ago, I have been kind of hiding them for just us to watch..but, think it is time to share them. We will see I am new to this whole posting a video thing:)