DAYS 14 and 15: Thinking about travel

You might remember this post about the timeline of how things work after the referral call, which we received on April 9th. Based on these estimates, we hope to travel in late May, but we won't know for sure for another 2-3 weeks.

We do plan to leave for Beijing a day early, and it looks as though several members of our travel group will be doing the same. CAWLI arranges almost all of its trips to depart on a Thursday and arrive back home on a Thursday two weeks later. So, we would leave on a Wednesday morning, and with the time change, probably arrive in Beijing on Thursday afternoon. We will most likely be there until Sunday, when we will fly to Nanchang, the capital of the Jiangxi province, where Sophie is from. Sophie will probably travel to Nanchang with several other children and some nannies. We will meet her Sunday evening or Monday morning. Here is a little more about the province of Jiangxi. Looks like it's known for its porcelain, so we might have to buy a piece of that for Sophie...how I'll travel with it for the remaining 10 days is another worry!

We will probably be in Nanchang until Friday handling all of the necessary paperwork. Then, we will depart for Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province. There, we will stay at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island, one of the finest hotels in China. If you look at the link, you will see that President Bush, Queen Elizabeth, and Bill Gates have all stayed there! In Guangzhou, Sophie will receive a physical exam and then be granted a visa by the American Consulate's office to come home with us.

I'll update you soon on the packing dilemma. For the flights to and from China, the weight limit on the bags is a little higher than it is for the in-country Chinese flights, which limits each bag to 44 pounds. So, the plan is to take three suitcases and about four days of clothing (and take advantage of the hotel laundry service), and then fill the rest of the suitcase with diapers, granola bars, Cheerios, and other snacks. By the time we get to Guangzhou, the other half of each suitcase will be emptied out, and I can pile in all my shopping treasures! If necessary, we can purchase another inexpensive suitcase for Sophie for the flight home. And, we'll each have a backpack with a day's worth of clothes, the cameras, all the important documents, and things to keep us busy on a 15 HOUR FLIGHT!! Ugh. I'm stir-crazy on a plane after three hours.

Finally, EJ and I finished the fifth Harry Potter book tonight and plan to start book 6, The Half-Blood Prince in the next few days. It's ONLY 650ish pages, as opposed to the 874 in book 5, so we shouldn't have any problem finishing it before book 7 is released on July 21st. Whew!