Saturday, October 14, 2006

We Have Travel Dates


So we got our official travel approvals from China, two crisp pieces of paper (one for Joe, one for me) filled with Chinese characters, a squished-looking photograph of Emma, and the heading "Notice of Coming to China for Adoption." We were told to not wrinkle the TAs; we must have to turn them back over to someone at some point.

Getting travel approval meant we could finalize our itinerary. We're leaving Tuesday, Oct. 24, flying to L.A. to catch a midnight plane to Guangzhou (bottom circled city). It's a 15-hour flight. I see Ambien in our future. From Guangzhou we'll fly to Beijing (top city; only a couple hours in the air), where we'll meet up with the Minnesota families in our travel group and spend 3 days sightseeing. On Sunday, we'll fly to Wuhan City in Hubei Province (middle city) where, on Monday, Oct. 30, we'll meet Emma (and never let her go). We'll spend five days in Wuhan, fly back to Guangzhou for another five-day stay, and leave China on November 9. Yeeow. It's finally almost here, and after waiting for a year and a half I don't feel ready. But every day we cross a couple more things off the to-do list. Here are some things we did in the last few days:

- Bought toddler socks and shoes, sleepers, a couple pair of pants, and a lavender toddler sweat suit. We can buy more clothes in China once we know Emma's true dimensions.

- Moved the box of cleaning supplies that's been on the floor in Emma's closet for six months to a high shelf in the laundry room. Babyproofing! It's easy.

- Arranged to meet with a native Chinese student at the U next week to record a few toddler-friendly phrases I can say to Emma. We got this cool handheld digital voice recorder that assigns a number to every recorded sound-bite. So I'm going to have a list of things I want to learn how to say (e.g., "You're a pretty girl," Are you hungry?" "Hand daddy the remote," etc.) and then Hua, the student, can record them in order and I can practice them on the 15-hour flight.

- Selected a car seat (a gift from Joe's mom and sisters)

- Bought big white letters that spell "EMMA" to hang on Emma's wall. Joe told the checkout girl that we're naming our daughter "MEAM."

- Met with Debbie, the genius quiltmaker, to deliver to her the fabric squares we collected for the 100 Good Wishes quilt (except it'll be a 110-wish quilt).

- Had breakfast burritos from Molca Salsa this morning to fortify us for the day's activities.

We have many more details to attend to before travel day is here. It's getting extry exciting.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about "MAME"?
(See B'way play and later movie)

Anonymous said...

Will someone please tell me how to print a current blog message without printing all the earlier
entries? I'm running out of paper.

Eliza2006 said...

congrats!!!! You are sooo close. Frustrated grandpa, Highlight the area you want to print, then go to file and select print. When the print screen comes up check the option "selection" and it will only print what you've highlighted.

Tiffany

Anonymous said...

It's really here - We can't wait to meet her and introduce her to McDonald's french fries - or - not.... maybe we'll make her some healthy juices with the Jack LaLane Juicer (only two easy payments of $49.99 if you act right now - he's celebrating his 91st birthday). Loved reading about the handheld recorder that you can use to learn Chinese words - that's cool.
Love,
Great Aunti Barbie

andrea said...

This is so exciting. And the 24th will be here sooo soon! I'm sad we'll miss the shower tonight. Hope it goes well.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Eliza. I followed
your instructions and it worked.

Diane said...

I loved the part about not wrinkling the TAs - Oh! you don't mean teaching assistants, you mean travel approvals! Well, they're for China so they're ITAs! :)