We met our daughters today at about 4:30, half an hour after we arrived at our hotel. The orphanage director and three of his staff members brought them to us. We also have the assistance of Evelyn who lives here and works for our adoption agency.

The girls are delightful. They seem pretty easy going (for the first 5 hours at least) and are laughing and playing with the little toys we brought and managing to pee on both of us. After a couple of hours they both had bottles and a nice nap.

They look really well physically and from what we hear they had a wonderful foster mom who provided us detailed instructions for their care. They are also very alert and engaged. When Mei just woke up she was babbling away.

Tomorrow we will visit the local agencies to make the adoption official



This is when we were first handed Mei and Fen. We are with the orphanage director and staff.



This is Mei sitting up and Fen playing with Stacey. We have learned they love plastic keys!


Mei getting tired, about to burst into tears.


Here is Fen enjoying her fish.

This morning we took a car from Hong Kong to Shenzhen Airport, in China. The ride took a couple of hours due to some traffic accidents along the way - none involving us. Our agency arranged for the car and a woman named Joie met us at our hotel and stayed with us until we got to airport security. The support here has been great.

I just looked at the departure board and it looks like our flight might be delayed by an hour or so. Not so bad since the trip is only 90 minutes anyway.

We have decided this is the strangest thing we have ever done. It continues to be surreal.

Hoping the flight is not further delayed.

Hours, not years, months or days

It is early afternoon here in Hong Kong and Stacey and I decided to hang out at the hotel today rather than going back into the city. It is really nice to have this time to relax. Our hotel has a beautiful outdoor pool and today is the perfect weather to use it (for us). It is cloudy and threatening heavy rain all the time. This is exactly the kind of day when we can do things like go to the beach or drive in a convertible. We will be arriving in Nanchang at just about this time tomorrow afternoon, but I don't think either of us are feeling stressed about that at the moment. I'm sure tomorrow will be a different story. So, for now we are going to continue to enjoy the beautiful hotel and take some naps. Just a few hours to go before we meet the girls. BTW, I do not know why my posts are now coming out as single paragraphs. They should have spacing, but it isn''t working. Neither is spellcheck!

Tuesday in Hong Kong

We had a really nice day in Hong Kong on Tuesday. We were up fairly early, probably due to jet lag, but we were fortunate to get a good night of sleep after arriving on Monday night. Our hotel is more upscale than we are accustomed to, but we are trying hard to adapt. The breakfast was incredible in the morning with many different kinds of food and great service. It seems like the clientele of the hotel come from all over Asia and probably the world. We are located about 30 minutes from the downtown area by train. The steep green hills make the city really beautiful. Although it is a huge city with tons of skyscrapers, and construction projects going on everywhere, it is also interesting since buildings can only be constructed in certain places due to the incline of the mountains. That makes it seem like little pockets of developed areas. We took a shuttle from our hotel to the Tsim Sha Tsui area, which is right in the heart of the city. We walked around some there. It was really fun to be tourists here. We took a ferry across Victoria Harbour to the "Central" area of the city. There is a lot of affluence concentrated in a small area. We at dim sum at a small restaurant that was recommended to us. It was a really nice meal and a good way to take a break for a little while. We then walked around that part of the city, visiting a temple called Man Mo and hiking to the cable car that goes up to Victoria Peak, which overlooks the city. It was a lot of walking, but probably a good strategy for keeping us awake all day to adjust to the time. The whole day was very hot and humid. We were lucky to miss the heavy downpour in the morning while were were on the shuttle and then it started to rain again just as we got back to the hotel. We took the subway/train for our return to the hotel at the end of the day. It is a pretty easy system to navigate and the train stops just a block or so from our hotel. I took a swim and then we headed back out to get some dinner at a huge shopping mall two stops down the line from our hotel. One thing that was striking was how many shopping malls we encountered here - unintentionally. On a Tuesday night the mall where we had dinner was packed and the stores are very high end and expensive. We saw the same thing in countless places as we made our way through the city. It was a funny feeling to be doing this touring in such a cosmopolitan area as we are on the brink of meeting our kids. In some ways it felt like we could be in any major city in the world, with all of the same stores and brands that we would find in Washington or New York. Also, English is spoken everywhere and almost all the signs are in both English and Chinese. Throughout the day we had to keep reminding ourselves of where we are and what we are about to do. Somehow, even though we are closer than ever, it seems quite distant. Anyway, so far we couldn't ask for anything more from this trip. It is great to have a little time to acclimate here before heading to Nanchang on Thursday.

Photos from Hong Kong

We are now in Hong Kong(photographic evidence to follow). After just about 24 hours of travel we are here in a really nice hotel. The trip went really smoothly all the way. Even our time in Newark was fine and went by quickly. We took the opportunity to catch up on some movies and sleep a little during the flight. Our adoption agency sent someone to the airport to meet us, provided car service and there was yet another person waiting to help us at the hotel. They have been very welcoming to us. We are planning to do a little sightseeing and resting tomorrow and Wednesday. Hong Kong looks like a beautiful city.

The journey begins

After a solid 90 minutes of sleep last night, we are now in transit to Hong Kong. As an optimistic thought, maybe our lack of sleep puts us closer to the time zone in China. Our generous neighbor Scott got up early to drive us to Dulles Airport and so far things have been smooth. With that said, it is very difficult to believe we are on our way. It is so hard to imagine what the next few days will be like. This past week has been full of excitement and tension as we worked on getting ourselves organized. In addition to looking forward, we have also needed to figure out what it means to be moving on from the kind of life we have had for many years now. There is a lot that we will exchange for this new adventure and I have been nostalgic. I am looking forward to pondering this more during our 5-hour layover in Newark today. Then there is also the 16-hour flight during which I can meditate!