Countdown to China

OUR COUNTDOWN to China started October 4 and ended early Thanksgiving morning, November 24, when we left the house for Dulles International Airport to catch a flight to San Francisco. Between those two dates, we had much to prepare and much to await.

Emily's bedroom, clothing, and toy situation were already great, so preparing the house for Emily's arrival took little effort. Preparing ourselves and Sydney for the arrival of a new baby, however, and preparing ourselves professionally and personally to be out of the country and helping a new baby adapt to our family and the United States proved more difficult than we expected. During the month and a half between our referral and travel to China, we struggled to clear our work calendars, task lists, work travel, and meetings in order to be gone for two or three weeks. Daniel made a list a full page long of tasks to accomplish before leaving for China; ultimately, the list got shorter as he let go of projects and tasks as they became obviously impossible to complete. Deborah worked with her employer and co-workers to prepare them and the office for her extended leave, as she intended to remain home following the adoption for about a month.

We also had plenty of paperwork to keep us busy and plenty of waiting to keep us worked up. We had to collect passports for all of us traveling to China - Daniel, Deborah, Sydney, and Daniel's dad, Tom - and complete our visa applications before sending the passports, applications, and passport photos through our travel agent, JC Travel, to the Chinese Consulate for processing of our Chinese entry visas. The visa application process remained a little cumbersome and tricky; since Tom is employed in a religious organization, he was unable to complete the "employment" section of the visa application. Instead, he wrote a brief summary of his responsiblities in a note attached to the application; the folks at JC Travel then undertook the vital responsibility of "translating" his professional responsibilities into a format acceptable to the Chinese government. We never saw what the final application looked like, but we did receive our passports with valid visas about three weeks before traveling.

The hardest part of this time period was awaiting our travel date. We received notification in late October that CCAA, the Chinese Center for Adoptive Affairs, had submitted our travel permission to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou; after receiving this notification, we knew we'd receive our travel packet and information soon. Looking back, I think it took only a couple of weeks to receive our travel packet and information; during the wait, however, the wait seemed interminable. We read and re-read our latest travel information from CCAI to be sure we hadn't missed any deadlines; we watched the email lists to be sure no one received anything before we did, in case somehow CCAI misplaced our application; we waited on pins and needles and fretted every phone call and email message. In short, we waited impatiently and poorly!

Finally we received notice that JC Travel would email us an itinerary by 5 PM PST on a Monday, and that we'd have a chance to speak to a JC Travel agent on Tuesday afternoon after reviewing the itinerary. So we sweated the weekend, check airfare prices, reviewed our budget, and counted the hours until 8 PM EST. Sure enough, about 7:35 EST the email message arrived with our tentative itinerary - and we were stunned by two things. First, the itinerary was much more expensive than we had budgeted or expected, and second, the itinerary itself was brutal, exceedingly difficult. That original itinerary had us leaving Dulles airport on Thursday afternoon, arriving in Los Angeles Thursday afternoon, waiting over 5 hours in Los Angeles to board our flight for Hong Kong at 12:30 AM Friday morning, and arriving in Hong Kong early Saturday morning, around 7 AM. The prospect of arriving in Hong Kong Saturday morning and staying up all day to fight jetlag - with a two-year-old - seemed a little too difficult.

So... we started scrambling for alternatives Monday night. Daniel contacted United Airlines to inquire about adoption fares and, after a very long wait and several different agents, we reserved, but did not book, what appeared to be a far more reasonably-priced and friendlier itinerary to Hong Kong. We then planned to speak with the folks at JC Travel to determine if they could beat the United itinerary and to be sure we knew what we needed to take care of if we booked travel to and from Hong Kong on our own.

Tuesday rolled around and Deborah spoke with the JC Travel agent while Daniel attended a nearby meeting. We discovered that JC Travel could do nothing better for us; once they learned of the United itinerary we had reserved, they encouraged us to go with it. As a travel agency booking adoption fares in bulk, the agency is required to use the blocks they've already reserved, which means that during peak travel season - like Thanksgiving - the pickings can be slim.

Back to United! Only we discovered that Monday's agent had significantly underestimated the final price of the itinerary, to the extent that our United itinerary would come very close to matching the JC Travel itinerary in price. Disappointed, we retained the reservation but paused to review our budget one more time and discuss our options. Ultimately, we decided we had little choice - the JC Travel itinerary was too brutal, and the United itinerary would only be reserved for another 24 hours. So we called United yet again and finally booked the more convenient itinerary. These calls to United each took over an hour; apparently, adoption fares require overrides and confirmations from some pricing authority desk within United, so reserving and booking took far longer than expected. At last, however, we booked round-trip travel for Deborah, Daniel, Sydney, and Tom, and one-way travel for Emily in her Chinese name, Lin Hui. With about two weeks before travel, we had tickets to Hong Kong!

But we needed to wait just a little longer. We now had tickets to and from Hong Kong, but we had neither travel nor lodging for our in-China time. We knew we'd be gone for about two weeks, but we didn't know how we'd travel from location to location or where we'd stay once we got there. CCAI separates travel to and from China from in-China travel - in part because Americans can, if they wish, book their own travel to and from China, but in-China travel requires a little more Chinese than most of us can read or speak. CCAI relies on JC Travel to book in-China travel, and CCAI books its own hotels in blocks to receive excellent rates in top-notch hotels.

About a week and a half before leaving, we received our in-China cost and itinerary sheet in our second travel packet; we had only a few hours to arrange for payment, so we scrambled to collect cash for travel and to overnight our check as payment for the in-China portion of travel.

And finally, less than a week before departing, we received the last bit of paperwork required for travel - Emily's paper ticket by mail in the name of Lin Hui (since it was a one-way lap ticket, apparently the airline could not issue an e-ticket... not sure I understand that, but that's how it happened).

Daniel's parents came into town the Friday before we left. Daniel's mom, Martha, learned the lay of the land and how to work the house electronics while the rest of us purchased and packed like no-one's business. Martha prepared to stay at our house, taking care of Meshach the cat and all of Sydney's stuffed animals while the rest of us traveled to China for the two weeks of our adoption odyssey. We enjoyed our time together as we somewhat blindly and nervously prepared for the life-changing events about to unfold.

And one more thing: about a month before we left, we received by email a couple of updated pictured of Emily, sent by her orphanage in Xioagan. The photos that appear above are the two we received in the update email, followed several weeks later by the originals.