Travel Plans

So here's the schedule, according to the tickets we bought this morning, a full 3 days before we leave:

Sunday, September 2nd: Leave Cedar Rapids for Beijing, China

Monday, September 3rd: Arrive in Beijing in the middle of the afternoon. They're 13 hours ahead of us here in CDT.

Wednesday, September 5th: Fly to Hong Kong

Sunday, September 9th: Fly to Nanchang, capital city of Jiangxi province

Monday, September 10th: Gotcha Day!! We get Sophie!

Saturday, September 15th: Fly to Guangzhou.

Wednesday, September 19th: Take the oath - she's an American citizen, and officially our daughter

Thursday, September 20th: Fly to Hong Kong

Friday, September 21st: Fly back to Cedar Rapids

Rest of the weekend: Try to sleep and adjust back to American time.

Match Day!!

After more than 2 years of waiting, it came suddenly. We tracked the matches against Log-In Dates to try to guess where we stood in line. The waits had gotten longer and longer, but the August matches barely reached our Log-In Date of November 21, 2005. On August 3, 2007, we were matched with Guo Yan Zi. We were emailed the picture in the last post, given the most basic of information, and told we would travel to China in 5-8 weeks. After waiting for more than 2 years, another month or two shouldn't be bad, right? Never has a month gone more slowly. We feared that a national holiday and trade fair in China might delay our trip all the way to November, but we were thrilled when we were told that we would need to be in Hong Kong by September 7th. We rushed to secure airline tickets, and hotel rooms for a trip to Beijing ahead of the group. We leave Sunday the 2nd. And although we have so much to do before we leave, we can't wait. Including our Beijing tour, we will be in China for almost 3 weeks. Ethan's packing his Harry Potter books and homework and coming with us.

We're grateful to our friends and family who share all of our excitement, and so we hope you'll share the adventure with us through this blog. -Eric

The beginnings of Sophie

On December 30, 2006, a newborn baby was left on the steps of the orphanage in Guixi, in the Jiangxi province of China. Doctors concluded that she was likely born that same day, so she was forever assigned a birthday 2 days before the start of a new year. I wonder what we were doing that day.

Staff at the orphanage gave her a name she will keep as her middle name. Her surname was Guo, because she is a child of the nation. Her first and middle names, Yan Zi, reflect a wish that she will have a beautiful figure and will live a happy, colorful and fortunate life in the future.

We hope so too.