Time to Fly!

It's 11:00 on Wednesday night as I write this, which means we'll be on our way to China in less than 12 hours!  Here's the plan:

Depart Dayton at 10:20 AM; Arrive in Detroit at 11:30 AM
Depart Detroit at 1:15 PM; Arrive in Shanghai at 4:00 PM on Friday (local time). That'll be 4 AM here.
Depart Shanghai at 10:00 PM; Arrive in Fuzhou in the Fujian Province at 11:30 PM.

So after 25 hours of travel time, we'll meet our guide (Penny, who will be with us the entire time we're in Fuzhou) at the airport on Friday night who will take us to our hotel.  Will spend Friday night through Thursday here.  Fuzhou is the Provincial City (capital) of the Fujian Province so this is where we will take care of the official local adoption paper work.  Mya's orphanage is actually in Xiamen, another large coastal city in the Fujian Province about 2.5 hours south of Fuzhou.  At this point, we're not sure if we'll get to visit her orphanage or not.

I'm guessing most of you have never heard of Fuzhou (funny thing is, we hadn't either until after we had booked our flights to Xiamen only to get a call from our travel coordinator asking how/when we plan to get from Xiamen to Fuzhou....oops!).  Anyway, we got through that and I've since discovered that Fuzhou has over 7 million people!  That would make it the fourth largest MSA in America....just smaller than Chicago and a bit larger than Dallas.  Crazy!  Below is a map and a picture of the skyline:

Now that you know as much as I do about Chinese geography, back to the adoption.  Here is the rest of our schedule while in China:

Saturday (3/16) - Rest and relax. Get ready for the big day tomorrow.

Sunday (3/17) - "Gotcha Day". This is the day we've been anticipating. Sunday morning (Saturday night back here), we get to meet Mya for the first time! We'll definitely have pictures to share of this.

Monday (3/18) - we believe this is when all of the provincial adoption paperwork is completed.

Tuesday-Wednesday - we just get to spend time with Mya, getting to know her and do fun things with her...with the help of Penny.

Thursday (3/22) - we fly to Guangzhou, which is about nine hours south of Fuzhou by land. This is where we'll stay in the same hotel with a number of other families that have just met the children they are adopting just a few days ago while we all await our individual consulate appointments. 

Here is a map of Guangzhou and a picture of the skyline there:

Friday-Wednesday - It sounds like we will have a lot of time in Guangzhou to relax, sightsee, and most importantly, bond with Mya.  We're really looking forward to this time, but at the same time, we'll definitely be missing everyone back home a lot by now.  We've been practicing Skype with the boys so they know how to answer it when we call....we'll see how that goes!

Thursday (3/28) - this is the date of our consulate appointment.  We just found out that we don't even attend this appointment, but it's handled by our agency.

Friday (3/29) - this is the day that Mya officially becomes a Wik as we go before the consulate, take an offical oath and receive Mya's visa so we can travel back home!

Saturday (3/30) - we fly from Guangzhou at 11:00 AM to Beijing, back through Detroit and finally make it home by 9:30 PM on Saturday night.  It's a 23 hour flight, but we gain 12 hours on the way back....at least that's what the clocks will say, but I'm sure our minds and bodies will not agree!

Obviously, we are eager with anticipation as we have a lot to look forward to!  That said, we would absolutely covet your prayers over the next day and a half, that our travel would go smoothly and we would make it to Fuzhou Friday night with no problems....and all of our luggage!  Thanks for being a good enough friend to care enough to read all of this, and we'll send an update when we get to China.....