We get her in 2 more hours

We leave for the Civil Affairs office at 8:40. Can't wait.

Leaving Beijing

We had a great time climbing the Great Wall and exploring the Forbidden city. It snowed last night in Beijing! In one hour we go to the airport to fly to Josephine's city, Hangzhou.

One more day!

Update pictures from orientation

The book she is looking at is our book with pictures of us and her room at home!

Tour of the jade factory

I purchased Jade earrings for Madalyn and a Jade peace necklace for Josephine. It is customary for babies to wear jade. One type turns darker the longer it is worn and more so with warm skin. Therefore when girls marry and leave their families a jade bangle is passed to them from their mother. When the girl visits family (usually only one time per year at Chinese New Year), the girl's family checks the bangle. If it is the same, the family worries she is not having "good life" with her husband's family. If it is dark, they feel she is happy and healthy.

I'm not able access my blog from here. The government bans many sites, including Facebook, so maybe this is banned also. Some of my email posts are not going through. So if one is duplicated that I why...

3 more days until we meet the reason for our trip!!!

Sent from my iPhone
On the bus ride, our tour guide, Lydia, told us all about Chinese culture and customs. She told us about lucky numbers and unlucky numbers. The Chinese will pay more money for license tags, cell phone numbers, apartment addresses, etc with lucky numbers!

She also told of ways the government is controlling traffic which includes rotating which license tag numbers can drive each day if the week! So on the lucky number days, there is much less traffic on the street!

Made it to hotel

Made it to hotel and acrobat show. It is now 7:30 pm and we are going to bed! All is good and will be great after a little sleep. Madalyn fell asleep while I was writing this! That was record falling asleep for her! Goodnight!

Sent from my iPhone

Unfortunately our Beijing flight turned around 3 hours into the flight due to a medical emergency. We just landed back at LAX. I'm not sure what the plans are at this point.

Finally in LA, for our 5 hour layover, then 12 hour flight to Beijing.  Madalyn has been up for 20 hours so far, and we have 17 more hours to go.  Gotta love airline customer service!

Airline cancellations

We arrived at 4:45 am for our flight to find out that sometime after we verified the flight last night, it was cancelled.  Because no other flights  arrive in time for our connecting flight to Beijing, the soonest the airline can get us there is 5:00 am the next day.  If anyone knows how to get more than a $10 voucher for an additional 14 hours worth of travel time, let me know!

Finally I can say we leave "tomorrow"!  And, in just 3 weeks, this will be our family again.....everyone 6 years older.......this time chasing a toddler...but just as excited to welcome a new family member.

Madalyn came home April 7 2006, and Josephine's day will be  March 29th 2012.