April 8

Once again, I'm a little bit behind, so we'll see what I can remember through my jet lag. The consulate appt. went well. We walked to the consulate and went through security, showing them our passports. Once we got upstairs, a guy came out and said that they knew we'd already been through a lot to get to this point and we'd now reached the easiest part of the process. They asked us to raise our right hand and swear that everything we'd given them was true and then said congratulations, you are now officially done. Now we could go back to the hotel and Wendy would pick up our babies visas in the afternoon. After that, Wendy took the first few families of our group to the airport. Three of them were flying out that afternoon. The rest of us met at Lucy's for drinks and appetisers and then walked to the hotel to eat. At supper, Wendy found us and gave us the last of the paperwork we'd need for entering the US, stressing that we were not to open the brown envelope or else we'd have to fly back to china and start the process all over again. She said that the corner of the envelope had been cut, so if we had to peek at the paperwork, to do it from there and to make sure NOT TO OPEN IT. It's kind of funny to listen to our guides talk to us. I'm sure they think they're dealing with a bunch of kindergartners. At first I thought it was just how Wendy talked, but then I overheard another guide telling their families that they were to meet downstairs at 9:30.....that 9:30 at the 1st floor lobby.....and don't forget its 9:30......that's 9....3.....0...in the first floor lobby. It got so that at the end we couldn't help but tease poor wendy about it. Hey, Wendy, what time was that again? 10:30? in the second floor lobby? As we were leaving for the consulate, after many warnings to bring only the baby and our passports, Cindy couldn't help herself and said hey, Wendy, hang on a minute, we've got to go get our passport! Wendy just turned around and said no I'm sorry, we're going anyway. I think she's on to us. So we had one last supper with everyone who was left and it was a little sad to say goodbye to these wonderful people who went through this experience with us.

Anyway, that brings us up to April 8. We got up this morning and had breakfast one last time at the breakfast buffet. Sitting by the Pearl River, watching the boats come in. We has a few people who were early risers and we'd see them and visit with them most mornings while eating our breakfast. As we were finishing breakfast, Matt, Cindy and Abbie came down to eat, as they'd just checked out (they had an earlier flight than we did). So we got to say goodbye to them one last time, although it won't be goodbye because we'll still e-mail and we hope to see them again someday. Then we went up to finish our last minute packing. We had to set our suitcases by the door at 10 for the bellboy to come get and be downstairs to check out at 10:50. We spent the last few hours playing with Susanna in the room. Downstairs, I checked out and paid our final bill. Then Wendy got us in the van and we headed to the airport. We were the last of our group to leave and from there Wendy was going to take the train back to her province (a 7 hour trip). She has done a phenominal job for us and we really appreciate all that she's done. Since this is an international flight, Wendy can only walk us in so far to the airport. But as I look over my shoulder at the last checkpoint, I see that she's still there looking around the corner to make sure we are heading in the right direction. I know she won't leave that spot until we are out of sight. We find the China southern desk and check in our luggage. I was getting nervous because the two people ahead of me were being charged for having overweight luggage, but then at the last minute, a new counter opened up and the new girl didn't say a thing about our luggage. Then we found our gate and waited and waited. I'm not sure that China Southern is ever on time. We were a bit late getting out of the gate. It was a short flight to HongKong, only 35 minutes. Susanna slept the whole way. When we landed, we had to find the Cathay Pacific desk to get boarding passes. We were met there by someone who had a list of people and our name was on it. It seems that we were getting down to the wire on boarding the plane and they were worried we wouldn't make it. Most of the seats at this time were booked and we ended up getting seats 30 rows apart from each other. But they assured me that one of them was an aisle seat so it would be easier for me to get up with the baby. They sent us in the direction of the gate, which was a little confusing to find, but at every checkpoint, there seemed to be a person there to tell us where to go and they seemed to know who we were and exactly where we were going, which was good because we sure didn't. Finally got to the gate, just as they were boarding the flight. As we got on, we found out they'd given Jimmy the aisle seat and the baby and I got the one in the middle of the row. So we quickly traded and a stewardess showed us to our seats. I asked her if it'd be possible to get seats together and she said she'd do everything she could to make it happen. The person in the aisle seat next to Jimmy hadn't showed up yet and if he didn't make it, I could have that seat. It ended up that he did show up, but didn't mind changing with me. All of our flights except China Southern were completely full. So we started off on our long leg of the flight. Coming over this flight was 14 hours, but going back only 11. We were a little late starting out because we were waiting for a few more passengers who had late connections and then the pilot was satisfied with the fuel distribution of the plane and had to wait a few minutes while he got it to his liking. But we were finally in the air and on our way home. We hadn't bought Susanna her own seat, so it was a little crowded and fun eating with a baby on my lap. She found out that she liked to play with food, even if she won't allow any of it to be put in her mouth. After supper, I took her back to the bathroom to change her. The bathroom I got didn't have a changing table, so I ended up holding her on my lap and diapering her upside down. Whew! I didn't want to do that again. I had intended to change her in Hong Kong, but we just didn't have time to stop since our flight was late. While I was changing her, I also gave her a dose of benadryl to help her sleep. Coming out of the bathroom, I stopped to chat with an asian couple from Hong Kong who were walking the aisles with their 8 month old daughter. They asked how old Susanna was, thinking she was about 4 months old, since she's so tiny and their daughter was rather huge. They were shocked to learn she was a year. We had 2 older asian grandmas sitting a seat ahead of us and to the left who were keeping tabs on Susanna during the trip. I have to say she did great and slept almost all of the flight. Jimmy and I watched a couple of movies and kept track of where we were on the in-flight monitors and did manage to get a little sleep in. Finally they turned the lights back on and served breakfast. Only 2 hours left until we touched down in San Francisco. When we landed it took a while to get off the plane, but finally we were on solid ground and got to go find the immigration line. We had to go through the line for new immigrants because of Susanna who was traveling on a chinese passport. They were great at getting us right through, although I was a little disconcerted to find them tearing into that brown envelope that I was told specifically not to open. They searched through the papers and found what they wanted, then put a stamp on the paper and said congratulations, she's now a US citizen, you should get a cerificate of citizenship within 45 days and with that we walked through the checkpoint and we had a brand new US citizen on our hands. For what it's worth, she seemed unimpressed. At this point we had to go get our luggage and put it on a cart and then find the Alaska airlines desk and recheck it. Going through customs with our luggage was pretty much a non-issue. I wasn't even really sure when we'd gone through because no one stopped us. We checked in for our Alaska flight about 2 1/2 hours early, then went to the gate and waited. While there, Susanna got a little fussy so I tried to make her a bottle. The bathrooms in the airport don't have hot water in the sinks, so the bottle I made her was cold and she would have nothing to do with it. I finally ended up just walking with her while we waited. Finally right before we boarded the plane, I went to a little espresso shop and asked them if they could put some hot water in her bottle, but by that time it was too late and she didn't want it. So we boarded that last flight. It was the only flight we'd had that was all american and it was a little weird to finally be able to converse with people without the language barrier. Everyone was very curious about her and thought she was just the cutest thing. We got out of the gate late on this flight also because they were having a problem with the bathroom on the plane. They got that fixed but we still couldn't go until they finished the paperwork, saying the problem was fixed. We finally took off on our last 2 hour flight. It was great to finally know our trip was coming to an end and we could get off the plane. Towards the end of the flight, Susanna started to lose it, so I got up and put her in the sling and walked with her. The flight attendant offered to go get her bottle from Jimmy and heat it up for her, which she didn't want at that point. Finally after walking in the rear of the plane and visiting with other passengers who for some reason liked to hang out back there, she fell asleep and I was able to sit down just as they turned on the fasten the seat belt sign to land. I think she did pretty well considering that she had gotten on her first plane for the day 20 hours before. It was great to see Seattle out the window of the plane as we landed. Once we'd landed we again had to wait. Since we'd taken off late, they'd given away our gate to someone else and the pilot said we'd have to wait until the gate was cleared. Finally they just assigned us another gate, but again we had to wait for a towing crew to come out and tow us to the gate. The towing crew never showed up and the pilot got tired of waiting so he taxied the plane into the gate. It was great to get off. As soon as we got off the plane I called Jim on my cell phone to tell him we were finally there and that we would collect our luggage and call him back as soon as we had it. So we headed to baggage claim where we weren't sure where we'd find our luggage, since they didn't know which carousel we'd be using. Unfortunately we got assigned the one that kept getting jammed and they had to keep fixing. At this point, it was all just a comedy of errors. We were finally able to collect all of our luggage, get it on a cart and out to the curb. I called Jim and he said they were just leaving the highway and would be there momentarily. As he pulled up, Joe jumped out of the car and helped Jimmy load the bags in the back while I got Susanna in the car, since it was so much colder than she was used to and I just couldn't find her coat in the diaper bag at that point. I did have her silk blanket to wrap her in and that helped but she was just shivering. Poor thing, we take her from a sub-tropical zone to WA state in April and she didn't know what to think. After we got her in the car, she was really studying her brothers and her nana and papa. It takes her awhile to warm up to people at first. We tried to let gran hold her while we were waiting for the mukilteo ferry but she wasn't ready for that yet. She didn't like her brother trying to hold her yet either. It was 12:00 or so by the time we got back to Micki's house. We visited a short while, then went to bed. She slept in between Jimmy and I and was a little restless, but did sleep all night.

Catherine