Mainland China

We made it to Guangzhou (GZ) this afternoon, so we are officially in mainland China now. We took the train here from Hong Kong which was about a 2-hour trip even though it is only a distance of 80 miles. We were met by a woman named Rebecca, who will be our guide for the entire time we are here in GZ (11 days!). She will help us as we navigate the adoption processes which will keep us busy, beginning with Gotcha Day tomorrow. Rebecca is a very friendly and animated woman with excellent English. She got us settled into the White Swan Hotel (where many adopting families stay) and briefed us on everything that will happen over the next 11 days. She told us that we will not get Lia Kate at 9 a.m. as we thought. Rather, we will get her at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. This doesn't affect much except that we'll have to wait a few extra hours than what we were thinking, and it will make Skyping with family once we get her more difficult considering the 14-hour time difference. Regardless, we are just excited that the day is finally (almost) here! We have already made friends with a couple from Austin, TX, who will also be getting their daughter at 2:30 tomorrow. We had dinner with them tonight and had a great time talking about our daughters and getting to know each other. I actually connected with them through an online China adoption forum prior to coming here and, now that we are here, are even staying on the same floor of the hotel. We are really enjoying having someone else to walk through this with. We ask for your prayers for Lia Kate right now as she is spending her last night in the orphanage. Her orphanage is a 6-hour drive from here and Rebecca confirmed that she will be leaving the orphanage in a private car first thing tomorrow morning with a couple of nannies and the orphanage director. They will drive straight to the Guangdong Civil Affairs building where we will meet her at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. I can't imagine how confusing this will be for her. I am already anxious for her but also thankful knowing she will no longer be an orphan but will have a mommy, daddy, brother and home. The next couple of days will be monumental in the life of our family! Pray for all of us but especially for Lia Kate as she is about to go through so much heartache, leaving everyone and everything she knows behind. We are taking comfort for her in this verse from Revelation ... "Behold I am making all things new..." For He certainly is. Until tomorrow ...

Mainland China

We made it to Guangzhou (GZ) this afternoon, so we are officially in mainland China now. We took the train here from Hong Kong which was about a 2-hour trip even though it is only a distance of 80 miles. We were met by a woman named Rebecca, who will be our guide for the entire time we are here in GZ (11 days!). She will help us as we navigate the adoption processes which will keep us busy, beginning with Gotcha Day tomorrow. Rebecca is a very friendly and animated woman with excellent English. She got us settled into the White Swan Hotel (where many adopting families stay) and briefed us on everything that will happen over the next 11 days. She told us that we will not get Lia Kate at 9 a.m. as we thought. Rather, we will get her at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. This doesn't affect much except that we'll have to wait a few extra hours than what we were thinking, and it will make Skyping with family once we get her more difficult considering the 14-hour time difference. Regardless, we are just excited that the day is finally (almost) here! We have already made friends with a couple from Austin, TX, who will also be getting their daughter at 2:30 tomorrow. We had dinner with them tonight and had a great time talking about our daughters and getting to know each other. I actually connected with them through an online China adoption forum prior to coming here and, now that we are here, are even staying on the same floor of the hotel. We are really enjoying having someone else to walk through this with. We ask for your prayers for Lia Kate right now as she is spending her last night in the orphanage. Her orphanage is a 6-hour drive from here and Rebecca confirmed that she will be leaving the orphanage in a private car first thing tomorrow morning with a couple of nannies and the orphanage director. They will drive straight to the Guangdong Civil Affairs building where we will meet her at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. I can't imagine how confusing this will be for her. I am already anxious for her but also thankful knowing she will no longer be an orphan but will have a mommy, daddy, brother and home. The next couple of days will be monumental in the life of our family! Pray for all of us but especially for Lia Kate as she is about to go through so much heartache, leaving everyone and everything she knows behind. We are taking comfort for her in this verse from Revelation ... "Behold I am making all things new..." For He certainly is. Until tomorrow ...

A Few Observations

This is our fourth day in Hong Kong and here are a few observations we've made about life here ...
* HK is a hustling bustling city, much like New York City
* The landscape, though, is like San Francisco, which, perhaps, is why a lot of Chinese settled there (from what I understand, most Americans of Chinese heritage came from this area of China -- Guangdong (also called Canton) province -- and that most U.S. Chinese restaurants are Cantonese restaurants)
* The city is up late at night and starts the morning late
* We have not seen many children here, at least not many out and about during the day
* Everyone is very polite and most speak English
* City is very clean -- we've seen only one homeless person, and a few begging for money ... that's it. Kind of surprising for a big city.
* You can't sit down anywhere ... there are few benches/resting spots for the weary.
* Many young men here wear skinny jeans and have dyed or spiky hair
* The people can be pushy ... and I mean quite literally pushy. Our friends told us this is more typical of mainland China than Hong Kong). We had our first Chinese experience the other night waiting for the Peak Tram. The doors to the tram opened, hundreds of people pushed hard, and you had to fight your way into the tram. It was a crazy.
* There seems to be a lot of money in Hong Kong. All the shops near our hotel are high-end, like Piaget, Bvlgari, Prada, Cartier, Tiffany's, Dolce & Gabbana, Coach, Hermes, etc. And, moreso, there are lots of people in these shops.
* We found the "other" side of Hong Kong last night. We ventured out across the harbor to the outdoor shopping stalls, and found the area that might be portrayed in movies -- neon lights everywhere, throngs of people, men pushing goods on you. We constantly had people rushing us with "fake watches," "fake purses," "tailor-made suits." It was intense, and we didn't stay long.

Today, we go to Guangzhou!!! We are so ready to be there. Our time in Hong Kong has been great, but we are ready to get the show on the road here. We take an early afternoon train to Guangzhou. It is only about an hour north but I think the train ride will take a bit longer. We will get settled into the White Swan hotel upon our arrival and will get everything ready for Gotcha Day tomorrow. We should be getting Lia Kate at 9 a.m. Monday morning here, which would be 7 p.m. Sunday night CST. I'll write more once we get to GZ.

Some Videos

Here are two quick videos we took yesterday ...

Walking the streets of Hong Kong at night:


The view of Hong Kong from the atop the Peak:

Seeing the Sights

We spent all day yesterday traipsing around Hong Kong with three friends! Didn't know we had friends here? Well, neither did we. We knew one of them from home and she realized just a few days ago that she would be in Hong Kong the same time we were for a girl's shopping weekend (they live in this part of the world). So we met up at Stanley Market, a little old English-seaside village with lots of shopping.

Stanley Market store fronts along the water.

To get there, we had to navigate the bus system. Hong Kong is full of double-decker buses thanks to their British heritage. We found the right bus and Danny just dumped change in until the bus driver told us to stop. Then we got quite a tour of Hong Kong as we were jostled about in the upper deck of the bus.

A picture from the bus ... you can see the tall high-rise apartment building built on the hills. In the foreground is the big horse race track.

Finally, we made it to Stanley Market. Danny didn't realize it would be more "shopping" than "seaside village". But he amused us as we made our way through all the stalls, looking, bargaining and buying. We had a great lunch at a spot along the water.



Our friends

Then we took a cab back to our part of town (downtown) and did some more shopping, hit a Starbuck's, then walked over to ride the Peak Tram up the mountain. The Peak has the best view of Hong Kong's cityscape. The tram that gets you to the peak is a funicular train and it just goes straight up and straight down (without turning around) on a very steep incline. It was pretty wild. Hong Kong is very mountainous, so when we got to the viewing platform, we were way above than the skyscrapers. It was a beautiful view!



A Hong Kong street at night.

By the time we got home it was 9ish, which was great b/c it meant we are adjusting to Hong Kong time. We came home, Skyped with Britton as he woke up for the day and then fell fast asleep. It was a very fun, full day!

On the agenda this morning will be the awesome breakfast at our hotel (I'll have to write about that), and then some more sightseeing...

First Day in Hong Kong

Don't get too excited about this post, because we didn't do much in our first day! Just wanted to post some pictures of the view from our hotel room. We got out and walked around today. Found a place to eat lunch. And then fell asleep around 4 p.m.! Woke up at 9 p.m., looked at the night view of the Harbor from our hotel window, and then took an Ambien to see if it would get us through the night. No such luck. We both woke up around 3:45 a.m. Don't think we'll be going back to sleep, so I'm guessing we'll be the first ones downstairs for the breakfast buffet this morning. ;o) Planning to get out and go sightseeing today!

Here is the view of Hong Kong Harbor from our hotel room:


Here is the view of the city, looking left out of our hotel room window:

We Made it to Hong Kong

Yay ...we made it! We landed in Hong Kong about 2 hours ago. We had a great flight, albeit very long. We knew it would be a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles, but 15 hours seems like *forever* when you're in the air. I kept waking up and looking at the flight map and seeing 11 hours to go, then 8 hours to go, then 7 hours to go, then 5 hours to go ... seemed neverending at the time. I keep saying this but it is very surreal to be flying to the other side of the world, and now to be here on the other side of the world. And even more surreal to know we are so physically close to Lia Kate.

We flew Cathay Pacific airlines and they were awesome! We got some great sleep on the plane -- Danny slept 8 hours and I slept 6. Danny took an Ambien and was out ... so out that I couldn't wake him up when he started snoring. I felt bad for people around us, but I just put my headphones on and went back to sleep. ;o) We also watched two movies each ... both movies the other would never go see ... like Julie and Julia and The Time Traveler's Wife for me. We landed at around 6 a.m., which is pre-sunrise here. Went through the health screening (they are very serious about swine flu here) and immigration without a hitch. A nice man from our hotel greeted us at the airport and drove us to our hotel which is by Hong Kong Harbor. It was a beautiful drive in along the harbor as the sun rose. Another nice man opened the car door for us when we arrived at the hotel and took us straight up to our room. No check-in or anything. I was shocked our room was ready so early in the morning.

Anyway, we are feeling good even after traveling for so long. I guess it makes a difference when you can get a near-full-night's sleep on the plane and then land in the morning.

We will spend a few days seeing Hong Kong and getting our bodies adusted to the 14-hour time difference before we got to Guangzhou and get Lia Kate. We are so excited to be here in her country, and are looking forward to learning all about it so that we can share with her as she grows up.

For those of you not too familiar with China, here is where we are and where we're going. You may have to click on the picture to see it bigger: