Anyway. We're 2 days away from flying out. We're leaving on May 10, Thursday, flying to Minneapolis. From there we fly to Tokyo, then on to Beijing, arriving Friday evening around 9:30pm their time. They are 13 hours ahead of Central Time. 9:30pm Beijing will be 8:30am Central Time.
For anyone that hasn't seen all three pictures we received of Grace:
Here's a translation of a report that was sent to our adoption Agency.
She was sent to HuangGang Social Welfare Institute on 7-17-2006. The doctor decided that her birth date is 7-10-2006 according to her physical development. When she was sent to the orphanage, she was in a blue jacket with a picture of two baby elephants. She was covered by a red quilt. A bag of milk powder and a bottle were found with her. She is living with an orphanage employee’s family. She was named Huang Wang Bin. Huang is the short name of HuangGang City. Wang Bin is her name.
Getting back to our itinerary. We are in a group of 6 other families it appears. On Saturday, we will be sightseeing. On schedule are visits to The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and The Forbidden City. Sunday we fly to Wuhan, Hubei Province and on Monday we'll finally get Grace Rose!! Grace is actually living in HuangGang City, Hubei Province, a 2 hour drive from Wuhan. Wuhan is the capital of the province. Of the 7 families, only Grace and one other child are from HuangGang. The other children are from different orphanages throughout Hubei Province. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Wuhan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan
You can check out the current time and weather where we'll be:
Beijing
Wuhan
Guangzhou (also know as Canton)
Monday through Friday will be spent in Wuhan finalizing the adoption and sightseeing. Saturday we will fly to Guangzhou. We'll be there until Thursday morning when we fly out on our way home. In Guangzhou, we will have a free day on Sunday to do whatever we'd like. Monday, Grace will need to get a medical exam. Tuesday and Wednesday, we have an appointment at the American Consulate to begin the process to make Grace an American Citizen and to get her travel visa. Thursday morning we fly to Tokyo, then Minneapolis, and finally home.
We will have select pictures posted along with updates during our 2 weeks in China. We have limited space for photos on this blog. Other photos will be hosted off-site and we'll have links for those.
