Today was our final full day here in China. We will board our bus at 5:30am tomorrow and head to the airport. Our flight will leave Guangzhou heading to Tokyo at 8:20 a.m. where we will have about 2 hours between landing and our flight leaving for Minneapolis. We are both really ready to be home! We’re tired, homesick and quite frankly getting a little sick of each other. We are just not used to spending 24/7 with each other in such tight quarters.
This morning after breakfast we did a test run on packing our luggage. When we came over from home we packed a small suitcase inside of a larger suitcase……..you know, to have an extra suitcase to bring stuff back in! After our test run we decided we still had room for a few things and went shopping again, plus we had some yuan left to spend…….they aren’t any good in the states after all.
At 2pm we met with the other families in our group for some photos by the waterfall and for the “Red Couch” pictures. It was so fun and totally hilarious to watch all the little girls together in their traditional Chinese clothes. Alicia started crying just because all the other little girls were crying. It was really cute. After which we all made our way to US Consulate Office where we received Alicia’s passport and visa for her to return to the United States. As a group of about 100 families we all raised our right hands and made an oath together. Our children will become citizens of the United States the minute that our plane lands on American soil…….so cool! Alicia slept in my arms during the whole process! During the bus ride to the consulate I looked at her and said “This is it, your stuck with us…..are you sure you want to go through with this?” and she smiled and it sounded like she said “YES!”
We want to thank everyone who has followed our journey to China and to Alicia and for emailing us during our trip. We started this process in November 2004 and never imagined that we would have to wait for our daughter for over two years. When we started this process the wait for a referral of a child was 7-8 months and we fully expected to have our daughter in our arms last year at this time. But now we know why the wait ended up being 15+ months and that’s because Alicia wasn’t born until June of 2006. She was truly meant to be a part of our family and she simply wasn’t on this earth yet at this time last year. We needed to wait for her to be born and for her to be available for us to adopt her and take her home to be a part of our family. I’ve heard it a million times during this process, but it’s true. Once you have your child in your arms, you totally forget about the wait. It’s a lot like childbirth……..God has a way of making you forget about all the pain. People would never have more than one child if you didn’t forget, right? And like Paul said the other night……..now he knows that you can love an adopted child as much as a birth child!!
If you have been following our journey and have not signed our guestbook yet, please do that!! We will be printing it off and adding it to Alicia’s baby book. She will be so happy to know that so many people were watching our journey to bring her home.
We are signing off for now because 4am is going to come too fast!! Just think we will leave China at 8am on Thurs and get to Minneapolis at Noon on Thurs……..God, I wish that it was only a 4 hour trip!! We will fly to Tokyo as a group of 5 families but will part ways with 3 of the other families there. We have really enjoyed being together with the other families in our group. We have already discussed doing this again and would love to be able to experience this with them again.
Marcus we can’t wait to see you on Thursday! We love you so much!!!
Goodbye for now and we will update you once we are home!!! HOME YEAH!!
Paula
