Late last week we received our Travel Approval. Monday we received our US Consulate Appointment. What all this basically means is that we can now make our travel arrangements to bring Caleb home.
Our itinerary will look something like this.
Leave Orlando on March 25 and arrive in Beijing on March 26. We will be traveling for close to 30 hours. One cool thing about this leg of the trip is that we get to fly over the North Pole (or somewhere close to it), and we will experience our very own, on board movie marathon.
March 26 – March 29 we will recover from jet-lag, see as much of Beijing and surrounding countryside as humanly feasible, and take care of some adoption paperwork and orientation. Collin is most excited to walk on the Great Wall, though he assures me that he is even more excited to get his new brother. We'll see about that when the big day arrives.
March 30 fly to Nanchang to get Caleb!!! We will spend several days in Nanchang doing “official” stuff, getting to know the lay of the land where Caleb was born and spent the first year of his life, and most importantly bonding as a new family. This will be an important time for us and we will greatly appreciate your prayers.
April 4 we fly to Guangzhou (I still don't know how to pronounce it) for more “official” work from the US Govt. We will have two visits to the US Consulate: one for the visa appointment and the other to pick up Caleb’s visa the next day. There will be much to do and see here. That is a good thing as we basically have five full days to accomplish two appointments. More time to bond and connect. This is good. What is also good is some odd Chinese regulation that prohibits more than four people occupying one hotel room. Since we are now a family of five, that means two rooms. This is one of those dark clouds with a silver lining. Let's do some travel math here: two adults, a nine year old, a five year old, and a new one year old. Add in a dash of ten plus days on the road, living out of one - yes one - suitcase each, clothes and an assortment of travel gear that miraculously multiply each time the suitcase is opened or closed or touched or left alone or placed in the dark or left in sunlight, the excitement of experiencing a new culture and place, and the tremendous joy of discovering who Caleb is and what he is like. I'm not sure if two rooms will contain all of this goodnes.
We then fly home on April 10 – a trip that I’m certain will involve several buses, three airplanes, numerous airport trams, sleep deprivation, no meltdowns (think positive), and the start of a whole new chapter in the life of the Harris’.
All in all, this is awesome, and we are so ready to go!!!
