Home...

We are home... Yeah...

I didn't get to post last night because we were in Hong Kong for just the evening and it was rather stressful. On Wednesday we had our swearing in appointment at the US Consulate in Guangzhou. It is pretty much a formality. There were around 20 families there with adopted children of all ages. Everyone stands up and raises their right hand and states that all the information in the paperwork provided is to our best knowledge. Of course we then get all of our paperwork and are ready to go. The whole process took about half an hour. The train station is only a block away from the consulate so we went straight there after our swearing in.

We had to lug all of our luggage through the train station, change our tickets from the 7pm train to the 5pm train. This entailed going up several escalators and several checkpoints with 4 bags of luggage, 2 kids and 4 backpacks. Luckily, Elsie our guide and one of the teenage boys from the travel group went with us. We made it to the train which takes 2 hours from Guangzhou to Hong Kong.

Our hotel was right across the street from the train station. We thought great... Except you have to go across the street via an overpass, into a mall and down at leas a 100 yard corridor to get to the hotel lobby. We didn't know where we were going and no porter or cart to get our luggage around. The girls were being fright full too. We were all tired and hungry by then.

We finally made it to the hotel and checked in. I took Mina out to get some McDonald's back at the train station and went back for dinner. We pretty much went to bed after that. Our hotel was very nice with a great view of the HongKong harbor, a kitchenette and a lounge room. Too bad we were only there for one night.

We had to be up by 6am, down to the lobby by 7am, to the airport by 8am and on our plane home at 10am. It was a 15 hour flight. The girls did pretty well. We watched everything we could watch on DVD before all the batteries ran out. I had my computer, that got us 4 hours, a portable DVD player, that's got us about 5 hours. My mp3 player ran out of batteries so I couldn't even listen to music very long. Its a long flight but all in all not too bad.

We landed in Newark NJ about 2pm eastern time. We had a 2 hour layover but most of that was taken up by customs, immigration and baggage check in. we had to recheck all of our baggage for our connection flight. Don't ask me why.

Our return flight was 2 hours and we all slept most of it. Thanks to Joyce, Joe and Mom (JoAnn) for meeting us at the airport. They followed us home for some more introduction time with Rissa and some pizza. Rissa got to meet the cats which she seems to like. She was amazed at all the toys to play with and things to do. She just soaked it all in...

It is good to be home. I'm sure it will take us all a while to get use to the time change. I know I have major jet lag. We will see if I am recuperated enough to get back to work on Monday but that is the plan.

We are going to have to do some retraining here at home too. Our old bedtime routine is not going to work. Susan would always go to bed with Mina at around 8:30 or 9:00pm. Rissa thinks I need to go to bed with the rest of the family like we did in China. We were told that Rissa could put her self to sleep at her foster home. She is petty wound up here. Retraining... If any of you more experienced parents out there want to give some advice we would be more than happy to hear your suggestions. ..

Well that's all for now. Tomorrow will be more unpacking, laundry and some grocery shopping. Saturday we have a party to go to.

I will keep everyone up to date on our progress as we adjust to being at home...

Michael