Wednesday, February 15, 2006

We made it to Changsha! It is now 11 pm and we should be going to bed soon as we have a long day tomorrow but it is hard to settle down and sleep. We had a great last day in Hong Kong. We spent the morning hanging out in the hotel doing laundry, re-packing, and taking our time. In the afternoon we were able to go to the LDS temple by taxi and when we came outside, the gloomy nasty weather had disappeared and we saw the beautiful blue sky for the first time since we left the US. Then we checked out of hotel and headed to the aiport. I can not say enough good things about the Hong Kong airport and the aiport express train. We were able to take a bus from our hotel to the Kowloon station, buy our train tickets and then check in our luggage and get boarding passes for our flight without standing in one line. We got to the airport with lots of time and were able to enjoy some really good spaghetti in a nice restaurant in the middle of this huge airport in Hong Kong which seemed a strange place to find such things but this airport really has it together. We even got a pitcher of coke with ice that was really, really cold which for anyone who has traveled to China before, knows that is not always easy to come by. I reccomend stopping in Hong Kong for anyone getting ready to travel or wondering if they should on the way to China. (Cynthia: your kids will LOVE Hong Kong.) Our hotel in Changsha, The Dolton is one popular with adopting families which you can see from the decor in our room.... a crib! We had to laugh as even though WenYan will be our baby, she will definitely need to have a bigger bed than that. Our bathroom is also decorated with Tweety bird decals everywhere.. the shower and toilet are covered with little stickers. We love the in-room high-speed internet though, what an improvement from our last trip where we were able to send one email the whole time and it took 2 hours down in the business center.

Tomorrow we drive to Yueyang where Sophie is from and deliver some blankets donated by Angel Covers and give them a photo album of the babies in our August 2003 travel group. (Changsha group.. I will try to post any good photos and info to our yahoo group tomorrow night) We are excited to think of only 1 more day until we meet WenYan. We have to wonder how she is feeling and what she is thinking. She will be absolutely blown away when she walks into the lobby of this hotel.. even we were and we have stayed at the White Swan and other nice hotels but this one is very luxurious and dramatic. If you have read this far, thank you! I know for me, these travel logs get a lot more interesting once the new children are in the picture.

Sophie & Shea: Mommy and Daddy love and miss you a lot. We promise we will call you when we can after we meet WenYan.

Good night! Susan

ps.. no photos tonight, sorry! I am having problems downloading from our camera and Michael is fast asleep.