Thursday, July 20, 2006
HAVE FLAT IRON, WILL TRAVEL

Well...we are off! After a semi-hectic packing weekend and birthday celebration for Jack and my mom, and a great visit with one of our dearest friends, we left this morning from Dayton for Hong Kong! Everybody was up and at 'em by 6am to leave for the airport, and soon all seven of us were on the road. My parents came in from Colorado to take care of the kids for us, and until we said goodbye to them at the security checkpoint, they really seemed not at all upset at the idea of us leaving them for two weeks. :) When I turned back to see little Hannah crying however, I started to break down. But we heard that she recovered quickly after a trip to McDonalds for breakfast with Gigi and GungGung. McD's cures all! It will be so hard not to see them every day, but hopefully we will be so busy with Grace that it will make the days fly. We love and miss you guys!!!!

I have to say though that once we had gotten through the goodbyes and I love yous, the rest of the journey was awesome!!! My folks had told us from the beginning that they would like to help us with the adoption by giving us tickets for the trip...what they didn't tell us was that we were receiving BUSINESS CLASS TICKETS!!!!! Let me tell you! This is the way to travel! :) Our comfy reclining seats (with full on foot rests!) stretched out so far that I couldn't even reach the seat in front of me, and had to keep asking John to reach things for me out of my bags. I've never taken a cruise or stayed at an all inclusive hotel, but I hear from those who have that it's all about the food...which was exactly our experience on the 14 hour flight...food, food, and more food! And movies! Two of my favorite hobbies! With the exception of a few tooty booties that occasionally engulfed us in a blue fog, the trip was so lovely and we arrived actually feeling refreshed and ready for the adventure...and full! Very full.

We decided to have fun and try the airport express train out to Kowloon...it was such a breeze. Hong Kong's transit system so far seems very organized and clean and easy to understand. It was very hot and humid as soon as we stepped off the plane, and we were not even outside yet. I could feel my natural frizzy hair zing to life and mourned the loss of the smooth silky shine my flat iron usually affords me. Hopefully our trusty converter/adapter set won't zap the flat iron cord...we'll test that out tomorrow. Also tomorrow we will explore more and have dinner with my old friend from college, Naomi. Thanks for everyone's prayers for a safe journey thus far! We appreciate it! We want to send a special shout out to Zach who broke his leg skating yesterday...we are thinking of you and praying for you, buddy! See ya!