THE FINAL PACKAGE

Our final travel package arrived Wednesday. It contains some final paperwork that we will need to take with us, a checklist of other paperwork we need to take and a list of the families that are in our group. There are 10 families in our travel group but Paul and I are the only family traveling to Tianjin. Our children range in age from the youngest being 9 months and the oldest being 10 years! In fact there will be three girls that are right at or just under 1 year and 4 children that are over 7 so this should be an interesting group!



WE LEAVE IN 12 DAYS!

Today we received our final itinerary via email. This is where we will be, when we will be there, and what we will be doing!

• 5/7 Leave Charleston at O'dark 30 in the morning, on a 16 hour adventure through air and time, bound for Beijing.
• 5/8 Arrive in Beijing, get through customs, meet our guide (Jessie), go to our hotel, The Wangfujing, and collapse!
• 5/9 Sightseeing: Tour the Temple of Heaven in the morning, have lunch at Dai Jia Cun Restaurant then Hutong Tour and Chinese Acrobat Show in the afternoon.
• 5/10 Sightseeing: TianAmMen Squre and Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Then have an orientation meeting with the CHI guide
• 5/11 Take a van ride, with our CHI coordinator, Jessie, to Tianjin City and Check into The Marriott Renaissance Hotel there.
• 5/12 Go to Tianjin Children's Welfare Institute to meet Claire! Spend the day catching up with her (we missed a few years)!
• 5/13 Go to the Registration and Notary office to carry out the adoption procedure.
• 5/14 Free day-we will try to walk around the area, see if there are any parks nearby.
• 5/15 Sightseeing: Culture Street
• 5/16 Paperwork Day, we will get our papers back from the registration and will need to complete some forms for our American Consulate appointment
• 5/17 Fly3 hours to Guangzhou, meet our new CHI coordinator, Elise, check into the White Swan Hotel on Shaiman Island
• 5/18 Free Day-I'm sure we will end up doing something that just hasn't been planned yet. Other families have gone to the zoo, the pearl market, shopping etc...
• 5/19 Go to the clinic and have Claire's medical exam
• 5/20 American Consulate appointment and Farewell dinner
• 5/21 Go to the American Consulate to get Claire's visa in the afternoon
• 5/22 Fly out of Guangzhou back to Beijing to catch our flight home! We will cross the international date line and arrive back at home at 10:30 the same day!

OH MY GOSH, WE LEAVE IN 12 DAYS!