Day 1 and Day 2? The 30 Hour Day....

Graciously the Lord has brought us through 30 plus hours of flight time and layovers safely to our destination of Guiyang City. We left St. Louis on Friday at 8:00 am, and arrived here Saturday at 11:00 pm. Somewhere at 35,000 ft. we lost about a half a day. So I guess this is really the end of day 2 of our journey. Or, what I like to call the 30 hour day. We are thanking and praising God for guiding us through the airport mazes of securtity checkpoints, customs, and immigration stations without any issues or getting lost.

We had a 3 hour layover in Chicago so we had plenty of time to eat and find our gate for our international flight to Beijing. We got to see our plane pull into the boarding gate and its nose was just huge! It is just amazing something that large could even get off the ground!

We just happend to choose to sit in the waiting area at the front by the checkin counter. When the flight agents arrived at the counter I went up to ask them if there was any way Trish and I could sit together on the flight. Our seats were a row and 2 seats apart. About this same time they told everyone to get in a single line so that they could start checking passports, visas, and tickets. So, I managed to be 2nd in a very long line. Coincidence? I don't think so! Anyway, we were able to board the flight shortly after that, and a nice young lady traded seats with Trish so we could sit together.

The 13 hour flight was uneventful, but very very long. We watched 3 or 4 movies, talked, slept (but not much), and read to pass the time on the flight. Trish spent some time talking to a young couple who sat next to us. The husband was American and his wife was from China. They had gotten married on 08/08/08 during the Olympics and were on their way to visit the wife's family in a province north of Beijing.

When we arrived in Beijing it was just as we had remembered it the first time we were there 5 years ago. Very hot, humid, and lots of Smog. I have to say though, that the new Beijing airport was very nice and a state of the art airport. It was very easy to find our way through it as there were clear signs that had both Chinese and English. We found our bags and made it through security to our gate just fine. Although, we thought they were going to confiscate the miniature pair of scissors from Trish's sewing kit. :) Our layover was for 5 hours, so we just kind of walked around and Trish has some TCBY yougurt.

When we were finally able to board our flight to Guiyang we were the only non-Chinese people on the flight. That was a little intimidating, but we survived. We slept most of the 3 hour flight, and arrived at Guiyang about 11:15 pm Saturday. We were extremely relieved and very thankful to see our guide Michael standing there holding a sign with our name on it. Michael is very nice and speaks very good English.

It wasn't until we reached the hotel that we hit our first snafu. Our voltage converters would not work for some reason and we have phones and cameras to charge, and our laptop to run. Michael asked at the front desk if they had a converter and they brought us up an extension cord with multiple outlets. I wasn't sure what to do with that.... By that time it was about 2:00 am so we decided to call it a night and go to bed. BTW, the beds are like "Fred Flinston Beds", as hard as bedrock.

Finally Online, Sort Of.....

Hi everyone, still no luck with the power situation with our laptop. So, I am in the Business Center of our hotel and trying to get caught up on some postings.

The Almonds are in China!

Hello everyone! This is Donna, Trish's sister. They are having some technical issues right now, so she asked me if I could please do a quick update on here. No problem, sis! (I hope I do this right; I've never "blogged" before!) :)
Trish & Ken made it to China, and they have a really nice guide helping them around town. And the best news yet....drum roll, please.......I am excited to say that they have Jacob!!! Yay! They got him probably around 4am Sunday St Louis time. I was very fortunate that I was able to Skype with them for just a few minutes before their computer battery quit. Like I said, I only had a few minutes, but I was able to see my sweet adorable little nephew! He is so, so cute! I want to squeeze his little cheeks! He was very happy and full of smiles! He even tried to say "hi" back to us.
They had paperwork and a doctor to visit on Monday, (that is Sunday night for us). I'm not sure what else they will be doing, hopefully they can find a new battery for their computer. This might be the only update they will have on here for a while.
Please continue to keep all of them in your prayers. I know it's been tough on sweet little Ellie to be away from Mom and Dad, and vice versa. Thank you all!

Almost Time to Travel.....

Where has the time gone? We can't believe our time to go get Jacob has arrived! We praise God for all of His merciful provisions and for working out all the details to make this possible! Below is our Itinerary while we are in China. Clicking on it will enlarge it so that it is more readable. Thanks to all our friends and family for your prayers and words of encouragement! Lord willing we will see everyone again soon with a new addition to our family!

Blessings,
Ken, Trish, Ellie, and Jacob

We have our Travel Approval!!!

We did recieve our travel approval from China on 07-11. This is much quicker than we had anticipated since we just got our SCL on 06-27. Praise God!!! Also we believe we have all the funds we need now (unless something we don't know about comes up.) Praise God for His financial provision as well!! We have also recieved our itenary from CHI and we will leave for China on 08-19 and return on 09-01. Based on this we were able to get our International Travel booked. We are now waiting for CHI to get our inside China travel arrangements booked for us.

This is finally becoming real and there is so much to get done to prepare for our trip now! Besides determining what all we need to pack and how to pack it, we now have Ellie's activities to factor in as well. Such as her Classical Conversations homeschool classes and soccer practices.