Travel Visas Have Arrived!

Our travel visa's arrived today! We applied for them a month ago, but the travel agency we used held onto our applications until they had a handful to send to San Francisco…which made me a little nervous. To avoid the risk of a once in a lifetime FedEx snafu, I decided to drive the 2 hours round trip to pick them up. No reason to tempt fate!

Also today, I heard back from our agency that my request to put us in a different hotel in Guangzhou has succeeded. I had hoped that we could get in at The Victory hotel, or in a dream world, the Westin or Holiday Inn (yes, they're actually pretty nice there). Our agency is still using the White Swan as their primary hotel (for those not in the know, it's one of the main hotels in Guangzhou used to house US adoptive families during the last week of the trip). Luckily, the were able to get us scheduled at The Victory, which has drinkable water from the faucets (!!!) and the rooms are bigger than the White Swan. I've read mixed reviews from other adoptive families about which is a better hotel, so it probably doesn't matter either way. By the time we get to this point of the trip, I doubt I'll even know the difference. Shawn certainly won't.... He'll just show up and I'll do all the stressing.

We don't have our final itinerary yet, but it does not look like we'll be with any other families, at least in Beijing and Hangzhou. One other Hangzhou family with our agency is waiting for Travel Approval, but it all depends on when they can get their Consulate appointment. Chances are we'll have a guide to ourselves, which is fine with us. I am sad that several online friends will be in Guangzhou the week before us, and some the week after us. It looks like the knock down drag out fight that Shawn and I had about when to leave for China (he wanted to leave no earlier than the 27^th/28^th; I wanted to leave no later than the 20^th/21^st) would have definitely worked in my favor had I won the battle. Oh well. He owes me... There's probably some nice jade jewelry in China that will make up for it.

Also in the news this week: Ian has his first doctor's appointment scheduled. He sees IA Pediatrician Julian Davies at University of Washington Adoption Medicine on Monday, December 4^th.Dr. Davies reviewed his file for us and is a highly respected Adoption Doc in our area (same goes for his practice partner Julie Bledsoe who has 2 daughters adopted from China). For those looking for an IA Pediatrician to review Special Needs files, I highly recommend their services and their website offers a wealth of information on Adoption Medicine: http://www.adoptmed.org From that appointment, we'll make a plan for him to see an audiologist to test his hearing.

As of today, I have 11 days of work left! I'm not even counting the weekends in my countdown…just work days. Hopefully the time flies by. In exactly 3 weeks, we'll be looking out at the world from atop The Great Wall! In 4 weeks, I'll be a veteran mom of 72 hours! Is the world ready for me?