Day 1 - Travel Day

Day 1 – We left our house around 9:30 PM on Sunday, March 12^th.  It was extremely tough to say goodbye to Lily and Andrew and know that we wouldn’t see them for 18 days.  Tears were shed – this was much harder than the last two times we left for China.  Everything about this trip is probably going to be more challenging than our previous trips.  We are traveling for a much longer time and that made packing quite a chore.  Plus, we are taking two children, Madeline and Zachary with us, we will be in 4 different provinces in 18 days, and we are adopting not one, but two, beautiful children.  It is going to be quite an adventure to say the least.  A journey that God already has laid out for us and one that we are so blessed, grateful, and privileged to be on – especially together.  Jeff and I could have never imagined when we started dating 26 years ago, what God had in store for the two of us and our lives! 

Day 1 (continued) – we arrived at Newark International Airport at 11:30 PM.  Thank you, Uncle Jason, for driving us to the airport and getting us there safely!  Our flight leaves at 1:40 AM on March 13^th.  It was a great time to take a flight for several reasons:  airport was very empty – NO line for luggage and airline check-in and NO line for security – a first ever for us!  Our flight from Newark to Hong Kong is a about 15 ½ hours.  Leaving this time of day we perfect for such a long flight – we will be exhausted and since it will be the middle of the night for our bodies – we should be able to sleep much easier on the plane.  We are flying Cathay Pacific this time.  It is currently ranked the #3 airline in the world and we are excited to see what that means in terms of comfort, food, etc.  Wish we could afford to fly first class and sleep in those private airplane pod seats that lay down totally flat for sleeping – but that will never happen.  The cost of those tickets for 4 of us there and 6 of us back would probably cost as much as our entire trip to China for 3 weeks! 

Many people ask us if we fly East or West to get to China; the answer is neither, we go North over the North Pole and Russia then into China!