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Monday, January 30, 2006
Originally posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:44 PM CDT
Originally posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:44 PM CDT
We're Home!!
Yes, we finally made it home after a very long day last Friday. We left the White Swan Hotel at 6:00 am China time on Friday, Sept. 12 (which would have been 5:00 pm Indiana time on Thursday, Sept. 11). We had a one hour flight from Guangzhou, China to Hong Kong. (For anyone who ever travels through the Guangzhou airport, good luck. This was the most disorganized and confusing setup an airport could ever possibly have.) What was supposed to be a 3 hour layover in Hong Kong, ended up being around 40 minutes after finally making it through the tranfer line and all the security / SARS checkpoints. We took one last group photo with our travel group and then we all boarded the plane for a long 14 1/2 hour flight to Chicago. Emilie did absolutely wonderful on the entire flight. She slept nearly 12 hours of the flight and what time she was awake, she was playing nicely on Lisa's lap or on the floor right in front of Lisa.
Due to a typhoon near Japan, our flight was detoured which added about 40 minutes to our flight. This caused us to miss our connecting flight to Fort Wayne. We were then told that United could not get us on another flight to Fort Wayne yet that night and neither could American Airlines. Our best option was to take a flight from Chicago to Indianapolis. (One little bit of irony - the flight to Indianapolis left out of the same exact gate we left out of just 2 weeks earlier to fly to Beijing, China - How's that for closure?) We landed in Indianapolis around 7:15 pm where Lisa's parents picked us up. After waiting for luggage, struggling with the car seat and stopping for a bite to eat, we finally made it home around 12:30 am Saturday, Sept. 13. By this time we had been up an entire 33 1/2 hours with nearly no sleep. Needless to say, we were a little tired.
The last 3 to 4 days of our time in China, Emilie had really begun to open up to us and was doing much better. However, she was still very attached to Lisa and didn't like for Lisa to be out of her sight. If this happened, it was met by a lot of crying and screaming on Emilie's part. Now that we are home, we have had a little bit of a set back the first couple of days. Emilie has been back to doing a lot of crying and clinging to Lisa just like she did the first 2 or 3 days we had her. She also is not sleeping through the night. We think this is partially due to her still being slightly on China time and it appears that she may also be having some nightmares.
We are seeing improvements almost daily. When Lisa's parents met us at the airport on Friday night, Emilie really didn't want to have much to do with them. Then on Sunday evening she was having a blast at their house. She was being quite the little ham wanting Grandma to take more and more pictures of her. :)
Today has been one of the best days Emilie has had yet. Today we visited Steve's workplace where Emilie got to meet many of the people Steve works with. While we were there Emilie was laughing and giggling and really enjoying meeting everyone and showing off her squeaky shoes. She loved the bear that was given to her as well. Up until this point she always acted shy and rarely responded to new people. We spent some time today doing a little shopping and Emilie seemed to emjoy it all. She has been rather animated all day.
We ask that you all continue to pray for Emilie's adjustment to her new home. This will be the last offical journal entry of our China trip, however we will continue to periodically post entries to update you all on Emilie's progress. If anyone has any questions about our adoption, our China trip, etc. that we have not answered in one of these entries, please feel free to e-mail us at hoosier925@hotmail.com and we will be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you all for your continued prayers and support during this process. We know all the prayers is what has helped us get through a few rough spots along the way. And a special thank you to our wonderful travel group. We could not have asked for any nicer people to share this experience with and hope we can continue to keep in touch for our sake as well as the girls. We wish you all well and hope to see you all soon.
Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie
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