Anyone want to join us?

Hallelujah! Praise God and all those other wonderful beings out there that have helped our trip to the East come together.

Since last week, Tom and I have been spinning around like Whirling Dervishes though instead of trance-induced states of bliss we often end up just feeling anxious and spent.

I am proud to say that the big pieces of the puzzle have finally come together and we are almost there. After much fretting for days, our visas to Vietnam arrived yesterday afternoon. (I'm still not sure what the actual visa fee is but that's another story). Nevermind the fact that no one answers the phone at the consulate in san francisco or returns emails. We finally got through by faxing a desperate plea to the office. Our plane tix arrived by FedEx on Wed. and our extremely patient and helpful travel agent, Todd Gallinek delivered them as promised. (Note to adoptive parents: if you are looking for a travel agent, he's your man!) Our shoulders still ache where we got last minutes shots for the trip (Hep A, Hep B and tetanus boosters) and our house is being overtaken by piles, piles and more piles. Mail and newspaper held, transport to the airport booked AND I've even written a letter to the health insurance company requesting they add our daughter to our policy.

I keep walking around in circles but manage to get things accomplished in my multi-tasking haphazard way of doing. For instance, it occurred to me today as I was waiting for the phone to ring for our pretravel conference with the adoption agency coordinator, that the slipcovers on several chairs needed to be cleaned. So, three loads of laundry later, we have clean chairs and our daughter will come home to a deceptively clean house. I've also been doing a lot of ironing lately. Not because I have to - more because I think these mindless tasks are somewhat relaxing and calming to my otherwise active mind. It gives me something to do, something measurable, while I wait.

After reviewing about 12 possible itineraries (thank you Todd) with all sorts of connections, we decided to go with Thai Airways (one of the world's best - they still do that service thing that the airlines in America have deep sixed for greater profits). We fly THIS Tues. a.m. from Dulles to JFK for a non-stop 17-hour flight to Bangkok. Then we're going to hop on a Bangkok Airways plane to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We are going to stay there (the Raffles Grand Hotel D'Angkor to be precise) for three nights and four days while we explore this unbelievable 1,000 year old Hindu monument.

We got a great rate at the hotel because it's off season but then there's always a reason why it's off season. Like the summer rainy season. I just checked the weather forecast in Cambodia - highs in the 80s all next week with showers and thunderstorms. Come rain or high water though, we still want to go to the temples. No expectations because we will have Max McCall by our side and we may spend more time in the hotel swimming pool than actually sightseeing but that's ok. I'm grateful for the vinyl ponchos I picked up at LL Bean the other day. If we're stuck in the hotel all day b/c of weather, do we still need to take our malaria medicines? We just decided this week to take them b/c according to the CDC website, Siem Reap is one of the areas in Southeast Asia where malaria-carrying mosquitos reportedly exist in great abundance. We'll be fine once we get to Hanoi but until then, Tom and I are both taking an anti-biotic for prevention.

After touring Angkor Wat, we fly to Hanoi late on July 7th. It's a 2 hour flight and we hope to stay at a hotel called the Melia. I say hope because apparently our adoption agency cannot give us a confirmation of where we will be staying. At first, this made me really mad - perhaps just a convenient excuse to vent the stress build up - but I've finally resolved to just let it go. My friend Brenda keeps reminding me to look at the forest, not the trees and when she says that, I'm reminded that we are on a mission to pick up our daughter. If we get her, the rest is merely details and a very small timeframe in our lives. (Like I'm hoping the flight will be????)

I am thankful for so many things right now (we're getting a baby girl!!!!!!!!! a dream come true for me) and one of those things is the experiences I've had traveling in my life. Two trips around the world with a backpack on a traveler's budget coupled with having lived overseas several times eases the majority of my anxieties. So if we arrive at the airport in Hanoi in the middle of the night and there's no room at the inn, well, we'll just pop on over to the Sofitel Metropole - the grande dame of hotels in Hanoi. Right out of the French colonial days which, despite all the bad things that happened, I tend to glorify and dream about.

Anyway, back to our itinerary. We are supposed to have our Giving and Receiving ceremony on July 9th which means, in the eyes of the Vietnamese government, our daughter is officially ours. Then it's weeks (two? three? four?) of jumping through hoops mostly for the U.S. Embassy. So, this means that I will become the mother of a 4 month old baby girl in 10 days. Yes, 10 days. Oh my god. It's getting so close!!!!! Ten days away from a dream coming true. Pretty freaky and very cool at the same time. I hope she likes Tunis Mills and gardens.

My intention is to try to write every day on our trip though I can't guarantee that will happen. We're taking our laptop and plan to stay in email contact. So please keep checking the blog if you want to know our progress. I'll try not to be so verbose.
Anyone have any tips for traveling with a four-year-old on a 17 hour flight?