Well, after 26 hours of travel (22 of them actually flying…although, my mind is a little bit blurry right now and I can’t actually figure of this number is right…it could actually be longer) we arrived in Nanning, Guangxi three hours ago at 12:00 noon (midnight your time). Dude, I think we just totally skipped over Thursday completely! I guess we didn’t need that day! We then drove a 2 hour drive south to Qinzhou. So now we are finally in Qinzhou! Thank goodness! I think Savannah is excited to be here and see the city where she was born. I just sent Mark and Savannah out to get some dinner for us because I can’t muster up the fortitude to do it (our guide left us at 3:00 and we are pretty much on our own to figure out how to get dinner in a city where we don’t speak the language–Cantonese– and we have no idea where to go or even what to point to on the menu since it’s all in Chinese Script). But thank God for Mark and Savannah’s “blaze a trail” spirit…I sent them out to find something for dinner while I stayed in the hotel to write you all….which I am much more happy doing. ;o)

We’re adjusting to the time difference okay, maybe it was the slow progression westward, and I do mean slow. Although, I’m looking at the clock and it’s 5:22 pm and what I really want to do is just collapse into bed for the night. Okay, so maybe we have a little jetlag. Anyway, here’s a few notes for you all…

First off for all you Facebookers, we are out of commission for the duration of our stay so please check the blog for our updates. Secondly, there may be a delay in posts, most likely toward the end of our days. The reason being is that, at least for our hotel in Qinzhou, they don’t have Wi-Fi and instead have a hard wired connection.

Tomorrow we will do some shopping for some Qinzhou Nixing Pottery–which Qinzhou is supposed to be known for. We will also be maybe eating lunch with the caretakers from Savannah’s SWI (maybe–not sure yet), as well as seeing the Bay (on the South China Sea) and other random things, all before driving back to Nanning to stay the night before we fly out the next morning to Guiyang and then Xi’an.

We love you all and hope to write again very soon!

Love you, Melissa and family (soon to be family of four!)

We arrived around 6:30 am in Guangzhou this morning and had a 4 hour layover before our next flight to Nanning so we were hungry and looking for a place to eat.  Oh wait, they don’t take US currency.  So, we found the money exchange booth but no one was home.  We figured they would open around 8am so we hit the iPhones for games to pass the time.  Around 8am Savannah and I ventured out to get the money exchanged and to pickup something to eat.

In the Guangzhou airport they have these golf carts that will ferry people around, for a fee of course.  They must work on commission because they kept asking if we needed a ride.  So I asked him how much and he said 5 yuan(that’s like .75) so Savannah and I hopped on board and before long we were dodging in an out, narrowly missing common pedestrians trying to make their flight.  The golf cart guy must have misunderstood because he brought me to a counter to buy a plane ticket (hilarious) I’m like exchange USD for RMB and finally the lights went on.  We finally arrived at the final destination only to find the place still closed.  Of course, the man wants to get paid and now he says 50 yuan.  We argued back and forth and he finally pointed the the sign on the outside of the vehicle that clearly stated 50 yuan (about 7.50) and I paid the man.  Shortly after the money exchange counter opened and we had cash in hand to buy some breakfast.

On our way back to Melissa we stopped by the Swatch store (you know that 80’s iconic watch)  Anyway, I’m explaining to Savannah how old I am and how these were really cool at one time.  Up comes a man that say “iPhone” and opens up a newspaper with an iPhone in it.  Being friendly like I am, I think I’ve found a fellow Apple comrade and I whip our my shiny new iPhone 4.  He keeps saying “iPhone, you want” and I’m like “I already have the iPhone 4.  Finally, the Swatch shop owner told they guy to take a hike in Mandarin of course and he disappeared quickly.

Mark

Were gonna get Jade on July 12th. We’ll be leaving on a jet plane July 7th

Still have a lot of details to wrap up before we leave.

Please pray that we will all have enough energy in these last couple weeks before travel. The good news is we’ve all been vaccinated for H1n1 the bad news is we’re all suffering from cold symptoms now.

Mark

Melissa sent updated paperwork to the USCIS office on May 27 and received our travel approval from China on June 9th….so at this point China had expedited their process and we were simply waiting on USCIS to update our paperwork.

We decided to get our Congressman’s office involved on 6/9 and after a lot of back and forth we discovered that USCIS had no record of our paperwork, despite the fact we had a Fed Ex tracking document with signature.

Jenny, from Verne Ehler’s office had been advocating on our behalf. She worked with the Special Liason to USCIS and they requested we send a new copy. So Melissa brought a copy to the office and it was Fed Ex’d with a note from Verne Ehlers to the Special Liason. Later that day, we received some good news. USCIS had found the original paperwork and our paperwork had been approved.

Lots of drama but we are thankful to have this behind us. Now we can move forward with setting the appointment with the US Consulate in China and back into our travel dates. We are tentatively set to leave for China on July 8th and expect to be united with Jade on the 12th.

Yesterday was busy. Melissa sent out two packages, one to Chicago to begin the Visa process and another to USCIS to get our immigration paperwork updated.

Before the packages could be mailed out Melissa had to pick up Savannah from school, go to Walgreens to get a passport picture for Savannah, then pickup our updated homestudy in Rockford. This is a run-on sentence isn’t it. So at 4:59 I’m about ready to leave work and notice a missed call from Melissa’s cell phone and I’m thinking, she should be home by now, why didn’t she call from our Skype number?

So I left work and called her cell from the road and confirmed she was still on the road. We ended up eating out at our favorite buffet Ming Ten. Mmmm sushi and Chinese food. Gotta feed the stress.

We are getting closer, travel details are starting to come together. Prayers that we can pull this all together soon would be appreciated.

Mark