The fan base is growing

Hey there, everyone. Sorry it's been a few days since the last post. It kinda threw us for a loop when we found that BLOOGER (blogspot) was banned in China. Free speech banned...who'da thunk it? Anyway, we have a couple of workarounds, neither of which will allow us to actually VIEW the blog while we are away, just do blind postings. So be it...if that's what we get, that's what we get.

A lot of folks have asked to be added to the blog, but not everyone has responded to the invite. So far we have 29 readers and growing every day. We hope this will be as much fun for you all as it is for us!

We are now working on travel insurance...just in case. Flight or medical issues...we want to be ready.

A lot of you have asked about where exactly we will be going once we are there. In a nutshell, we fly United to Beijing (non-stop on a 777). It's something like a 13.5 hour flight. We will meet our translator "Bill" at the airport and he will be with us the entire time. After a few days in Beijing, we will fly to Chengdu, which is the capital of Sichuan. It will be here that we meet Anyssa for the first time. We will be in Chengdu a few days to get all of Anyssa's paperwok in order and to get her passport issued, then we fly to Guangzhou. Now the real fun begins. You would think that dealing with the Chinese government would be the hardest part, but apparently, getting through the American consulate is where the REAL fun is. Once we are cleared by the US, we will take a 3-hour bus ride to Hong Kong where we will board a 747 for the 14 hour flight home. What's neat is that as soon as the wheels touch down at O'Hare, she will become an American citizen! I'm pretty sure we will all be exhausted by the time we reach the house.

All in all, it will be a 16 day adventure. I just bought a 16GB memory card for our new camera. We can shoot HD movies with it and I'll be downloading daily to Laura's laptop. We will post whatever we can!

Just so you know, Laura is also going to be an author on the blog so hopefully you be able to get HER view on this too.