On the positive side, we have all of our paperwork assembled and organized. I need to make a few dozen copies of documents, but we have all of the pieces we need. We also finished our “money laundering”* ahead of time.
(*For all the government officials reading this, I am only JOKING and referring to exchanging legal tender for better quality bills of the same value to pay for official adoption fees in China. Don’t be a weed.)On the still-left-to-do list, we have to actually pack for the trip, clean the house for our house sitter, buy some small gifts for the orphanage workers, and a few other miscellaneous tasks.
One negative that we’ve run into is the luggage weight limitation for in-country (China) flights. For our flights between Newark – Beijing (and Hong Kong – Newark) we’re permitted more than 140 lbs per passenger without any baggage fees. For our flights from Beijing – Nanchang – Guangzhou, we are strictly limited to 44 lbs per passenger before incurring a “per kilogram overage fee” of about $3/kg. This means that we are not going to be able to take the donations of clothing, blankets, toys, and stuffed animals we’ve collected to the orphanage without having to pay >$300 in fees. While it really stinks that we can’t deliver our donations to the children, I’d much rather give the $300+ to the orphanage than to some random government worker at the airport. So while cash is extremely impersonal, it’s about the only thing we can give. We’ll give our donations to a local charity instead. Thanks, China Airlines.
We have been told that both Facebook and Blogger/Blogspot (i.e., this blog) are currently blocked in China. So we’ll move on to Plan B to send blog updates via email, and/or Plan C to have a mystery blogger post for us. Supposedly Skype will work from China, so we’ll be chatting that way whenever possible. Also, we’re encouraging Lucy to keep a journal of her journey. We’ll post those to our blog as we’re able.
