Thursday, July 9 - Train to Hong Kong

Hey, we're in Hong Kong now so I can finally see our blog and I've been reading the comments from people!  As you may remember, many websites are blocked in China, including Blogger (the website for this blog) so we've been emailing the blog posts to our blog even though we couldn't access it.  But now that we're out of mainland China, those sites aren't blocked anymore.  And I can add more than four photos to a blog post!

We checked out of our hotel at 9:00 this morning and took a bus to the train station.  Helen is super nice and she went with us all the way to the gate of our train, and she made sure that we knew what to do once in Hong Kong and how to get to our hotel here.  Although it may have had a tinge of sadness to leave the Garden Hotel where we've stayed for the past couple of weeks, mostly we were happy to leave because we're one step closer to being home!  I do feel sad for Ezekiel though, especially when I was putting him to bed last night and thinking about it being his last night in China and he doesn't even know it and won't remember anything about this.  Adoption is in some ways very joyful and happy, but in many ways it's also quite sad.  For Ezekiel, I think he will have some especially unique challenges that even TongJie will never have to deal with.  At least TongJie looks Chinese and can identify with other Chinese people.  Ezekiel will feel like he doesn't really fit in with either - he looks Caucasian, but he's not . . . he's Asian, but he doesn't look like it.  There will always be people who don't believe he's Chinese.  It's just something I've been thinking about as we've been getting ready to leave his old home and take him to his new home.  We plan to come back to China when both boys are older, maybe in 10 or 12 years or so.  Really, we've had a great experience here and although we're looking forward to coming home, there are things we will miss about being in China.

So, anyway, our train left around 10:45 for Hong Kong and both kids did great on the train ride.  Of course TongJie was happy to be on a train again!  We were on one with two levels and we got to sit on the upper level, so that was even better because we could see everything really well.  We sat with two young women who were from Ireland, so it was nice to sit with people who spoke English.  We had to go through customs when we got off the train and then walked to our hotel, which is right next to the train station.  Got checked into our room, and Ezekiel promptly fell asleep for a nap.  We have a much smaller room, so it's good we're only here for one night - the crib barely fits in the room!  Jeff is napping with Ezekiel and TongJie is doing a good job of playing quietly.  Tomorrow, we take a taxi to the airport and then our looooong flight home.  We will arrive in Seattle around 8:30 am on Friday morning.  The first few days at home are going to be exhausting with jet lag and getting used to how everything works at home with a new family member.  Thanks for following along on or blog - it's been quite a journey!  You probably won't hear from us on here till after we're home, so we'll "see" you all then!