Travel News!

First view of Taipei, at dawn July 2006

Finally! We got the call I have been anxiously awaiting for the last three weeks. We will be at St. Lucy's to pick up Hui-Min on Monday, September 22nd. I can finally book airline tickets. Yay! It's been an anxious few weeks. Ever since we heard about our first decree I felt like we'd be traveling the week of 9/22, but our agency discouraged me from making reservations until we had a confirmed date with St. Lucy's. With each passing day of no news, I got increasingly out of sorts. This Tuesday I had convinced DH to just book tickets for a two week trip, figuring that our appointment just HAD to be sometime between Sept. 22 and Oct. 2. He almost did it, but in the back and forth of trying to figure out how to use frequent flier miles with British Airways partner airline, Cathay Pacific, for one of the four tickets we need, the seat that was available was taken. So we were no closer, despite my desperate attempts to move forward. Back in July, when our dossier was FedEx'd to Taiwan, I put it in my head that I wanted some news by August 28th. This is the 2nd anniversary of our first decree in Alex's adoption case. It is also the 3 month anniversary of our referral. It just felt right. And by golly, it came to pass that we got the news I've been waiting for late in the afternoon. Now, I'm usually the last person to accurately predict anything. Give me a 50/5o chance, and I'll ALWAYS pick the wrong 50. So while I had high hopes for today, I really had no expectation that my hopes would actually be realized. So when we hadn't heard anything by noon, I figured it wasn't going to happen. With Taiwan 15 hours ahead of us, our agency usually gets its news from St. Lucy's first thing in the morning. By noon Pacific time it's the middle of the night in Tainan, so if you haven't heard by noon, you're not likely to. It turns out that it just took some time to get to the phone to make the call. I'm fine with that. I'm so fine with not having to wait through the long weekend. Our tickets are booked. Hoorah!