Out and about in Downtown Hong Kong

This morning I was up by 7:30am after falling asleep around 5:00am.  Our bodies are slowly beginning to adjust to China time. Today was a free day for Herb and I, as the rest of group 1938 from CCAI will be arriving sometime today to the hotel.

We took the shuttle bus from the hotel at 9:30am and headed to downtown Hong Kong. It was pretty much like NYC, very busy with a lot of people and lots and lots of stores. For those who like shopping, you all would have thought you died and went to heaven.

After a few hours, I was ready to come back to the hotel. I didn’t shop though, because I know that in China things are a lot cheaper. Hong Kong is very westernized and it’s almost like being in the United States and almost everyone speaks English. The prices of clothing equal about the same as the U.S., if not more.

The only thing we did buy when we entered the market place (another word for supermarket) was bread, chips and some sprite, lol. It was pretty uneventful. There were some really annoying salespeople who would spot Herb from a mile away and want him to walk into their store – most of them were tailors.  Ugh!  After the 2^nd one it got real annoying.

I found a park that we decided to walk through and we are glad we did.  It was pretty and took us away for a few minutes from the noise of the city. I will post some pictures of our day.

We got back to the hotel around 3:00pm and now we are just relaxing. Maybe we will go through a stroll somewhere by the hotel later into the evening.

Looking forward to going to Victoria Peak, Resolve Bay & Fisherman’s Village tomorrow with our group. I will try and take pictures tomorrow of our CCAI group.

Entering Kowloon Park

Herb buying bread, chips & sprite at the market place.

Working our way around!

Hi everyone. So right now it is 1:15am (China Time) we  are still in Hong Kong. After our flight landed, I said a prayer to our awesome Lord thanking him for a safe and excellent flight. I then asked him for total guidance as we embarked the plane and began to approach the
people of Hong Kong to get us to Hyatt Sha Tin, which is where we will be staying.

The very first thing we witnessed when we began to walk in the airport where lots of people wearing mask around their mouths especially the women. Herb kept saying to me, “Maybe they know something we don’t”, hahaha. I kept thinking just don’t drink the water and watch what we eat. As we were walking towards immigration & customs, we then saw a Chinese couple get really mad at one another and the lady threw her cell phone across the airport into a million pieces. I was like “Well ok then, welcome to Hong Kong", and the boyfriend/friend/or hubby yelling stuff at her in their language. A piece of her phone landed in front of the man and instead of picking it up, he kicked it another few yards in front of her… I was like, "Oh man, someone is not happy".

Oh well, we continued to walk towards immigration. The immigration officials took our travel documents inspected them, stamped our passports and sent us on our way. We then went to baggage claim, picked up our 4 pieces of luggage (which I have to say – they were all within the limit and we did not have to pay extra for any overweight items, yayy us – not typical of the Bosch Family, I always have a tendency of over packing). So, we then approached the foreign exchange counter and we spoke to this nice lady and told her where we were going and we needed to take a taxi to the hotel, she told us more or less what taxi we should take (because they are color coded for different areas and different pricing) and how to get to them, and the best thing, she SPOKE ENGLISH!!

We then exchanged $100.00 American dollars into Hong Kong money, the exchange rate is 9.1 to $1.00. Not bad! So, I then took out the address of our hotel in Chinese language that our agency provided for us and worked our way outside to get our cab. Approached the green cabs, handed them the address, the cab driver grabbed our luggage put them in the car and we were off.

It puts you in a very vulnerable position when you are totally relying on some stranger who does not speak your language and you show him an address that you have no idea what it says to take you to some place.. Herb said “If this man knew that we were loaded with all this cash, he would kidnap us and take us to his cousin’s house and nobody would ever see us again”. I said, “Really, Herb”? That makes me feel so comfortable, BUT He better not because we have our daughter to pick up in just a few days”, lol. At any rate, we asked the driver “if he spoke English and he said, “No”. So we just sat quietly in his back seat and enjoyed the ride for about 30 minutes to the hotel.

I did notice though that his cell phone was on a little stand on the dashboard and he was texting and driving (NOT SAFE) but all in all we got to the hotel safe and sound.

The total cost for the cab was $216.00 Hong Kong money (which was about less than 30.00 U.S.) he did charge us an extra $10.00, we asked the luggage carrier at the hotel why he charged us more than what the meter read and he said “It was for the tunnel fee, the luggage carrying at some other stuff” (I think he was basically just adding his tip, it was all good though – still cheaper than what the lady at the airport said).

So now we check in to the hotel “Hyatt Shatin”, what a beautiful hotel!  We were welcomed by this nice young man who takes our luggage and escorts us to the check-in desk, the people behind the desk spoke English, so far we have not had any problems with the language here in HK, we got checked in and the man behind the desk escorted us to the elevator, pressed the 11th floor and said, "Enjoy your stay!"

When we got to our room, they gave us the room key and it’s not like the hotel room in the U.S. that you insert your key in this hole and it digitally opens it for you. This key is like a censor and you place it under this light, the door opens and then in order to turn on the lights in your room, you have to put the master key in this little box looking thing and it powers your entire room, very cool. Our view in our room is of the bay and behind it our all highrise buildings, in the evening you see the moon shining on the bay and the lights lighting up their city, it truly is beautiful from what we could see at night. The room is very modern, the bathroom is HUGE. In one bathroom you have marble walls that divided the toilet, the shower and the bathtub with very heavy matching doors. Now what I liked is where the king size bed is, you have the room with a desk (like a typical hotel room), but it has a clear window so if you’re taking a bath, you can see the people in the bedroom. (I know that sounds weird but if you’re by yourself or with your spouse only, it looks really nice). I will take a picture of our room so you can see tomorrow.

We finally got to bed around 11:30ish and then all of a sudden our room phone rings and it was our tour guide Matthew. He welcomed us and we went over the plans for the next couple of days. He said since we arrived a day earlier, the rest of the group will get here tomorrow which is Friday 11/30/12 , this will be a free day, so we can do whatever we want. We will probably sleep in and then go out and explore what we can without getting into any trouble we hope. We are having a sight-seeing tour with our group from CCAI on Saturday and we are to meet down in the lobby at 10:00am, we will be gone all day and return back to the hotel by 4:00pm. In our group there are a total of 10 ppl. Not sure if it’s 10 couples or 10 individuals. The sight-seeing tour consist of visiting Victoria Peak, Repulse Bay, Aberdeen Fisherman’s Village and then we will have lunch with our group from CCAI. I am looking forward to this tour because at this time we will be able to meet up with other people who are also adopting.

Matthew also informed us that we will then be departing Hong Kong with another couple to “Nanning”, the capital of Guanxji (where Isabella is) on Sunday afternoon. Our flight takes off at 4:00pm and we are to meet downstairs with bags packed by 2:00pm.

It is getting closer and closer until we meet our girl. Such an exciting time. Well, that pretty much sums up things for today.

I will post again tomorrow night with what we ended up doing on our own on Friday 11/30/12.

Again, thank you for all the prayers and support.

Arriving in Hong Kong - Day 1

Nov. 28, 2012

Today started off really early. We didn’t get to bed until 1:00am and we were up by 4:00am doing last minute packing and getting ready to head out to Ft. Myers airport (RSW). We got to the airport around 5:30ish. Checked in our bags, got our boarding passes and headed towards our gate. Our big boy drove us to the airport.  We hugged and said our goodbyes and this mama was so sad... Gosh, I HATE leaving our boys behind. I almost started to cry. This is the first time in Seth’s entire life that we have been apart, my mom told me that when he woke up this morning, he asked for me and mom told him that we went to China to pick up Isabella.  He didn’t believe her. He walked to the other room calling my name, after a few minutes though, she said he was ok.

Our flight to Chicago took about 3 hours. It was a pretty fair flight, a little bit of turbulence but not bad. I slept almost the whole flight. When we got to O’Hare (Chicago) airport, Herb and I went to have breakfast and then we got on the tram to head to our terminal. Thank GOD we had a 4 hr. layover because we spent about 1.5hr at the security checkout. Everything so far is going well.  We are now sitting at our gate getting ready to board “Hong Kong” bound at 2:00pm. We should be arriving in Hong Kong tomorrow night 7:55pm (China Time) 9:00am (USA Time). Until then, keep us in your prayers for safe travels!

Still Nov. 28, 2012 (It is now 6:03pm – USA Time) we are on Cathay Pacific Airlines, still on our way to Hong Kong. I have to say that this airline is AMAZING!  OMG’osh!  We are in the economy section of the plane and the seats are like recliners, and every seat has a personal TV in front of them. You can track the trip to Hong Kong and it tells you how much longer you have, how far is the distance (which is right now 6,344 miles away), what is the current time and temperature and the current time from the original place you departed from. Attached to the TV is a cellular phone with a keypad on the opposite side where you can scroll through the TV like a remote. You have many things you can choose from like movies (new releases) comedy, drama, family films and even kids’ activities.. You can choose to watch TV programs and even listen to music, it’s totally awesome. I am grateful because at least I know that I can keep Isabella busy with some kid’s films like Finding Nemo or such others. I can even choose the language, so maybe I can even put in Chinese and she will understand it, this is so so cool!

As soon as we took off they gave us a choice of a drink and some peanuts and then shortly after they served us dinner. It was yummy. You had a choice of Salmon, Pasta or Chicken. Herb & I choose the chicken dinner; it came with white rice, a dinner roll, fruit and vanilla ice-cream for dessert. Now our tummies are full and they have dimmed the lights.

The current time right now in China is 7:15am. Isabella should be waking up soon to have her normal day.  Little does she know that in just 4 more days, her life is going to change forever, and so is ours.

The majority of the people on board are Asian and its starting to really sink in that we are closer and closer to our sweet baby girl. Herb & I kept seeing little baby girls and we couldn’t help but think of Isabella. All the unknown questions that we have about her young life, what her personality is like? Her likes and dislikes? How things are going to go on Gotcha Day?

OMG’osh, we can’t wait!

Well, that’s it for now. We expect to be arriving in Hong Kong at 7:55pm or sooner (Thursday night). As soon as we get into the hotel and settled, I will work on the computer system to get everything up and ready for blogging. Until then, I will leave you with some pictures that I took on the airplane..

U.S. CONSULATE

Today we received confirmation of our U.S. Consulate appointment in China to complete our international adoption. Our US consulate appointment is scheduled for Dec 10th, 2012. So what does this all mean? It means that we are leaving to China on Nov, 28, 2012. Again, are family is so excited. Everyone is feeling different emotions but nonetheless, we are thrilled to be adding a precious china doll to be part of our family and life.

Travel Approval

 We finally got the call today informing us that our Notice of Travel document, also known as our Travel Approval or TA was issued. It took18 days to get after our Article 5 was picked up on October 30. So basically all we are waiting for right now is confirmation of our Consulate appointment in Guangzhou, which we should have within 1-3 days. This will then allow us to have definite travel dates, FINALLY, after 6 six years of waiting for our baby girl, it's finally happening. It all still seems like a dream. 

Next post will be about out CA (Consulate appointment) and then our detailed itinerary to China. OMG'osh I can't wait. I am over the moon happy.