Madame Pearl

Three years ago tonight Dave and I were walking the streets of Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong enjoying a brief few days of R + R before traveling to Wuhan Hubei ( central China) to be united with our new daughter. We were excited, nervous, exhausted from the trip over and trying to soak each moment in.

Each night we would walk back to our incredible hotel room and you could take a hot bath in the glass walled bathroom and look out over the Hong Kong skyline. It was magnificent. We were so glad to have arrived a few days early as it gave us both a chance to unwind and reflect on the changes and new directions our lives were about to take. Not that we hadn't fully understood the magnitude of the journey, but with all the preparations leading up to traveling and making arrangements for our son John during our trip across the globe, there simply wasn't much time to really absorb it. Now, we were only days away from meeting our Elizabeth.

We were to meet up with our travel group of approx. 22 families who were also adopting and the night before we were to unite, I came down with a very nasty bug. I was running a high fever, coughing, vomiting, sore throat, etc.. Dave went out on foot in an attempt to find some cough syrup that was strong enough to muffle it during our flight into mainland China. He succeeded and came back with some pretty putrid stuff called "Madame Pearls". After I took 2 tablespoons, I felt I needed to see the ingredients. On 2nd thought, I decided not to find out :)





Finally the day arrived where we were to have our luggage in the hallway and our guide gathered all 22 families and their travel companions together, piled us on a big bus and took us back to the Hong Kong airport. Our flight would depart from Hong Kong to Wuhan Hubei in the mid morning hours putting us at the destination where we would get Elizabeth sometime that afternoon.

There were indescribable anticipations.

To be continued.