packed and ready - more or less

I think we're finished packing. We have 3 large pieces of luggage, two backpacks and a small carry-on. We're not taking the stroller our friends lent us. Its too heavy and we're weighed down enough as is. We'll get a stroller in Nanchang, I think there is a Walmart there. Our itinerary shows a shopping trip so I'm assuming that's where we'll go. I feel like we're already traveling with a drug store complete with toy department and I bet we still find out we're missing something crucial once we get there.

The car is coming at 8:30 tomorrow morning for the half hour trip to Newark. Our flight leaves at 12:10 PM and we arrive in Beijing at 1 PM the following day. For the trip I filled my mp3 player and Jackie's iPod with a bunch of music. I also "rented" a CD-MP3 book "Manhunt: the 12 day chase for Lincoln's killer" and put that on my mp3 player. I've been told audio books are good for long plane rides.

Its almost midnight and I'm hoping to get up at 6:30 to go to the gym before the car comes but I really doubt that is going to happen. I'm feeling totally wired at the moment. The last few days at the office I had a knot in my stomach as I plowed through as many of the tasks as I could before going on my leave and I feel the same way now.

Today we took $2700 in cash out of the bank. That's how much we'll be traveling with tomorrow. We were lucky because the $3000 orphanage fee we were allowed to pay by cashiers check to our agency instead of traveling to China with the $3K in cash which is how it is usually done. We're bringing $1500 for other administrative fees and another $1100 for ourselves. I know there are a lot of international adoption programs that require the adopting parents to travel with large sums of cash so I feel like we got off easy. We have a couple of money belts that we'll be using on the trip. I've never used a money belt and I don't know if we put that on before we get to the airport, in the air or what. There were no directions with the money belts.

For the last couple of years I've thought of this trip only in terms of getting Sadie and getting home. However in the last couple of weeks people have been asking me if we are going to do some shopping while we're there. Item such as; ribbon microphones, Prada suits, Cuban cigars and opium have come up in conversation. I have no idea where I would look for this stuff. I'm guessing the knock-off stuff merch will come looking for us so I'm not too worried about it. But I'm still not thinking of the trip as a vacation at all. It'll be nice to get away but to be honest; Beijing or Guangzhou would not be on my short list of vacation destinations.