Reynolds Family Blog

In less than 24 hours, we’ll tell our kitties goodbye, temporarily cede custody of our house & cats to our neighbors, load up the car, and be on our merry way (praying through all of it that we don’t forget anything). Though I shared our overall itinerary previously, I thought I’d give a more thorough breakdown of the next few days for us (map pictures are courtesy of Google maps).

Thursday morning we plan to leave the house between 7:00 & 7:15 a.m. to drive to Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport. It’s roughly a 20 minute drive for us and parking (including long term) is free and conveniently close to the terminal. The plan is for Brock to drop me & Preston off at the building with our luggage. Preston & I will strip off our coats and leave them in the car. Brock will then park the car, strip off his own coat and hurry inside to meet us. We will fly out of Springfield at 9:37 a.m., with an estimated landing in Chicago of 10:35 a.m.



Once we land at O’Hare, we will have to scramble to get from Terminal F to Terminal C. Our layover is just under two hours, as we are scheduled to depart Chicago at 12:32 p.m. Though I’m including a map below that shows a line between Chicago & Hong Kong, I don’t believe that will be our flight path. From what I’ve been told, we will probably fly north over Canada & the North Pole, then south over Asia to get down to Hong Kong.



We are scheduled to land in Hong Kong at 6:05 p.m. FRIDAY. That will be 4:05 a.m. back here in Illinois, as China is 14 hours ahead of us. We expect it to take as awhile to get through Customs, etc., so we booked a room at the Hong Kong FlyCity Marriott, which is at the airport.

Hong Kong FlyCity Marriott



As we check-in to the hotel, we should be given our train tickets, as our travel agent requested that they be there waiting for us. On Saturday (Christmas Day), we will be taking the 1:10 p.m. train to Guangzhou. The train ride is just under two hours. The ironic thing is that we will be closer to Shaling in Hong Kong, as she lives in Shenzhen, which is a suburb of Hong Kong. However, all of the adoption paperwork and transfer of custody takes place at the Civil Affairs office in the provincial capital, which happens to be Guangzhou. She will be brought to us on Monday. In the map below, I circled Hong Kong in purple, showing a line indicating our train ride to Guangzhou, which is circled in green. I circled Shenzhen in pink. In the 1970s, Shenzhen was a small fishing village, but now has roughly 9 million people. It thrived after being designated by the Chinese government as a special economic district.



Once we reach Guangzhou, our guide will meet us at the station and take us to our hotel. Sunday is basically a free day, but we hope to meet up with a family from Florida (Carl & Kim, along with their teenage sons Matt & Andrew) who are adopting 8-year-old “Natalie” from the same orphanage as Shaling. They are staying in a different hotel, but not all that far from us.

Monday will be “Gotcha Day” – the big moment when we finally meet Shaling. This is the day for which all of our emotions are building right now. I wonder what she must be thinking these last few days. Though she has shown enthusiasm about being adopted, we wonder how scared she might be once the day is real and she has to leave the only caregivers she’s ever known. Preston has asked me more than once if I’m going to cry and I tell I probably will. I ask him if he thinks he will, but he doesn’t think so. He tells me that Dad doesn’t think Dad will cry either, but I have my doubts about that.

Thanks again to all who’ve sent well wishes, prayed for us & Shaling, showered us with love & gifts, etc. We hope you will continue to follow our journey as we cross the “big pond”.