At around 2:30 pm this afternoon, we arrived in Newark, New Jersey and crossed through immigration and Elizabeth became a US citizen at that moment! Pretty exciting stuff.
But let's back up-yesterday in Guangzhou, China we left our hotel around 2:30 pm and headed for the US consulate for our swearing in ceremony. We arrived at the consulate and slowly like a trickle and then like a river people started flowing into the room we were waiting in. These were all adoptive families coming for their swearing in ceremony as well. After a greeting from the head adoption officer and acknowledgement of birthdays in July (of course, our girl was included) then we had a brief(like 20 second) oath and then we were given our brown envelopes to show at the airport check in counters and with immigration here in the US and then we were free to leave.
Our very good friend Debi Callahan had arranged for a private driver to take us to Hong Kong last nite and we stayed next to the airport and flew out of Hong Kong this morning. The ride to Hong Kong was shall we say-interesting. First, it took almost one hour just to get out of Guangzhou for the traffic, then once we approached the border of Hong Kong there was alot of inquiry with our passports and Elizabeth's passport Visa. They made me wake her up and show her to the border officer to prove that the picture in her passport matched the baby that I was holding. Now I don't think her passport photo looks anything like her, but apparently, they did and after scanning our heads for temps we were allowed through. We arrived at the Marriot Sky City directly next to the hotel around 7:30 pm and checked in and ordered room service and pretty much went to bed. Just a word for all the other travelers out there-this Marriott is VERY nice, the price was reasonable and literally the shuttle took like 4 minutes to take us over to the terminal.
We checked in at Continental and thank the good Lord the ticket agent took mercy on us and put us in seats together and it was also a bulkhead row so we had some floor space for Elizabeth to play and did not have to hold her the entire time. That in itself was a God send as the flight today was 15 hours! I never want to do that again. She was a great traveler, only cried seriously when it was time for bed (her regular bed time) and entertained the flight crew everytime they walked by waving and smiling at them. We arrived in Newark and cleared immigration and then customs and Patrick's brother, Mike, picked us up and took us to his wife's office for a quick check-up. Mike's wifeGrace, is a pediatrician and we have been anxious to have Elizabeth "checked out" officially. The exam in China lasted about 15 seconds and the immunization record is also a little confusing.
Elizabeth weighed 13 lbs 15 ounces today and she measured at 28 1/2 inches. So a little different than the exam in China, particularly the length part, but she otherwise checks out ok. We need to concentrate on getting her to eat and have caloric intake. We are going to try to switch her over to american formula and whole milk and see what we can get her to eat from the table as well. Grace suggested we don't force her to eat-we have held her down at times to eat, and just let her eat at her pace. The first few days we weren't feeding her enough, now we feed her enough but maybe not in the best manner. We are still learning everyday and Elizabeth takes our nonsense quite well.
We are all exhausted but Elizabeth is handling the time change, lack of sleep a heck of alot better than her dad and I. We are all trying to stay awake until 8 pm and try to get on East coast time fairly quickly. Don't know how that is going to work, but we'll try. The jet lag was the pits in Beijing-took about 3-4 days for the correct time to kick in and the fatigue to go away. Now we have to reverse everything back. In fact, with our flight today we basically lived July 31st forever. We left Hong Kong at 10:30 am on July 31st and arrived in Neward on July 31st at 2:00 pm. And believe me the flight was alot longer than 4 hours!!!!!
We will be coming home on Sunday for good, and honestly, we can't wait. We are anxious to sleep in our own beds, eat our own food, get Elizabeth into the real world and on our schedule. We will continue to keep everyone posted on our transition home and will also post some more photos later.
Until next time.........................................
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