WE ACCEPT!

Well, we went to our travel meeting on Saturday and met one of our facilitators in China - Grace Chang- and also many of the couples that we'll be traveling with to China. It was a chaotic, emotional, highly charged meeting to say the least but clearly everyone was in a joyous daze. It was so exciting to see everyone else's baby pix and the ages ranged from 7 months to 2 1/2 years! We were surprised to find out that our travel group received referrals from 3 different provinces! So we are all going to fly to Hong Kong together in August(hopefully the first week) and then split up into 3 groups to go claim our babies!! Our province, Guangdong, has 3 or4 other couples traveling together - Amazingly, another couple's referral picture showed their daughter Lily wearing the exact same outfit as our Hannah! Clearly they are friends who share each other's clothes. :) We did hear ominous news that Guangdong may be soon requiring adoptive parents to stay in country for 3 weeks instead of 2. This would be particularly sad for Riley who is going to be very eager to meet her new sister and probably will not want to wait an extra week. Hopefully, this will not transpire. The best news of the whole meeting for us (besides getting Hannah's photos in full color - will post soon) was finding out that we are going to be staying at the "White Swan" hotel in Guangzhou for all but one night that we are in China! This is great because it is usually the "4 star treat" that adoptive parents get at the end of their trip to China but since our Miss Hannah En Ming lives in Guandong, we get to be there the whole time!! She's bringing us good luck already!! Grace Chang also informed us that Hannah's favorite toy is a jingle bell, she enjoys walking around in walkers, and LOVES TO EAT!!! She is most certainly not a picky eater as her favorite foods are chopped meat,rice, eggs, chicken,vegetables and fruit. Is there anything left? Grace told us to stock the fridge before she gets home! We're thrilled. She is so perfect! I am still walking around on air and can't really focus on anything but Hannah and China. Rob and I made a first attempt at learning Cantonese and we are pitiful but to be fair it's REALLY hard. We plan to learn "I can't understand you" and probably use that more often than not. Well, about 7 more weeks and we'll be on a plane. Unreal and so exciting! Please pray that our "travel approvals" come through quickly. We are psyched!!