We left Los Angeles for Hong Kong at about 2:25 p.m. (about an hour late) on Friday, November 17th. According to our flight schedule, we would not arrive in Hong Kong until 8:55 p.m. Saturday night (with the time change - China is 15 hours ahead of Denver time - that's about a 15 hour flight). We flew on Cathay Pacific, which is a really nice airline, but it was still a 15 hour flight. 

Neither one of us slept much or read much, mostly we talked or occasionally tried to watch the in-flight tv. We spent a lot of time talking about what was coming up, figuring out how many hours we had to go, and imagining coming home on this same flight with a 9-month old baby along for the ride. There were 15 CCAI families (from two groups) on this flight. We had an extra-strong head wind, so our flight was actually a little longer (a little over 16 hours). After we arrived in Hong Kong, we were met by our CCAI representative (Joan) and taken to our hotel - the ShangriLa. We checked in around 11:30 and tried to send a quick e-mail home saying we had arrived. We had trouble with the Internet access in our room, so Karl went down and used the business center. We got to bed around 12:15 am, which was about 29.5 hours after we got up. We were kind of tired, but still had trouble sleeping.

The next morning we got up at 6:00 and ate breakfast, then had to make an 8:30 appointment for a half-day tour of Hong Kong (this is designed to show us a few sites, spend some money to help the local economy, as well as to try to start adjusting our body clocks to China time). We started by visiting Victoria Peak, which is up a steep and narrow road and provides very nice views of Hong Kong harbor. 

We then stopped by Stanley Market, an open air shopping area. 

Then we went to the Aberdeen Fisherman's Village and took a boat ride on a sampan boat to see all the boats that the fisherman live on and work on. 

We continued on to a jewelry factory/store - the factory was closed since it was Sunday, but the store was open - just for tourists like us). Finally we ended up at a Chinese restaurant for a Dim Sum lunch. We experimented with chopsticks (they gave us tiny little forks also, but they weren't much help). We did fairly well with the chopsticks, although Karl did lose a beef dumpling that fell to the floor - but luckily was caught by his baseball cap.

We then returned to the hotel, took a little break, then walked along the waterfront. We also went and bought some more bottled water (you can't drink the water anywhere in China without boiling it first), then returned to the waterfront to take pictures of the lighted buildings. 

At this point we were feeling kind of weird. On the plane trip over it felt as if we were going to get this child - traveling halfway around the world to pick up this stranger and bring her into our lives. Now it just felt like some weird kind of vacation since we weren't doing anything adoption specific. We figure when we leave the hotel tomorrow at 3:30 for Changsha, it will begin to feel more real.