August 2, 2007

   

I apologize for the thumbnails, but that’s as good as I can get it tonight.  This first set is my wonderful family waiting to see me off on my journey on August 1.  That night they dropped me back off at home and I flew off without much fanfare the next day after our flight was delayed.

Well, I almost got off to a bad start on my goal of posting a recap of 2 years ago before I even started.  This post and maybe several others are going to sound more like a travel journal than a blog post, but that’s ok with me, and I hope you’ll indulge me and keep reading and maybe even send a comment or two!  I have a new computer since my trip so I don’t have all the pictures on this computer yet.  I am planning to locate the CD I put them on and upload pictures for the next several posts, but I know there wasn’t much of the departure day and it’s late, and I’m tired so I’m not going to bother trying to find it tonight.  The trip was so overwhelming and exhausting that I didn’t get to record it very well at all when I was there and that was very disappointing to me.  Also when we got home we had so much to work through around here that it didn’t get done the way I wanted it to either.  I did paraphrased recaps of everything on the travel journal so I could upload it all before I ordered a CD of our site and let everything expire, but it’s really important to me to record some of these details before they start to fade from my very questionable memory, and now that Chloe will sleep for more than 30-45 minutes at a time without waking up, I’m going to take advantage of it and try to get it all down in writing.  And hopefully add pictures, but we’ll see!

This erratic start to the recap posts is kind of like how our departure to VietNam was delayed before it even started.  I was supposed to leave from my hometown airport on August 1 and arrive August 3, spend the day resting and preparing for the trip to Chloe’s province and then head out the morning of August 4th, but there were storms in Dallas the evening of August 1 so I had to take my hyped-up self home after waiting at the airport for hours, hoping against hope that the rains would clear and the storms would magically move away so that my plans wouldn’t be disrupted.  God chuckles at the plans I make for myself a lot!  

My cousin, her husband, and I left on a plane the afternoon of August 2nd and arrived in VietNam on August 4th.  The date line messes me up every time, but my best guess of how much time we spent traveling was 43 hours and that was before we got on the van to ride 7 hours to visit Chloe for the first time!  All of that excitement will have to wait until the post I hope to do on the 4th, though.  August 2nd was actually a much better day to leave.  I had tried to work all the way up until I had to leave so that I could conserve my vacation and sick leave for during the trip and after we got back.  That didn’t work well as my brain almost completely shut off at work on July 19 because that’s the day I got the call that I would get to travel in the next group from our agency.  Having that extra night at home let me repack my bags for the 10th time in that many days and it let me rethink my outfit choice for the trip, which was also good.  Don’t get your hopes up, I certainly wasn’t dressed up for my long, long trip, but I was comfortable and the black shirt and gray stretchy pants hid the grunginess of that long stretch without a shower very well!!

We flew to Dallas and then on to LAX where we had a nice, 9-hour long layover in their international airport.  The travel agent said they’d had trouble with Dallas and summer storms delaying people all summer so they changed from the evening flight to the afternoon flight to avoid that, thus the ridiculously long layover.  It’s nice not to worry about missing your flight because you didn’t have enough time to find your gate or something, but come on!  Thankfully my cousin had his laptop and brought a splitter for the earphones and the three of us were able to watch a movie or two and cause everyone around us to stare while we laughed out loud to something they couldn’t hear.  Normally I hate people staring at me, but I needed any distraction I could latch onto and the movies did the trick!  

     

We flew out of LAX on an 11:45 pm flight, if I remember correctly, on a 13.5 hour flight to Hong Kong.  I love the Hong Kong airport!  We had a lovely breakfast, walked around thankful to be off that enormous plane and thankful to be over solid ground again.  Let me just say, I’m not a fan of the little TV screen on the back of the chair in front of you that tracks your progress on the flight as you fly over a vast black openness called the Pacific Ocean! Kind of interesting at first, but really started to freak me out after the first couple of hours.  I don’t fly all that well and this was my first flight of more than 3 hours and my first flight over any body of water wider than the Mississippi River.  Not good news!  I will also say that when I go back to VietNam I will be taking a different kind of anti-malaria medication.  The one I was on is apparently not a great choice for those with tendencies toward anxiety and when we’re talking about a plane ride like that, I’m definitely anxiety-prone.  It is a miracle that I did not have to be sedated because I had to talk myself down from several near panic attacks, and I wish I were kidding about that!  

I can still feel that feeling I carried with me across the Pacific, but as I’ve said before I feel like my mind isn’t working clearly enough to explain it.  I’m going to try any way.  I felt like I surely might throw up for much of the weeks and days leading up to this flight and the travel days were certainly no different.  We ate at several Vietnamese restaurants in town in those 2 weeks before we left so we were familiar with a variety of different dishes, but also so we could vote on the authenticity of our local food vs. the real deal when we finally made it to Vietnam (that is not why I felt like I’d throw up, I love Vietnamese food!)  One of my last meals in town was with a group of friends from work, one of whom had traveled back to Vietnam recently and told me that judging from the people he traveled with, I would probably be sick the first three days I was there and then my stomach would get used to the food and I would be fine so don’t worry.  That’s about all you have to say to me to make me worry!  With the normal travel worries of flights, and liquids in your carryon baggage and misplacing your passport and not being allowed into the country and travelers’ stomach issues, I added a whole heap of others that I’m embarrassed to write about.  I was also legitimately (in my own mind any way) worried that when I arrived Chloe would be sick or she would get sick once I had her and she’d need medical help I couldn’t get for her in time, that there would be problems with the paperwork that would prevent me from taking her home with me, that the orphanage director would take one look at me and decide he could do better for her and find some other incredibly lucky family to make her their daughter, the list goes on and on.  

The internet is a huge blessing in a lot of ways, in my opinion.  For me, it did not do me many favors in those weeks leading up to my travel.  I know that the process of adoption is not for the squeamish, and that it’s good to be knowledgeable, but I found some of the worst horror stories out there at very inopportune times.  They were true, they were valid, they were important for me to read, but I wish I had found them after we returned.  Oh well.  Definitely not something I can change now, but I really am sad that the worry they caused me had the effect of stealing some of the joy out of my first days with Chloe.  They were such hard days for her and I just wish I could have been more joyful and less worried.  We survived and things are going well so I’ve almost forgiven myself because of the “no harm, no foul” rule, but still.  

My friend Denise sent me a video just a night or two before we left, two days ahead of her, I think, and it showed something horrible and purple growing on Chloe’s head that someone from my agency told me was just related to her “special need”.  An adoptive mom from my agency had taken the video and emailed it to her.  I don’t remember who it was, but I had asked a couple of people that traveled in the month or so before me to send videos and pictures, but I never got anything from them.  Now I know it was probably just an overwhelming transition when they arrived home and after that they just got busy with life.  At the time, I convinced myself that they didn’t want to email me the proof of the horrible thing growing out of her head.   For those who are appalled at this point that I’m sharing all of this personal information about my child online, don’t be.  Chloe’s head was fine.  She has a strange cowlick thing on the back of her head and when her little shaved hairs first grew in they grew in a strange pattern.  I took a couple of pictures once we got home where this thing showed up too, and I assure you there was no giant purple growth to blame for it!  She had rashes covering 75% of her body, but those were quickly treated and not too hard on her after the initial adjustment.  Her “special need” was also not a factor when the pictures were taken, but a few flippant words here and there caused me a great deal of stress and heartache while I was counting down the final hours to travel.  I could not get any of that off my mind during this 43 hours of travel and that made it a very long trip with not much sleep.  

We finally arrived in Ho Chi Mihn City on the morning of August 4th after a short flight from Hong Kong.  I’ll save the rest of the travel story for Tuesday.  Hope everyone has a great week!  With our anniversary coming up, Chloe and I are going to have a wonderful week!!