The beginning of the Web Journal

(Below is the first entry of our web journal chronicaling our trip to get Malia. It was probably written around October 30, 2002.)

I was accompanied on this trip by my fiancé, Kevin, and our wonderful friend, Evie. I appreciate all they did for me during the trip. They worried about getting fresh water, finding good restaurants and grocery stores, finding disposable diapers... All I had to worry about was bonding with Malia. Malia and I are very grateful.

In our group, there were 12 families. Eleven of the children came from the same orphanage as Malia, the QuZhou Social Welfare Institute. One child came from an orphanage in HangZhou. Because QuZhou is so far away, we were not able to visit the orphanage there. Instead, the children were brought to us by bus in HangZhou . Most of the children were extremely healthy. Malia didn't even have diaper rash---which was the least of what I expected!

Our adoption agency, Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI), arranged all of our travel, tours, and meetings with government officials. In each province, we had a different representative from CCAI. Every representative was FANTASTIC--we would have been so lost without them. In addition, since they were locals, they provided insight to that particular region of China.

Honestly, I found the trip to be a hard trip. It's difficult to start a family in a little hotel room. I longed for my kitchen and the ability to run to King Soopers or call our pediatrician at a moment's notice. I hated how careful we had to be not to drink the tap water---don't sing in the shower! However, the trip was made much easier since we were all healthy. Malia was amazing. She was great about having her schedule upheaved almost every day. She was patient with the three of us as we figured out how to take care of her. Everyday she awarded us with a million smiles and that made any hardship trivial.