The story of the drama leading up to our departure isn’t uncommon. The short version is that we were advised not to travel until we had the official itinerary from ICAB, and we were at the 10 hour mark before our departure. We were advised to change the dates of travel, and we were traveling during the most expensive travel time of the year. Of course, it would be another large sum of money to change the dates, so we opted to risk it and potentially eat the cost of the airfare by not changing the date in the hopes we would get the official itinerary just before departure.

At a point of pure desperation, I reached out to the social workers at Hospicio de San Jose, in the hopes they heard about the itinerary. Yes! They indeed had, and our entrustment was scheduled. Beth and I decided that we were going to get on the airplane regardless of the official itinerary or not. They clearly had scheduled the dates but kept our local social workers in the dark. They were flying blind and they couldn’t risk us traveling without the official word. We knew for a fact that Christopher was expecting us, and we couldn’t disappoint him. He had been counting down the days.

Beth and I arrived at the airport at 3AM for our 5:30AM flight. Sue, our social worker set an alarm to check for an official itinerary and sure enough, 3:23AM she forwarded it on. We were totally in the clear at that point and we boarded knowing that “it was on” and we were flying with everything we needed.

The first flight was an uneventful trip from Rochester to JFK, just an hour and a half and we were down and getting setup for the next long leg of our journey. Of course, a Nor’easter was bearing down on NYC, just our luck. Our 777 was already delayed due to a late arrival, so we were already an hour behind schedule for the first departure time. I was praying that we wouldn’t be affected, and sure enough, 30 minutes before boarding we were told that our flight was delayed again, but they could not tell us when or if our plane was going to be leaving.  The second delay was due to the weather; fog, wind and rain.

Beth and I were especially concerned about our connector in Guangzhou, China. I figured we had another two-hour buffer, as far as delays go, and we should still be able to make our connector.  This was especially tight because our entrustment was scheduled for the next morning at 9AM. Most families schedule their entrustment for two days after arrival to get acclimated to the time change. I had mistakenly sent the request for the 23^rd and not the 24^th and we were set to arrive at 10:30PM on the 22^nd. It was going to be tight all around.

As we were sitting in JFK, concerned about our departure, I had my eyes all over FlightView to see if I could see any ATC updates on our flight. All the sudden, a spunky Puerto Rican gate agent just started running around yelling, “Flight 300, everyone get in line!” No PA announcement, just this crazy lady running from gate to gate yelling “Everyone get in line!” So, we did… It was almost as if this Chinese airline was saying “Screw this! We’re flying this tub on out of here right now!” I was playing doplar dad and saw we did have a break in the weather, and JFK was clearly trying to get as many international flights pumped out as quickly as possible.

So, we boarded the most unique flying experience of our lives. I have to say, I was not looking forward to flying on a Chinese airliner, but it was actually really great. The flight attendants are actually nice and accommodating versus US airline attendants that just act as if you’re a giant inconvenience. There was an obvious Chinese preference not to fly with a couple of Caucasians. We were sitting among clear acquaintances as they were deciding who should sit with us, assignments be damned. After the jockeying was all settled, and we and our new Chinese companion were settled, the attended approached him and, after some back and forth, our new Chinese friend just vanished to the front of the plane, and no one was interested in coming back to the third open seat. He was clearly upgraded, and apparently so were we! We had an entire row of three seats to ourselves for our 15 hour leg.

So, 15 hours, on lack of sleep, is not fun, not fun at all. You think it’s not going to be as bad as it is, but it’s not fun. There were some pluses. They fed us three times, I slept through “lunch”. The flight attendant was kind of awesome. Every time she’d come through with hot food options, she would tell you what to get. The first was “beef and potato OR fish and rice, fish is better.” Ok… fish it is.

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The second meal was “chicken pasta or pork and rice, pork is better.” Ok… pork it is. And she wasn’t bullshitting. The guy behind us, who selected before us as she came up through the aisle, selected the chicken pasta and immediately returned it for the pork and rice. The food wasn’t bad at all, and I mean, pretty good all things considered. I can’t wait to see what the food is like on the return as it will originate in China and not from some airline caterer based out of JFK.

So, we survived our flight right over the North Pole. I was impressed to see the outside air temp get down to -63F over the North Pole. That’s damn cold and thought that was probably as cold it could get, right? We hit Siberia and it dropped to -83F. Wow. That is cold. The airline flight tracker was on the entire trip, it was like watching the worlds slowest download progress. Coming into China I was able to observe some pretty awesome cloud formations floating on top of China’s trademark pollution cloud. The coolest thing to observe while flying in is all of the gardens and nurseries nestled into the urban landscape.

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China is exactly what you would expect it to be, a highly monitored state, and the transfer between international flights included a high-tech temperature scanner and then another security check, and they don’t play around. It’s honestly not different than our own TSA, except it’s a bunch of kids dressed up in black SWAT team outfits. And when they frisk you, they FRISK you. I can say, my crotch definitely did not harbor any weapons, but they weren’t taking any chances.

We made it through and we were posted up at our gate. We didn’t think our two hour flight from Guangzhou to Manila would have anything more than peanuts, so we decided to get some Chinese, from the Chinese. We ordered dinner and it was pretty good, and it was only $23 for dinner at an airport, which is kind of amazing.

Well, as it turns out Southern China Airlines doesn’t play around when it comes to food, and they had another hot meal for our two hour flight. This time it was pork and rice noodles and egg. The distinction between “and” and “or” caused lots of confusion while the attendant tried to explain that it was actually a choice between the two. We both opted for the pork and noodles, which wasn’t half bad again. What was most amazing about this leg of the journey was the line for the shitter on that airplane. I’m not joking when I tell you the line did not slow down the entire flight. It’s like everyone was excited to shit on an airplane. Unfortunately for us, we were sitting in the very last row of the plane, right next to the toilet. A couple times the male attendants had to go in to the toilet to decontaminate it and attempt to deodorize it. Wow. At one point it turned my stomach, but thankfully the worst of it was toward the end of the flight. I mean, they were turning people away from the toilet with 20 minutes left to land, people should have been seated and buckled but they were still trying to get to that damn toilet.

So we land in Manila, a huge sigh of relief, and we go through the medical scanner again, but compared to China, I don’t think the Philippines really cares. The quarantine box was about a 3 foot by 3 foot roped off box and a young girl was monitoring the heat camera. I somehow don’t think she was at all that invested in the process. Immigration was a post card and a quick question from the officers there.  They didn’t even speak to Beth, just stamped her passport and pointed the direction she should head. No problem at all. Customs was the best, it was just an open door with people standing on either side just waving you through, so if you did have something to declare, you really didn’t have a chance to say boo. “This way sir…” … Uh, ok? Thanks. As I understand it, it will not be as easy to leave.

I had been planning to use a Philippines SIM card in a spare smart phone, and did get one, but it was such a pain in the ass to try to use VOIP calling that I just gave up and added international calling once we got to the hotel. Getting a ride to the hotel was the first thing we were apprehensive about. I’ve heard so much about taxi scams I was kind of nervous. I wanted to use Grab, the Asia Pacific version of Uber, but just couldn’t get it up and working and we were running out of time due to our tight timelines and hopes for some sleep before our big day the next morning. So a guy just grabbed us, over charged us for a ride, but did get us to the hotel. Honestly, the ride only cost us $30 and that’s on par with a ride in Boston so I can’t really complain.  Beth referred to this guy as the “taxi pimp” as it was his job to drum up the costumers and talk money.  I still tipped the driver, as he seemed like a nice and genuine person. We had decided to just utilize the hotel’s car services though, from here on out. It’s not outrageous and they’re very accommodating.

We finally get up to our room and do some shuffling, enough to the point where we have our clothes laid out for our, and Christopher’s, big day. We crash out and got our solid four hours of sleep. Thankfully we had a car ordered up for the next morning.

We were told that getting from point A to point B in Manila was a real bear and to give yourself lots of travel time. Well, the orphanage turned out to be close enough that it wasn’t much of a concern and were left at 8AM, to be there by 9AM, but arrived at 8:15AM.

Everyone at Hospicio was so accommodating to us, it’s such an awesome place. The kids are so well cared for. The worst case scenario for a child is becoming an orphan, but Hospicio really is the best place for a child who is in that circumstance. They’re so well loved and the kids are truly happy there. The staff loves them so much, and the kids love the staff. Even so, Christopher was so excited to go home with his new Mom and Dad and we were excited to have him with us.

The entrustment Mass was very emotional, and the presentations from his Godmother, Orphanage Director, and one of the four house moms, really had us in tears. We hadn’t prepared a formal speech but still couldn’t make it through a couple of simple lines without choking up. Christopher was constantly telling Mommy and Daddy to stop crying. He was just so excited.  We tried our best to explain happy crying.

The party afterwards was just amazing. We felt so grateful, and Christopher was so well setup by his Godparents and Hospicio. He had a bag packed, filled with his favorite toys, and all new shoes and clothes. We delivered our donated items, the ones that weren’t left out in the rain at JFK, and our gifts for the workers at Hospicio. Our gifts felt so inadequate compared to all that we received in Christopher and how well loved and cared for he clearly was. We really want to help support the orphanage all we can, and hopefully we can have our home parish “adopt” or sponsor Hospicio with a second collection. We will always have an annual Christmas gift for Hospicio.

We ordered up our car and we were headed back to the hotel to begin our adventure as a family.

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We arrived at the hotel and got ourselves situated again. Christopher was just so excited to get to the hotel. After we got back to the room we checked through the clothes and did some relaxing. We put on some TV and played a few games. We were all so exhausted it was really a blur. I read a book to Christopher and just played it low key. One of Christopher’s daily routine items is a 6PM rosary, so we prayed our first family rosary. We did some exploring on the floors in the hotel, that were not hotel run. There are a bunch of little food stands on the ground floor, and then there are a couple of casinos on the next three floors. On the fourth floor was a Korean BBQ joint. We weren’t going to eat there but Christopher really insisted, so that’s what we decided on. None of us had ever done Korean BBQ, but we figured it out.  Christopher insisted that “Mah-may” cook the food not “Dah-day”!  But in the end, we all took a turn with it.

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He’s a good eater, like his dad. The place was really great, and it was super cheap for a family of three. We were super happy with the food. Beef was the winner. He definitely likes to ham it up for the camera.

One thing the house moms warned us about was that everyone in the Philippines is used to waking up early. Christopher had been waking up for 4:30AM Mass each morning leading up to our coming. Well, turns out he was willing to sleep in for us and we all laid in bed until 6AM. I was up at 3:30AM, and Beth was up at midnight for an hour. Thankfully he’s a good sleeper, though he did fall out of bed twice. Once seemed to be unnoticed, but once did startle him. Beth snuggled Christopher, as he admitted he was scared. Of course, it’s a completely new experience.

To be continued.