Saturday, Aug 11

At 12:20 a.m., we boarded EVA Air #17, Evergreen Deluxe Class, bound for Taipei. As soon as we boarded and settled into our seats, the stewardesses brought everyone a warm, wet towel to refresh our face and hands. It felt like heaven. The video monitors ran a short tourism film featuring the most beautiful sights and sounds of Taiwan. Very cool. The stewardesses picked up the used towels and began preparing everyone for takeoff. We left at 1:10 a.m., right on time.

I've never flown in a 747 before; the thing creaks and squeaks on the ground making the turns necessary to position itself on the runway for takeoff but, once up in the air, she's smooth as silk! It felt odd to hear all the announcements in Chinese and then have to wait for the English translation! The video monitors immediately began showing us the position of the plane on a huge map, followed by all the flight stats, such as what altitude we were currently flying at, the temperature outisde of the plane, our groundspeed, how many miles we were from our departure point, how many miles to our destination, and an estimate of how long it would take to reach our destination. The next screen told you what time it was at the departure city, what time it was as the destination city and what time it was in the time zone we were currently flying in, etc. All the screens were displayed first in Chinese, and then in English. Although the pictures aren't great, I've included a couple of screen shots so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. When that map of Asia came up for the first time, it really made you realize just how far you were away from home! How very strange it was to realize that you were closer to China and India than to our own familiar North American continent!

Back to EVA Air -- our domestic airlines should take some lessons from these guys -- they provide incredible customer service! A pillow and quilted blanket was in every seat, along with a pair of "paper" slippers and an amenities pouch containing a travel toothbrush, toothpaste and hand/face cream. The stewardesses were all Taiwanese, and quite beautiful, I might add. They switched easily from speaking Chinese to English, depending on the passenger they were conversing with at the time. Our class had four stewardesses assigned to the 60-some seats. They were pleasant and efficient. Beverage and meal service was distributed shortly after take-off. Todd decided to sleep through "dinner," but Lauren and I had pork chop with rice. An appetizer of raw salmon and cucumber, along with fruit and a roll, rounded out the meal. I got a kick out of the stews asking us if we wanted, "tea/coffee?" I guess the "or" is unnecessary verbage. Cute.

Not long after the trays were cleared, the lights were dimmed and most folks settled in to sleep through the night. I discovered that I don't sleep well on planes, so I watched a couple of movies and got up from time to time to stretch my legs. Interestingly enough, about five hours into the flight, I began to smell the aroma of noodle soup and discovered that they serve a delicous spicy beef noodle soup in the middle of the night upon demand! It was so funny to watch (and hear!) the Chinese passengers slurp the noodles using their chopsticks, and then drink the broth out of the cup! Several men were standing by the stewardess station, yakking away a mile a minute in Chinese and slurping up their noodles! Well I had to try this for myself, and I found it to be an instant ramen-type noodle, but a WHOLE lot heartier and tastier! There were vegetable and beef slices in the soup, as well! Wish we could get that stuff here in the States -- it was really yummy!

Lauren woke up when we were flying over Japan and was truly disappointed to find that we still had four more hours to go until we arrived in Taipei! A couple of hours later, we flew over Okinawa, which was thrilling to me because my father had been stationed there in 1954 when he served in the Air Forced during the Korean Conflict.

When the stewardesses brought the lights up, I began to get excited because I knew we were getting close to our destination. Out came the refreshing warm, wet towels again to freshen up with, and then breakfast. Your choice of omelette or congee -- we all chose the omelette, served with potato, sausage, a small slice of cold chicken and potato salad (what?), a mini croissant, yogurt, juice and "tea/coffee." After the breakfast trays were cleared, the duty-free cart came around, and the next thing you know, we began our descent.

We watched the island become visible, and held our breath as the plane approached the runway. You could see the steam coming up off the tarmac, our first indication of just how hot and humid Taiwan is in August!

So, after nearly twelve hours of flight, having crossed the International Date Line, we arrived in Taiwan just a few minutes before 5 a.m. on Sunday morning. As we taxied to the terminal, I just broke into tears -- I was finally in here, coming to get our little girl and bring her home! Todd smiled that, "Oh, gee, my wife is so cute when she gets emotional" smile, and Lauren patted me and said, "It's o.k., Mom." She's so sweet! So we begin the adventure of our lives, 6000 miles from home and just that much closer to our Mia!

Friday, August 10

Alrighty then, where did we leave off? Ah yes, Todd made it home from work only slightly later than we anticipated, and I took off to go pick up Lauren from her first day of sixth grade and middle school (what we used to call "junior high"). Here's a picture of Lauren with our luggage – so the amount of luggage wasn't really as bad as it seemed like it would be, huh?

We checked in at the airport two hours early for our flight, and went to grab some lunch. Funny how expensive mediocre airport food can be! (That's funny, as in really unbelievable, not funny ha-ha.) As we waited for our flight to Houston, we met a lovely woman from San Antonio who had adopted her sixteen-year-old daughter from Russia when she was about 2 years old. Sharing our adoption stories with each other made the time pass quickly until they called our flight. As we our plane took off, I remember thinking, "I can't believe this day has finally arrived! I've dreamed of it for so long!" Todd must have read my mind, because he said almost the same thing!

Our flight to Houston was smooth and arrived right on time, so we proceeded to the gate where our flight to San Francisco was supposed to be departing from only to find there had been a gate change. We had plenty of time, so that was no big deal. Our flight to San Francisco left on time so we settled in for the nearly four-hour flight. On board was a co-ed high school athletic team returning to SF from some sort of international tournament. They were wound up, to say the least, so it was a bit of a noisy flight. I wrote thank you notes for the gifts received at my baby shower the previous week, so the time passed quickly. Next thing you know, we're landing in San Francisco.

We claimed our baggage (only to find out that we could have checked it straight through to Taipei in Baton Rouge!) and proceeded to the International terminal to check-in for our EVA Air flight to Taipei. We had plenty of time, and we were starved (our Houston/SF flight was beverage service only), so we found another outrageously expensive café – thankfully, the food at this one was much tastier! Still having a couple of hours to burn before our next flight, we settled in at the gate and waited. Todd took a nap, and Lauren and I people-watched. Nearly everyone at the gate was Chinese, so we began to get the first taste of what it felt like to be in the minority for a change!

I watched them load the luggage and cargo on our 747-Airbus – everything was piled on these huge pallets and shrink-wrapped, then hoisted up onto a platform and loaded onto the plane through these incredibly large cargo doors. I found it interesting, but then there's not a whole lot else to find interesting at midnight while you're waiting for a flight!

Turn back the hands of time …

Okay, by now most of you know that we've been back from Taiwan for almost a month now. You've also probably heard that the blog-thing didn't work out so well because we never could get an internet connection at our hotel in Taipei. Also, we were kept pretty busy every day until we went to St Lucy to pick up Mia and, after we got her, time was a blur until it was time to leave for home. And since we've been home, it's been pretty crazy! We're just now getting back to "normal," although "normal" for us is still pretty crazy!

There's so much to tell about our trip, and I really do what to share it with y'all so, with your permission, we're going to turn back the hands of time and blog our trip memories! I'm going to do my best to make fairly regular posts to catch you up as quickly as possible to-date.

Are you ready? Here we go …