At Last

Let's just say this trip was the longest 40hours of our life. It started Friday morning at 5am as we headed to Little Rock airport. We made our flight to Dallas with no difficulty and all flights on time. As we were waiting to board our flight in Dallas to Vancouver, they were doing security checks since it was an international flight. So we boarded the flight 40min late, sat on the runway due to air traffic congestion, then sat some more due to wind, then some more due to severe thunderstorm that came in while on runway. After 3hours they taxied back to the gate to refuel then came back and said they had to cancel the flight because we had been sitting there for 3 hours and if we stayed on the plane any longer they would be fined $27,000. We sat in the airport til 11:00pm Friday night. Even if we took the next flight to Vancouver there were no flights that we could take to Hong Kong because they were all booked. So, we were rerouted to LAX and then onto Taipei. We were on 2 standby flights and had a booked flight to LAX at 9:35pm Friday night. We got on one of the earlier standby flights, left LAX at 11:00pm and off to Taipei. We arrived in Taipei Saturday night American time. We got a shuttle to the train station. We had 30min at the train station before our flight left, so we went to the bathrooms to at least wash our faces, brush teeth, and attempt to look clean even though we felt utterly disgusting.
The train ride was nice and probably would have seemed even neater had we not been traveling for almost 40hours already. Every patch of land is used for something here. It either has a building or a crop on it. I will have to try and get a picture of their cemeteries here, they are the weirdest looking thing. They are all built on hills as well, so that the evil spirits will slide down the hill. The cemeteries are very old here and now most people are cremated due to lack of land space for burial. David and I began to wonder when we got off the plane if we were going to catch some horrible disease. It seemed everywhere we turned there were people wearing surgical masks. We were told that here if you have a cold you wear a mask to keep others from being contaminated with your germs; very clever if you ask me, as I am a germaphobe.
We arrived in Kaohsiung and walked around the train station looking for Holly, Trena, and Christel. Ir wasn't too hard to spot them, as we were the only ones with non black hair...lol. I was speechless when I saw Leia. It made the last 40 hours so worth it. She is so much prettier than her pictures. We thought she was so precious and beautiful from pictures, well she is a gorgeous little girl. Christel was holding her and handed her to me first. She is so snugly. She just burrowed her head into my chest. She wouldn't hardly lift her head because she was snuggling so hard. She loves her Daddy. She just stares and smiles at him. We went to the grocery store after leaving the train station and she was so content to just look around; the next thing I knew she was napping in my arms while we were grocery shopping. Can I say I am in love with this little girl?
We headed to Sara's house with our couple of carry-on bags. Yeah, no luggage in a foreign country with small framed people. We are praying that it arrives to Taipei today or tomorrow. As soon as we got to Sara's I made a beeline for the shower. I wanted to be clean before I could even think about sleeping. David napped yesterday afternoon for about 3 hours. I chatted with Sara. It was very relaxing. Last night we went into Dashe to get a bite to eat at a Thai restaurant. It wasn't bad. David even ate everything that Sara and Christel ordered. They have amazing little bakeries here. Not the same as our bakeries that have everything that is loaded with sugar, but they are just very neat and yummy too.
We all slept like rocks last night. I did fine until we started eating last night and then I started fading. I felt like I had been given anesthesia drugs and was forcing myself to hold my eyes open. Leia whimpered twice during the night, gave her her pacifier and not another peep. The sun, I think, rises before the birds here. At 4:45 this morning it was light outside. I was wide awake at 5:45, but laid in bed til 6:30 when Leia woke up.
We are headed to the House of Hope today. The plan is to paint the nursery there today. I plan on getting some videos of Caysen, Mia, and Maren. Jasper has been staying with Sara all the time, and he is such a cutie. He loves to play and is such a happy little boy. Well, off to get ready for the day.


In the car while we ran a few errands before heading to Sara's.

Headed out.

I could have done this all day.

She feels perfect.

Just need the other 3 to make this family picture complete.

Leia snuggling with Mommy.

Leia snuggled right up to Daddy. She wouldn't even lift her head from his shoulder.

This is our first sight of Leia.

This is what we look like after 40 hours of traveling in aiports.