Itinerary

I can't believe I'm actually able to tell everyone exact dates and times that we will be leaving for Taiwan!! It still seems surreal to know that in less than three weeks, we will finally be parents!!!

One exciting part about our trip (well, other than the obvious!) is that we will be in Taiwan for Chinese New Year! In terms of magnitude, Chinese New Year is to Taiwan and China what Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's would be for Americans if they were rolled into one mega-holiday. It is a big deal there and we couldn't be happier to get to experience this tradition so we may share it with our son in the future.

Without further ado, here's our itinerary. We are allowing a few days on either end for travel time and also to get to see the New Year's festivities. We are required to be there at least January 23rd- 27th. Anyway, here it is:

1/19/06 Leave Phoenix at 8:22 pm for Los Angeles. Layover in L.A. for about 3 hours, departing for Taipei just before midnight. The flight time is around 14 hours and 20 minutes. Yikes!

1/21/06 Arrive in Taipei at about 6:20 in the morning. Drag ourselves to the hotel to rest and recover from jet lag.

1/22/06 Hopefully sight-see a bit.

1/23/06 Go to the orphanage to meet our son for the very first time!! I'm not positive how it all works, but he should be ours that day. I'm pretty sure we will be free to take him back to the hotel and wherever we want at that point

1/23- 1/27 not exactly sure, but I believe these days will be spent getting Quentin's visa and processing the immigration paperwork.

1/29/06 Chinese New Year's Day

1/30/06 Depart Taipei at 6:40 pm. Arrive in Los Angeles before we left (we get to L.A. at 2:05 California time. It's kind of funny to see that on your reservation :) Flight time back is only around 11 hours 25 minutes. I'm guessing the shorter time frame is due to the effects of the jet stream. Who knows-- I'm no pilot. I'm just glad we'll be in the air less time with a new baby.
We have a layover in L.A. for about 3 hours and then arrive back in Phoenix at 7:25 pm Arizona time. Whew! Finally home!!

We are taking America West for the Phoenix-Los Angeles segments and Eva Air for the Los Angeles-Taipei segments. We found a great travel agent who was able to get us booked in record time. We are flying in "Evergreen Deluxe" class on Eva which is sort of like their business class. It was highly recommended due to the extra room plus they can get us a bassinet for the flight home. Getting kind of nervous about 1) being on a plane that long and 2) flying over the ocean. I'm not really scared of flying, per se, but this may cause me to develop that phobia! Brian is also not looking forward to being cooped up in a plane for 14 hours, but we'll survive somehow. We are trying to figure out a good balance between keeping ourselves entertained and over-packing. Luckily, the outbound flight is at night, so I'm hoping we can sleep much of the way.