No One Likes Hiccups

Every adoption has their glitches. Everything does not always go as planned. As we entered this adoption, we were very aware of these facts. After all, we had just gone through the ban of Russia adoption in the midst of bringing home a son from Russia. We know bad things happen. Some completely out of our control but nevertheless frustrating.

We have been delighted that Daniel's adoption has had very few bumps in the journey and the ones we had were minor and manageable. We hit a doozy last night though and my morning was spent on the phone as I tried to reclaim our travel plans. You see last night, ( Sunday night) I was contacted by our adoption agency that they had concerns with our connecting flight through Taipei, Taiwan. I was so confused. My itinerary was submitted over a week ago to everyone and now we have a problem? Ugh! Well, long story short, we thought we would save ourselves some money and book our tickets ourselves. We found a rock bottom fare that beat everyone else's. It took a lot of personal legwork but in the long run was suppose to save us over $1000 so it definitely seemed worth it to sit on hold with multiple operators trying to help us.

As we researched last night what the heck is wrong with going through Taipei, we found out that Daniel is not a US citizen until he hits our soil and gets his papers stamped. Chinese citizens need special visas to both enter and exit Taiwan. It appears these are not only possibly costly but may or may not be secured in the time frame we have. We cannot go through Taipei. :(

I cancelled our cheap flights, took a major hit on our tickets, lost all of Daniel's ticket, then re-booked our flights with an adoption travel specialist at a much higher fare. Cutting corners cost us twice as much money than if we had just booked with a travel agent in the first place. Cruddy and expensive lesson to learn but the good news is we still have Gotcha on the 16th. Our boy will soon have the mom and dad he has been waiting for over seven years. As I count down the days till I hold my son in my arms for the first time, I have to keep reminding myself that he is so worth any and all hiccups and inconveniences that cross our path. Please pray for traveling mercies for Lou and I as well as Daniel. This little boy is about to leave everything familiar to him. I cannot imagine how scary that would be.