Iris Is Heading Home

We are going to board our flight in 15 minutes.  I found a free wireless connection and decided to try to post this blog.  See you all soon.

It is 9:03am in Hong Kong. We have eaten breakfast and are now waiting for our flight to Chicago. We will not be able to post this until we get back to Kansas City (we decided not to spend the money for the internet while in Hong Kong for only a few hours). So we are typing this so we can capture our last days in Asia.
Yesterday we spent the morning in the playroom with Parker and his parents as we waited to leave Guangzhou. We left the White Swan hotel at 2:!5 to go pick up Iris's visa. We then headed to the train station with all luggage. It would have been nice to have one more set of hands to help haul everything through the train station.

There are a few flights of stairs and steps before you actually get to the train. You have to go through security, customs, etc… We knew going into the day that there would be challenges and tests so we were prepared and managed.
The train ride to Hong Kong was 2 hours and Iris did pretty good even though there was not a lot to do on the train. We arrived in Hong Kong and immediately found McDonalds and relaxed for a short while. Again lugging all of our stuff (and Iris) with just the two of us was a challenge. After eating we found a taxi and took a nice ride to the hotel.

The taxi ride was nice as we saw a glimpse of Hong Kong and saw the awesome skyline at night. It looks to be a great city and we would love to have had the opportunity to spend more time here and see more.
Once at the hotel Iris took a bath and quickly went to sleep.
We are now sitting in our room waiting for the time to go to the airport. We will actually walk over to the airport as it is very close. There is actually an airplane that we look down upon. It is amazing we did not hear any airplane noise in our room.

Iris has no idea what is going to happen over the next 18 hours. She will leave as a Chinese citizen and will arrive as a US citizen. She will also have a brother, sister, and dog when we arrive at home. Today is emotional for mom and dad and we can not wait for Ansley and Elliot to see their sister.
We are anxious to leave but we are worried about the 14.5 hour plane ride to Chicago. We will see a lot of you in Kansas City and can not wait to arrive.