Hong Kong at last!

We arrived in Hong Kong Sunday night at 7:30 PM (that's 6:30 AM EST). The flight was LONG and as usual I was unable to sleep on the plane, even after taking an Ambien pill donated by friends. I thought I'd be OK since they had the video screens built in to the back of the seat in front of you, but alas, one of the movie screens (showing The Island) was blanked out. "Oh well," I thought, "No problem. There's always the video games." No go on that either. My touchpad was apparently broken so no matter how hard I tried to get into the game menu, the keypad always thought I was trying to change my default language. Needless to say I did a lot of reading -- the O'Reilly RADIUS book worked better than the drugs at putting me to sleep, but only long enough for my neck to cramp.

Getting to Hong Kong consisted of flying NNE from Newark, up over the North Pole, and down across Siberia and Mongolia, and finally through China to Hong Kong. Cruising altitude was 35,500 feet and we dropped from about 25,000 to the landing strip in Hong Kong in about 5 minutes -- better than any roller coaster I've been on to date. After hanging out at the terminal waiting for other adoptive families to arrive, we finally headed for the hotel at 10 PM.

Scott and Mary Bruno (friends from church who are also adopting through CCAI) flew out yesterday and leave Hong Kong tomorrow to meet their new daughter. Nevertheless, they managed to stay up until we arrived at the hotel around 11 PM, and showed us around the Shangri-La, a hotel that is nicer than anything we've stayed at to date, and probably nicer than anything we'll stay at again (assuming we don't adopt another child from southern China).

After a much needed shower and snack, we are now ready to turn in for the night. We'll be up at 6 AM for breakfast, just about the time that I would normally be wrapping up the LifeTeen meeting prior to Mass if we were on the east coast.

An internet connection at the Shangri-La runs about US$5 per hour so I have just enough time to upload the earlier entry and write this one from scratch with a little time left over for checking email. We'll be taking a half day tour of Hong Kong tomorrow so we'll try to give you an update afterwards.

For a rough idea of what Hong Kong is like, try to imagine the look and technology of Times Square, the size of all of New York City (including borroughs), the mountains of Asheville, the coastal charm of Charleston, and the cleanliness of downtown Charlotte (on a good day). Wrap them all up and you have a rough idea of what this city is like. Truly exquisite.

Good night everyone!