Departure Eve

Well, we're finally here.  The night before the big flight we've got all 10 checked bags loaded in the cars and all 4 carry on bags ready to go.  With the 5 backpacks, that brings the total to 19 bags!  We found out that our air freight shipment won't make it through customs until after Chinese New Year, so that means we'll be stuck in a hotel until mid February!  Thankfully we're checking the kitchen sink, so we should be able to scrape by in relative luxury until then.

We'll see what comes over the next 24 hours, I'm sure we've forgotten a few things (like me picking up my contact lenses from the doctor in IN prior to flying out to VA).  Thankfully Suzhou is about the size of Atlanta so you can find a lot of what you need if you read and speak Mandarin.  Once we get there we'll give up our passports for the police registration and then basically lounge around snipping at each other until we get over jet lag.  We're at a nice hotel, so I'm sure there are worse ways to recover.