Trip Home
Newsflash: twenty-six hours is a long time to travel with an
active 18-month old!! We left the White Swan Hotel in the wee
hours of the morning. After a few mishaps (the bell-boy lost
our luggage, the airline couldn’t find JacJac’s ticket, the
airport only had one security check-in line open) we finally
made it out of China. China is the only country I have ever
been in where you have to clear customs and immigration to
both enter the country and to leave. But, we made it.
The flights to Tokyo and on to Detroit were uneventful, but
LOOOOOONNNNNNGGGG. Unfortunately, we had mild turbulence on
most of the eleven hour flight from Tokyo to Detroit which
meant that the fasten seatbelts signs were on. JacJac was not
very delighted about having to stay in her seat instead of
having Daddy walk her around. But again, we made it.
When we passed through Immigration in Detroit, Jacquelyn
Abigail XiaoLi became an American citizen! Unfortunately, we
weren’t able to take pictures in Immigration, but I don’t
think we would’ve been able to find our camera in all our
carry-on luggage anyway. Even through our exhaustion we did a
little happy-dance; our baby girl had made it with us to the
land of opportunity. We gathered all our luggage and made it
through customs with no problem.
In Detroit we had a few hours before our final flight home to
Norfolk. Our journey came somewhat full circle when we ran
into our friend Larry at the airport. Larry is the husband of
Cheryl (the one whose willingness to share her adoption story
really got us started thinking about China in the first place)
and has two beautiful daughters from China. How wonderful it
was to see a familiar face! He found me staring dazedly at
the board looking for our departure flight gate. I was
getting a little worried because I couldn’t find any
information about our flight and was afraid something had
happened. He gently pointed out that I was looking at the
arrivals board, not departure. That solved the problem. The
hours flew by since we had him to talk to and he was even on
the same flight home as us.
Finally, twenty-six hours after we had left Guangzhou, we
arrived home in Norfolk, VA. Dozens of friends and family
were there to meet us. We truly felt loved, but we only had
eyes for Bekah and Logan. How wonderful they looked to us!!
We were delighted and thankful to God to finally have our
family together at last.
Once again, thank you all so much for joining us on this
journey of a lifetime. We have been tremendously blessed by
it and look forward to the future. We will continue to update
this website once a month through June.
Blessings,
The ENTIRE Crouch Family
|
Starting out on our journey,
everyone was happy...
Fifteen hours later, everyone
not quite so happy...
Funnin' at the Detroit
airport
|
