THE FOOTBALL

Here it is ... the football ... as we have named it... it's very James Bond and it contains majorly important documents for our trip.

Our agency handed it off to us in preparation for our Friday departure ... it's a very complex color coded system. At any given point on the trip, our director may bark out "BLUE - 4!!!!" or "YELLOW - 8!!!!!" and we will then go to our footballs and retrieve the state -- or adoption -- secrets contained therein. And we'll sign it. Or hand it over. Or stamp it. Or whatever.

Here's one example: our real live "TRAVEL APPROVAL" document from Beijing containing Eleanor's photo:



So after a frenzied four or so days, I think we're nearly ready. Tyler has a 12 day schedule to rival that of the busiest celebrity. We hope all our technology -- to skype and blog and text -- works. These are verbs that did not exist a few years ago but I think I know what they all mean.

So the next post will be from Hong Kong ... or maybe Nanchang if we're too tired the one night we are in Hong Kong!!