The Flight

Over the next several posts, I am going to share in detail about our adoption journey to the Philippines to bring our daughter home. There are several reasons I did not do this a year ago. For one, the journey was intense and I was absolutely exhausted. A second reason, I struggled for a long while, both while there in the Philippines and for several months after coming home and I honestly didn't want to share publically, especially since Joy's adoption wasn't finalized.

Why am I sharing now? I want other adoptive families to know it is ok to struggle. Maybe even normal. I want to share my experiences so I can hopefully help someone else on their journey. Joy's adoption should be final in the next couple weeks, so I feel it is a good time to share the details.

The Flight

October 2nd, 2012

Not many children can say their parents flew through a typhoon to bring them home-but Joy can! I think our flight was our first indication of how difficult this journey would be.  The day started out great! I got more sleep than I imagined I would and woke up refreshed and ready for our 24 hours of travel to the Philippines. I felt a little anxious, but more excited than anything.

We arrived at the Louisville airport, feeling relaxed and ready to go. We made it through security with no issues and had time to get Starbucks. Our first flight was a piece of cake. Just a hop, skip and a jump and we were in Detroit. In Detroit, we had a significant layover before our 14 hour flight to Tokyo. 

The flight to Tokyo is where it got rough. I was too excited or anxious to read or sleep, so I put a movie on. The kids were settled in. The first 10 or 12 hours were smooth, and I even snoozed a bit. By about 12 hours into our flight, we started going through some intense turbulence. The plane dropped like an elevator falling-or maybe the Tower of Terror ride at Disney World and people screamed. For almost 2 hours the plane dropped and bumped and shook. Babies cried and kids got sick. One of them was my kid. Micah, who was sitting next to me got sick all over himself. The little baggie...it did no good. I tried to page the stewardess, but she was not any help. There were people getting sick all over the plane. I tried to clean him up with one of the airline "blankets", but he had to sit that way for over 1/2 hour.

Finally, after a very bumpy decent, we landed almost an hour behind schedule at the Tokyo airport. We were late for our connecting flight to Manila. Running through the airport, Natalie got sick. Thankfully, the airport employees were very kind and helped us find the restrooms and jump to the head of the line so we would not miss our flights.

The take off again was very bumpy. Flying through a typhoon was absolutely TERRIBLE!!!  We arrived in Manila, absolutely exhausted. The airport was crowded and it was tiring trying to maneuver through all the people. Thankfully, our friend, who was our tour guide and driver while we were there, met us at the airport and took us safely through the traffic to our hotel.

Our hotel was beautiful and very westernized. I did not get much sleep that night, even though I was exhausted! I knew the next day I would meet our little girl!