I called with several travel agencies and checked with some other adoptive parents. We settled on using Adoption Travel Services. At the time, Northwest had started a new direct route from Minneapolis to Hong Kong with a round-trip fare of $747.00 per person ($163.00 for Emma on the return trip) so we grabbed it. Wayne Howell of ATS was wonderful and handled everything. A few days after booking the flights our tickets arrived and I immediately put them in a safe place.

Because of a delay in the processing of our referral acceptance and because of the annual Guangzhou Trade Fair, we had a longer than normal wait time from referral to travel. We got the call on July 16, 1997 and finally left on October 23rd. Although the wait was agonizing at times, it did give us plenty of time to get our travel act together. Here's a list of some of the other activities in preparation for our departure:

	Finalizing our packing list
	Buying clothes for Emma and ourselves
	Making a departure checklist to insure our house and dogs were intact when we returned
	Made arrangements for someone to keep an eye on our house, get mail, newspapers, etc.
	Arranging with friends for a ride to the airport
	Arranging with friends and family a welcoming part at the airport when we returned
	Getting money and travellers checks
	Getting our adoption paperwork in order
	Making photocopies of important documents (ie, copies of driver's licenses, credit cards, passports, etc to be placed in each of our checked bags.)
	Getting about $200.00 in Hong Kong currency before leaving.

With the exception of our "Beijing Add-On", all of our travel within China was taken care of by our adoption agency, Holt International. They provided us with a detailed breakdown of all our travel, including hotels, estimated costs, where we could expect to use credit cards and travellers checks, where we'd need cash, information of currency exchange, how much travel money to take, etc. The list was very accurate and was invaluable in preparing for our trip.