March 24, 2011

In 20 days we will board a plane to China for a return homeland trip.  This blog is the "Bott Girls" place to capture our trip in words and pictures. 

Intrepid travelers are: We have 7 people in our group - me, my daughters, Grace and  Ruthie, my friend Diane and her daughter, Maggie, as well as my parents, Ann & Tom. 

Where are we going?: Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Hanchuan, Maoming, Guangzhou and Beijing.  Diane's trip varies from ours after Chengdu, but we'll all meet back up in Guangzhou.  Why Hanchuan and Maoming?  Those are the birth cities of Grace and Ruthie.  So we'll be visiting their orphanages and hopefully meeting Grace's foster family.

Decisions: For our first trip Diane and I decided to go the private tour route and neither of us had the time or energy to do the amount of research needed to pull together a trip on our own.  We also decided that we wanted to travel in April and not the summer - when the heat and humidity in China can be intolerable, but also plane fares tend to less expensive in the spring.

After comparing tour itineraries, length of trips, and of course cost, we finally settled on BLAS.  BLAS stands for Bridge of Love Adoption Services.  They are actually part of the Chinese government's arm for international adoption.