Say whaaaaaaat???????

Yes!  I do believe that this expression was plastered on my face this morning when I opened up my email.  We have only nine days left until we travel, and I have been busy finalizing our travel plans with Lotus Travel.  I initially wanted to make all of our plans on my own, but I was finding that China is not really accustomed to dealing with large families traveling there, so I couldn't find anything available ever.  How is that even possible in a city with hundreds of hotels?  Yet I couldn't find anything for my family.  And, much as it may sound exciting, there was no way on earth that we could afford the Ritz-Carlton.  We needed something safe, reasonably comfortable, and most importantly -- available.  Nothing. 

So I turned to Lotus Travel.  They were phenomenal finding us extra cheap plane tickets to and from China.  There is no way that we would have been able to find such a great deal.  Trust me.  I've been scouring ticket websites for months.  So it was well worth the fee to the travel agency to get these tickets.  Since purchasing our tickets I have been working with their very nice agent, Sandy, to plan the in China portion of the trip.  We are going to be there a super long time.  We will be staying in Beijing for eight days, Wuhan for four, Guangzhou for six, and Hong Kong for five days.  Our agency is working out all of our travel plans for the time we are in Wuhan and Guangzhou, but we were responsible for working out our plans before and after that time.  That is what Lotus has been working on.  Sandy has been wonderful planning out fun activities for our family in both locations.  I don't know exactly how much work she has put into this planning, but I will say that it is no picnic trying to plan logistics when there are eight (soon to be nine) people involved.  We have the basics figured out.  They were just trying to find a hotel for us in Hong Kong, and even their agency was struggling with this. 

Well, today they finally got everything worked out, and I received an email with the final price and itinerary.  Before I get to that email I have to say that I knew when I started planning for this trip that it was not going to be like a trip to the lake.  Taking eight people on an extended trip to the other side of the world was going to cost a bit of money.  I have no illusions that we are going to get this done with the same amount of money as we used when we took everyone to New York a few years ago.  But I had a general idea of what I expected after doing my own internet research.  I was not prepared for the amount I saw on my screen this morning.  I think I literally felt my stomach slam straight into my ankles.  To use another Peanuts reference for this adoption journey, this is what I felt had just happened:

I'm only going to put the amount on this blog because there is no way on this green earth that I would ever begin to consider spending the amount they are requesting.  I can't imagine a time in my life where I would ever consider spending that much on a family trip, no matter how well our businesses might be performing.  The total cost for Lotus's plans for us was going to be $13,500.  No way!  It came out to about $900 a day.  $900 a day!  On what alternate universe would I ever spend $900 a day on a trip for my family?  I love them dearly, but that is absolutely insane!  The crazy thing is that those costs don't even count the cost of room and transportation in Wuhan and Guangzhou.  We would still have additional costs involved with that portion of the trip.  It also doesn't include the cost of the plane tickets which we have already purchased.  Now, as excited as we are for this trip, we are not willing to move under a bridge after we return because we spent outrageous sums of money for the trip.  The important part of this trip is meeting Minsy and working through the adoption procedure in China.  The sightseeing is a big bonus, but I have no desire to let the costs involved overwhelm us. 

Now what were we going to do?  If this had happened a month ago it would be easy to adapt.  But now we are looking at a week to try and figure all of this out, all of this while we are also trying to get our affairs in order here and pack for this trip.  I also admit that I feel this total guilt about saying no to Lotus after they have put all this work into making plans for us.  Herman, however, has no issue with saying no.  He has volunteered to be the bad guy here.  Now we just needed to decide exactly how we were going to prepare things for this trip.  How much would Lotus plan, and how much would we plan?

I contacted the China liaison from our agency.  I asked Sabrina what her opinion was, and she said that she could get us the hotel in Beijing.  Of course, she uses the same hotel as Lotus Travel, so that doesn't really save us much.  Although, we would eliminate any travel agency fees by using Sabrina, so that is something.  She can't help us out in Hong Kong, so we would still have our issues with finding hotels there.

I think what I'm going to suggest is letting Sabrina handle our Beijing hotel arrangements.  Then we will rough it a bit with our planning and set up our own plans for touring Beijing.  That will significantly reduce our expenses because we will not have an English guide or driver to pay for everything.  It'll make things interesting to be sure.  But I'll be there with Herman who has super fond memories of landing in Brazil as a 19 year-old missionary, knowing very rudimentary Portuguese.  Their ride was not there to meet them, and they didn't know what to do, so they tried to use the public phone to call the mission home.  The operator picked up the line and spoke to them in fast, fluent Portuguese, and they were only able to mutter out basic, broken phrases.  But they worked it out, and it is one of those experiences that has helped to create the man I married.  He loves to throw himself in these sort of situations to see what will happen.  So it'll be another Blau Family Adventure!  Then we'll let Lotus work on our Hong Kong arrangements for us.  We'll still spend some time tonight seeing if we can find our own hotels in Hong Kong for our family.  Any little savings will make a difference when we are traveling with so many. 

The thing that is stressful about all of this is that we only have a week to get things figured out.  I like to know what I'm doing pretty far in advance, especially with a trip like this where we will be in an unfamiliar environment.  I had our New York trip planned to the day at least a month before we left, and New York wasn't really that difficult of a place to travel to.  China seems more complicated to me, so I wish I had a bit more time to wrap my head around this travel.  Oh well!  It'll work out.  Like I say, it'll be an adventure.  As long as we can get our hotels we'll be able to be flexible and still see all of the sites that Lotus planned for us to see.  We just won't have a guide with us.  We'll be okay.  I just was shocked that our agency price quote was so high.  Luckily we have the power to accept or deny this service, and we'll make it work for our family.

So tomorrow Herman is taking over communication with the travel agency.  He is a master negotiator.  Hopefully by the end of the day we'll have this mess figured out.  For now . . .

I'M TAKING A NAP!!!