Well the day has finally come.  We are so excited about getting home.  But we are not looking forward to traveling for twenty-four hours.  We hope that the boys travel as well for this as they did for the plane ride from Nanjing to Guangzhou.  We spent the morning packing, making sure that we didn’t forget anything.  We spent the rest of the day eating and watching bad movies on Chinese cable.

At about 5:30 P.M. a bellboy picked up our bags and we checked out of The White Swan.  The ride to the airport was without incident.  Jason gave us instructions for getting through the maze of airport bureaucracy.  This included about seven or eight different stops.  As soon as we walked into the airport we went to the ticketing counter to check our bags and get our seat assignments.  This was supposed to be like step number four.  The next stop was the security checkpoint.  We were supposed to have gone through a room where they take everyone’s temperature.  This is in response to the SARS epidemic.  We got to the gate in three steps and could not figure out where the other steps fit in.
The next twenty-four hours are spent on planes and in LAX.  There is nothing witty or earth shattering to report. 
Upon our return to Boston we were met by eight family members.  This was a huge unexpected surprise.  Under normal circumstances this would be a non-issue.  But we arrived at the Boston Logan airport at 6:00 A.M. on Saturday morning.  I cannot start to tell you what a great feeling this is.

I want to thank everyone who has followed our journey.  Additionally I want to thank all of you have sent us emails or phoned us with praise for this recording of our journey.  This has been a tiring and sometimes frustrating process.  But we would not change a thing.  If there are any of you who have ever thought about doing something like this, I highly recommend it.  You can contact Mary and/or I and we will talk your ear off.  But the long and short of it is that we feel that this is what was meant for us.