Quick Sawadee-krup from Bangkok!

Sawadee-Krup (Hello from a man, in Thai) family and friends!

This is a quick update to let you know that we made it safely back to Bangkok from Udon Thani, Thailand at 12:30PM local time on Sunday, December 14th. We are at a mall in the heart of Bangkok and I'm writing from an internet cafe at 5:15PM Sunday afternoon. Bangkok is a happenin' place, even on Sundays. It reminds me of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles combined!! We will be applying for Penny's passport on Monday and our meeting with the Thai Adoption Court will be on Wednesday. Then comes the hard part: dealing with the United States goverment at the Embassy and USCIS. They can often make it a long and difficult process to get the paperwork completed for the Visa for Penny. I pray that we will be out of Thailand on December 23rd.

Thank you to everyone for your kind messages. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to reply to everyone personally. We are doing well and having some nice bonding experiences. Our greatest difficulty is the language barrier, but we're all learning to persevere and be patient with each other. This is also an interesting time of a lot of "firsts" for Penny, such as eating at a buffet, and one that I didn't even anticipate: fear of escalators at the mall. However, our sweet girl was able to overcome that fear quickly and she ran to me from her mother's side so I could protect her from this strange moving staircase. Oh my! :-) We may not always be able to update every day, but we will try as often as possible. Bye for now!

Jay :-)