Our journey begins...

Hello to all our family and friends. This is the beginning of our journey to Vietnam to meet and bring home our son, Dat Phuoc Ho. As we shared with many of you earlier, Dat Phuoc is a beautiful name in Vietnamese. It roughtly translates as: accomplished child of blessings, hence the name of our blog.

All being well, we depart on Wednesday June 20th at about 11:30pm, arriving in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) at about noon on Friday June 22nd (Vietnamese Time) *

* Vietnam is 11 hours ahead of Toronto Time and 6 hours ahead of British Time.

Once in Vietnam we will be based in Ho Chi Minh City at the spring hotel. Our son is in an orphanage located about a 5 hour bus trip south of the city in the town of Tra Vinh in the heart of the Mekong Delta (yes big, VERY BIG mosquitos). We hope to travel to Tra Vinh very early on Monday morning (June 25th). The giving and receiving ceremony is scheduled for that day. Once this takes place Dat Phuoc Ho is officially our son and will be named

John (to be called Jack) Dat Phuoc Charles Sullivan

John is a family name in both Taylor's and Vanessa's family. John is the first name of every first born son in the family (for at least the five generations since the family settled in Canada)

Not much is known about the circumstances about Jack's birth. We were given a small amount of information from the orphanage, which we share with you here:

On November 3/2006 at about 10:30am he was found
wrapped in a blue table cloth in front of the home of
a Mrs. Ho in the hamlet of Lo Ngo (This of coarse is
not an uncommon occurance in many parts of the world.
This Mrs. Ho seems to be a town official of sorts and
considered someone responsible who would do what was
necessary for the child). Jack was then placed in
Mrs. Ho's care for two months while the officials went
through the process of finding his birth
mother/family. On December 29th/2006 he was placed in
the Tra Vinh orphanage.

The forecast in Ho Chi Minh City as of 4am Saturday, June 16th (note this 4:00 in the morning)

28 degrees celcius with a humidex of 39 degrees.

The latest update gives Jack as 7.6kg (approx. 16.5 pounds) and 66 cm. He is where he should be for his age.

This will be the first time Vanessa has travelled to Asia. She regularly travels to England and is used to the 7 hour flight there. She is somewhat apprehensive of the upcoming flight of about 20 hours. Taylor however has travelled extensively, including several long haul flights. This will be his second time travelling to Asia.

We hope to update you every so often during our journey. We of coarse have no idea what sort of internet facilities we will have in Vietnam, nor do we know how much time we will have to do this (!) However, we delight in the opportunity to share our exciting journey with you.

Vanessa and Taylor