All the different emotions and experiences of your trip, re-run and compressed into a few short hours.

The excitement, anxiety, and weariness you felt before embarking on your adoption trip will be repeated the night before you finally leave China. You’ll have accomplished much - your new child, who you’re still just beginning to know, sleeping there in your hotel room. A big envelope full of vital paperwork. Memories to last a lifetime.

And just like before you started this adventure, you need to plan the end of your trip carefully. Time is short - you have only one night to get everything in order and pack up.

1. •Packing Tip Number One: All the adoption paperwork, medical reports, etc. needs to go in your carry-on bags. That material is far more dear to you than diamonds or gold!
   

2. •Figure your trip back to North America will run a good 24 hours. What will you need for formula, diapers, snacks? Change of clothes? Pillow, blanket, toys? What about your needs?
   

3. •What can you toss? Do you really need to haul that toothbrush back across the ocean? Every ounce counts when you’re lugging baggage across big airports and pulling your carry-on in and out of the overhead bin.
   

4. •If you’ve decided to buy the extra seat for your child (something we recommend), remember that you get a baggage allowance for that. It’s OK to haul more back than what you came with, but you’ll still have to carry it...
   

5. •If you’re flying an international airline out of Guangzhou (JAL for instance), you can check in the day before your flight through that carrier’s website. You’ll probably want to do this at the business center of your hotel, because you will need to print out your boarding passes.
   

6. •Some parents give their child an antihistamine before the long flight, in hopes of inducing sleepiness. Risky behavior! The family in the row in front of us tried it, and their son broke out in hives a couple hours out of Tokyo. He was so frustrated, exhausted, and itchy that he couldn’t help but act out.
   

If you’re taking the early China Southern, Air China, or Hainan Airlines flights out of Guangzhou, you’ll need to be up early. Not that you’ll be able to sleep, but figure you should be up before 4:00. This will be your last chance for a shower and shave for some time.

Once the family is awake, fresh, dressed, with a little breakfast, it’s time to zip up the suitcases and check out. Unlike hotels back home, you need to go back to the check-in counter and finalize your bill.

On our trip, one of the parents had their bags on the bus and was ready to roll until she realized she hadn’t checked out. That cost the rest of us a 15-minute delay, which we really could have used at the airport.

The bus ride to the airport goes quickly; you’re up before traffic. The plan is that you are at Baiyun by 6:00, so that you have enough time to make your 8:00 flight.

Arrival at Baiyun International will be on one of the upper roadways on either side of the central terminal. Grab one of the free luggage carts along the sidewalk; refuse any offers to porter your bags for you.

The international airlines’ ticket counters are all clustered in the southeast quadrant of the terminal building, and all the overseas flights park at the southern “A” concourse.

Check-in is supposed to be as smooth as what you’re used to back home, but you’re dealing with hundreds of infrequent flyers in line with you, and a customer service team that only services a few flights per day, so they’re not the most practiced group. Even if you know exactly what you are doing, the chances of check-in going off without a hitch are pretty low.

There are six layers of security you’ll likely encounter between the check-in line and the open sky:

1. 1.A random baggage search before you hand your suitcases over to the airline. Our guide said, “they look for travelers who don’t look like they’ll cause too much trouble,” so naturally we were ‘invited’ to be pulled over into the screening area.  This seems to be where the new screeners get their training, so be really patient. (Our bottle of Purell Hand Sanitizer was confiscated, because it “has alcohol.”) This took a good ten minutes.
   

2. 2.The usual boarding pass check as you head out to the concourse, which goes quickly enough.
   

3. 3.The passport control counters, which are horribly understaffed for the morning traffic. Half an hour wait, nowhere to park yourself, and your child is really beginning to get antsy.
   

4. 4.X-ray and magnetometer screening, with more staff eager to pull apart your carry-on bags. Another 15-20 minutes. Thankfully there is a moving sidewalk between the X-ray station and the “A” gates, but we were still jogging at this point.
   

5. 5.You might think you’re done, but for the international departures they set up another carry-on baggage inspection (oh yes, by hand) on the jetbridge as you try to board your aircraft.
   

6. 6.ON THE AIRCRAFT, after you’re strapped in, Public Security uniformed personnel may come aboard and demand your child’s Chinese passport “for verification”. That’s what happened on our flight, and for five minutes we were all terrified before they came back to return all our kids’ passports without comment or apology.
   

A few other notes about the concourse:

1. •The gift shops are well-stocked, and a good place to burn off any unused yuan in your pockets. Plenty of snacks and gifts. However, do not buy any beverages for the flight. Unlike the US and Japan, where anything you buy inside security is OK to take on the airplane, the Chinese will confiscate your bottled water or can of Coke at the jetbridge check!
   

2. •Do you recall the pre-boarding announcement for First Class passengers, those in wheelchairs, and families with young children who need extra time to get situated? This now applies to you! (Our entire group had the “duh” realization at the same time.)
   

If you are connecting flights at Tokyo, you will go through a quick and efficient passport check / security scan. Everything you purchase from the many shops and restaurants in the concourses is OK to bring on board your next aircraft.

Unlike your westbound trip, all in daylight, going east you’ll experience sundown, sunrise, and burn through another half-day’s sun before landing.

Finally, as your aircraft approaches the United States, you will be given a Customs Declaration Form (click the image at left to go to an instructions page.) Only one of these needs to be filled out per family, and in all likelihood, you’ll have nothing to declare.

Have your adoption paperwork ready to present to the Customs agent. As you cross the passport control line, your child is now an American citizen!