It's My Sister Lynn!

Anna and I, while talking about our wedding, decided to ask Lynn to be our Maid of Honor at our future wedding!  Lynn is my oldest friend.
I have known her since I was 10 years old.  I always tease Lynn because she is 13 months older than me... so for one month she is two years older than I am.  Lynn has agreed to be Anna's Maid of Honor and she is going to help us plan a small wedding and reception at our apartment.

Test For Remote Blogging

I just received a nice phone call from Martin wishing me well for my trip!  He told me about a setting for Blogger that should allow me to update my blog using email.  This is my test!  I am also including one photograph to make sure that works also!  I am so excited!  Leaving tomorrow at about 5:30 am.  My next blog entry should be from Beijing!  I had my last video chat with Anna about three hours ago.  We are both so excited!  The photograph that I have posted is a special card I have purchased for Anna.  To me it represents our communication with each other and how we met and fell in love.  I have also purchased a large framed print as a wedding gift for Anna.  The artist is Elena Ray and I really like her work.  She does beautiful prints with a Chinese theme.  This photograph is of a beautiful antique Chinese caligraphy set.

Internet Chat Using Skype

Anna and I have been very lucky.  We established a special bond very quickly.  One of the tools we both love to use is internet Chat using Skype.  Skype is a free resource that can be downloaded at http://www.skype.com/.  I cannot begin to tell you how exciting it was to start internet chatting with Anna after about a month of long email letter exchanges.  If we were lucky we would get about two long letters exchanged in a good week.  With Skype chat it was like exchanging a long letter in a half an hour!  And when we fianlly added video it was like we were talking in the same room with each other!  I will always be grateful to Skype for allowing this level of communication with Anna.  Anna even downloaded Skype on her parents computer so we could keep in touch when she goes home for a weekend or the holidays.  Also we plan to keep in touch with Anna's family this way when Anna and I are finally together in the US.  During each chat session Anna records our conversation and I take at least one photograph from the video to help document our relationship.  This is necessary for the immigration process.  Here is one of my favorite photographs of Anna from one of our chat sessions.

Finding Anna!

After my failed attempt to connect with Jane and Jessica I vowed that I would take my time going over all the profiles at Chinalove.  I began my careful search and after viewing hundreds of profiles and photographs this is the photograph that really caught my eye.  My first time seeing Anna!  I read her profile and found Anna to be very intelligent and I was so happy that we seemed to have much in common.  Also I became excited when I read that she was fluent in English.  Anna is acutally a University English teacher!  Perhaps this would be a key to the deep level of understanding I wished and hoped for in my relationship?  Maybe it was fate but something just clicked immediately.  My intuition is very accute when it comes to people and it was going crazy after reading Anna's profile.  I decided Anna was the one I would try to establish a connection with next!

Leaving for China!

Well I have definately been remiss in my blogging!  I still need to do a long post about how I met Anna.  I plan to work on my blog while I am in China.  Edward has agreed to help me post to my blog if the Chinese National firewall give me trouble.  I am leaving for China on Thursday!  I am filled with nervous excitement.  At long last I will get to be with Anna!  This is one of the first photographs Anna took for me using her digital camera and is one of my favorites!

Happy for my Friends!

I am so happy that Edward and Martin are now in China and have both gotten married to very special ladies! You can follow their adventures by reading in their blogs listed in my blog list here. Congratulations to Martin and Zhifang! And also to Edward and Xindi! I am so happy for you and hopefully soon I will be in China and getting married to a woman of my dreams! I admit that having now failed twice writing to two women has me a little sad. But I think it just means I had not found the person I am meant to be with. Martin and Edward's success has given me hope and inspiration. Also I have just found Anna. Tomorrow I will write a post all about Anna. I must say I can barely contain my excitement and happiness!

Farwell to Jessica...

So I have not been updating my blog already. I was writing to Jessica almost every day for three weeks. I could tell the very moment that our translator Jenny stopped writing letters for Jessica and when she starting to write to me on her own. All the flowery love talk just about stopped. Her letters suddenly got very short and I could tell she was having a harder time coming up with substance. Also instead of a reply within 24 hours, now sometimes I would have to wait for up to three days to get a reply. So I decided to try some advice from the brothers at the Chnlove Info forum. Ask Jessica two questions at the end of each letter and also have her ask me two questions. That should give us something to talk about and to build upon for a better letter. That lasted for one letter. I talked to her and tried to explain about why it was so important to me to have something meaningful in our letters... this is our only link! Our only way of getting to know one another. Always she would say I work long hours! I work six days a week! I am tired! You know I do understand this... she is a single mother and divorced. I know she works a lot! But guess what? So do I! I am taking all the over time I can get to save the funds needed to do this. Money for trips to visit, to pay for a marriage, to pay for the visa process, to bring my wife here to live with me! I also am working 60 plus hours a week, sometimes 7 days a week. And I never... NEVER do not have time to write. I make time to write. So I finally realize that this is just not as important to her as it is to me. Writing to me should not be a chore that she has to endure. Also one of those questions I asked was to please tell me two of your favorite things to do. She responded with sleeping and shopping. Perhaps that should have sent up red flags too. So again, being who I am, I began to self analyze. What I found is that perhaps I was too hasty in my search to find a woman to write too. After all I admit that it was her first photograph that I have posted in a previous post that stopped me and made me look at her profile. She does indeed have a Hollywood smile. So perhaps I let her appearance and beauty influence me more than I realized when I chose Jessica to write too. So I am writing and am saying farwell to Jessica. I only wish her the best and hope that she will find the man of her dreams. I don't believe that Jane or Jessica were running any kind of scam. It turned out that they were just not the proper woman for me. I do however believe that at least the first half of our correspondence with both women was really with the agency translator. In both cases, I could tell when the translator stopped writing the the women themselves started writing. I do not like this. It is my greatest belief that to have a sucessful marriage it will require communication on a very deep level. I wish to completely know my wife. So I am disappointed but will begin anew having learned something. This time I will take my time and very very carefully search the profiles and find the woman who is just right for me and write to her. I only wish to write to one woman. So this time I will only send one cupid note or EMF and wait for a response. Hopefully I will select the best candidate and this woman will respond to my carefully written profile and introduction. I very much trust in my ability to allow a woman who is interested to see into my heart and get to know me through the written word.