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.

Dinner at the Emerald Palace

So I have met some great guys that are also either seeking to marry, or are already married to wonderful Chinese women. Already from the Chnlove offical forum and also the Chnlove FB forum I have met some great guys and made new friends. A new friend Martin is now in China and has met his Lady Zhifang for the first time today! Another guy I met there is named Edward and we seemed to hit it off pretty good right away. Also we found out that we live in the same area of San Diego! So we decided to meet up for dinner on Monday night. The Emerald Palace is Edward's favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. We both showed up with camera's in hand. We got a good laugh over that one! It was great getting to know Edward. He is leaving for China to meet his special lady in two weeks. He will be heading to the city of Changchun, north and east of Beijing. We talked about his trip and his lady, about our excitment for Martin, and also about my new relationship with Jessica. The food was also very good. Edward ordered Chicken with pan fried noodles, and I ordered Beef with ginger and scallions. We shared our dishes and had a great time. I think Edward and I will be good friends. The owner of the restaurant took pictures of Edward and I together. I practised eating with chopsticks. Heh. I was able to eat everything but after dinner little pieces of dropped food surrounded my bowl reminding me that my hand is not yet skilled. I think my hand was being silly and lazy as Jessica would most likely say. It is important that I learn this skill so I do not embarrass Jessica when we eat together. I am sure that she will give me lessons and there will be plenty of time to practice when I am in China for my first visit.

How I found Jessica

I spent all Saturday at the beginning of March reading all the information at the Chnlove.com website. There is so much information there. There are alot of experienced members who have great advice to give and I was just greatful as the new guy to read the website and the forums and try to learn as much as I could. I created a profile. I was amazed at the number of interesting and beautiful Chinese women looking to find a perfect husband and soul mate. I carefully searched the ladies profiles. I selected as an age range 32 to 42 years old. I am 47 so I wanted to find someone who was close to me in age so that we would have similar life experiences, but also to be young enough to consider having a child if things worked out. I started adding possible matches of women that I thought were attractive and had interesting profiles. After several pages I had quite a few profiles on my favorites page. I literally could not get through all the women's profiles. There are thousands of them. So I selected four women and sent out Cupid notes. The Cupid note is a short introduction note printed on a e-post card with nice graphics. This is to act as a short introduction and to get the interested lady to read my profile. When you start your profile it is listed as visible, which means the matchmaking agencies working with Chnlove can show your profile to the ladies in China. By Monday night I had about 24 admirer mails, and two of the ladies from my Cupid notes had responded positively and also sent me letters. I was blown away! I ended up having to make my profile invisible so I would not get more letters. So I decided to respond to one of the Cupid notes and one of the admirer letters. That is how I met Jei and Jane.

So the real nice feature that Chnlove offers is an express letter service that allows Western Men to write to Chinese ladies and they translate your letters back and forth. The gentleman purchases credits and after the first letter exchange there is a charge of one credit removed for each letter translated and delivered. After two letters from Jei she just disappeared. I got a note from her agency after three days that they could no longer reach her to deliver my last letter and also could not contact her through her friends. The agency pulled her profile. Chnlove is very careful to make sure there is no scam going on. I wrote to the agency and to Chnlove to inquire what was going on... they were supposed to try and deliver my mails for 7 days. But she still has not returned and her profile is gone. I still am worried about what might or could have happened to her. Jane, the other lady I started writing too, was very intelligent and kind. She works as a Doctor in Zhuhai. We exchanged letters with each other for about three weeks before I realized that we were probably not the perfect match. She is a great woman but because she has been hurt in the past I think she wants to be more in control and holds back part of her heart. Our letters started getting shorter and shorter and more strained. So I decided to try and find another suitable woman to write too. I decided I would choose four women to initiate contact and would be happy if things worked out between one woman. I selected one woman from my saved favorites and sent her a Cupid note. I then answered two admirer letters with my own letter. And then I decide to check the ladies profiles again. I realized that I again would never get through all the profiles so on a whim I decide to select a random number from the several hundred pages and look there instead of going page by page. And there she was... Jessica! Her smile on her first profile photograph stopped me dead in my tracks! She was so beautiful her smile took my breath away. So I read her profile and really liked what I read there. She was a woman who was also looking for her true love and soul mate. We had similar interests. She also was one of the rare profiles that also had a live video. It was so great to see her in person and to hear her voice. I added her to my favorites and then stopped searching. I immediately sent her a Cupid note and then waited with hope in my heart that Jessica would like my profile and respond. I realized I had probably made a mistake trying to contact four women at once but I did not expect to hear back from them all. The person I really wanted to hear back from was Jessica!

A Lonely Heart...

I am an intelligent, gentle, good natured man. In appearance I am not remarkable. Sure I could lose a few pounds. My work ethic is very strong and I have been working since I have been 15 years old. I have a good job that I enjoy doing, and I am good at it. I have some close friends and am lucky in that regard. But for most of my life I have just not been lucky in love. The first woman I thought I might be interested in marrying, when I was 21 years old, was cheating on me. My heart has been broken so many times that I should have a humty-dumpty nursery rhyme written for it. I should just have Shiva the dark goddess cut the living heart from my chest and be done with it! I have tried asking women out in person, blind dates, dating services, and online dating websites. I even lived with a woman for a couple of years. It didn't work out in the end. And I swear if I hear I just want to be friends one more time I will jam sharpened pencils into my ears. So I decided to try the foreign matchmaking services. After going through several sites I finally met a nice woman from Uzbeckistan. We started writing to each other but I finally realized that her heart was a little cold and mercenary-like. You come Usbeckistan. We meet. You kiss once on cheek. You pay to take me to America. We do sex once a week. I wash your shorts. You buy diamond ring and sports car. You get the picture. Later I tried Yahoo personals, Matchmaker, and eHarmony. I would get nibbles but nothing ever more than a couple of letters exchanged. Unless of course I was willing to date a retiree! I even looked into a Mexican matchmaking service since the border is only about 30 miles away but with all the violence going on there now it just wasn't worth the trouble. Then I had a pretty good idea. I work with some very wonderful Chinese women. They are intelligent, vibrant, very family oriented, and good co-workers. My mentor at work is a wonderful lady named Zhongzhou Shen. So I thought I wonder if there are any Chinese matchmaking services? After a quick Google search I found the Chnlove.com site which looked really promising. Wow! Thousands of beautiful Chinese women! Could this site be for real? So for one entire weekend I read the forums and information at the site and then decided to fill out my profile and give it a try. This may have been one of my best decisions I ever made. This is what has eventually led me to Anna!