China Trip Journal : Jan-Feb 2005
Summary
In January of 2005, Stephanie and I took a long awaited trip to China to pick up our daughter Sophia. During the trip we made daily updates to this web Journal for our family and friends back in the U.S. to keep up with everything. We continue to keep it posted on our website so that other adoptive families who are in process can read through it and maybe have some idea of what to expect.
WE MADE IT! MONDAY, 01-24, 9:20AM HONG KONG TIME
In a nutshell, we arrived at the Denver airport at 5:30pm on Saturday, Mountain time. And it is now 9:30am on Monday the 24th in China and we have just now stopped traveling. By the way, 9:30am in China is 6:30pm the day before in Denver - got it? :) We have met all of the people in our group and they seem like a really good bunch of people. We are all dragging from the trip so it is hard to really get a feel for anyone, but it looks like we are traveling with a fun group. One of the couples traveling with us brought along their 3 1/2 year old daughter whom they previously adopted from China. She is a real trooper with the travels so far and the parents sure do have my respect. Our flight from Denver to San Francisco was a typical cramped United flight, but we arrived on time so that is all that matters. The Singapore Airlines flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong left a little to be desired. It was a nice flight with some really nice meals but other than the food and the warm towels it is just like any other 747 with not enough legroom and carry on space. Hong Kong is a fascinating city. There is an interesting mix of old and new. Brand new high-rise construction is going on right beside really old neighborhoods and shops. We are leaving here in just a couple of hours to go get some lunch and then a 6-hour tour of Hong Kong. This is as much to keep us awake and get our internal clocks right as anything. We are looking forward to the tour and will be posting some pictures for you to see later on today/tomorrow or sometime. From here, we will leave tomorrow at 1:00pm to go to Nanning. This is the city we will be picking up Sophia in and we will be there for about 5-6 days or so. We hope to have Internet access there as well so please send us some emails. We will continue to update this site as often as we can. Once we get to Nanning, we will be getting Sophia on Wednesday afternoon (China time) but we don't know the exact time yet. That is about all we have for now. We will post more info and pictures as we get them.
UPDATE - TUESDAY, 01-25, 9AM HONG KONG TIME
Tuesday Morning at 8:16 am. Yesterday Brian and I took a tour of Hong Kong after about three and a half hours of down time. We started out by going to an authentic Chinese restaurant for dim sum, which is traditionally a Chinese lunch of several different types of dumplings, fried noodles and perhaps a dish of sweet and sour pork as we had. They put it on a large glass lazy susan and the group helped themselves to items they wanted to try. For the most part, everything was much like Chinese food in America, with a few exceptions. A few dumplings were suspect, so I gave them to Brian. After the lunch, we traveled to a market place in an affluent part of Hong Kong, where many Europeans have settled and stayed. We walked around a bit, bought some bookmarks of our names, Brian, Stephanie and Sophie written in calligraphy Chinese characters. I'm going to have them framed together. The ride to the market was breathtaking at times. The hills and the water are unlike any we have seen in the states. Jackie Chan lives in this section of town, because it has very good feng shui (pronounced "Fung Shway" more or less), and there are two mountains protruding from the China Sea, which they say are dragons protecting the city. It is very good luck to the Chinese to be living in an area protected by dragons. We are learning that the Chinese are extremely superstitious. The buildings here are thin and very tall, and many of them are government housing, which we learned one third of the Chinese population live in. The apartments are 200 square feet and usually house a couple, their child or children and grandparents. They hang their laundry outside their windows to dry. After the market, we went to a boat dock and rode a sampan boat, piloted by a woman who lives in the Aberdeen fishing village. This is an entirely different community, comprised of people who have lived in the harbor on their shanty boats for generations. They have a boat that they live in and another for fishing. They say if they move to an apartment in town, they feel seasick, because they are more comfortable living on the water. Their accommodations are unlike anything we have ever seen before. The sampan boat took us throughout the village and we took several photos of it. Leaving the Aberdeen area, we went to the Aberdeen jewelry factory, where we watched men making jewelry at old-fashioned workbenches. It was amazing seeing their benches that are worn in places they continually sand, tap and pound on. This factory opened into a large jewelry showroom. Our guide, Matthew, said that this is the most reliable jewelry store in China and if we wanted to get authentic jewels this is the place we should buy. Brian wanted to buy a gift for Sophia, as both a birthday present and an heirloom for her from China. We got her an amethyst earring and necklace set that is absolutely beautiful. After we left the factory and jewelry store, we went to Victoria Peak, the most affluent section of Hong Kong, with the most beautiful view of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it was very foggy. We attempted to have our photo taken with Hong Kong in the background, but it appears we are just standing in fog. Then we traveled back to the hotel, where we ordered room service. I am in awe of this fascinating and beautiful city. There is great opulence here, as well as extreme poverty. But the architecture and the views are unlike anything I have ever seen. I feel that Brian and I are blessed to have the opportunity to see it and the country of our daughter’s birth. I have a much greater appreciation of China in a way that books and photographs have never shown me.
TODAY IS "GOTCHA DAY" - WEDNESDAY JAN 26TH, CHINA TIME
Today is the day we have been waiting on for over a year. It is 7:30 in the morning here on Wednesday, Jan 26th 2005. We have just a short time to get ready and then we will be meeting in the hotel at about 9:15 to fill out some documents. After that, we will go directly to a government building to meet Sophia at 11:30. Steph and I are very excited as you might imagine, but we are also very tired. The combination of all the traveling and lifestyle changes are having a little bit of an effect on us and we are not able to sleep much. My guess is that we have had roughly 12-16 hours of sleep since last Friday. Yesterday was basically a very interesting travel day for us. We left the hotel in Hong Kong at about 1:30. From there we drove about an hour to the border of China. We went through one customs/immigration stop on our exit from Hong Kong, then got back on the bus and drove about 2 miles through "no mans land" to the entrance port of China. Here we had to get all of our belongings off of the bus and take them all through Customs to enter into China. After getting cleared into China we drove about another 40 minutes or so to the town of Shenzhen. We had to catch a flight from Shenzhen to Nanning because there were no flights available directly from Hong Kong. Once we arrived in Shenzhen, this is when things really started to change as far as the culture. Nobody really speaks English at all, and then don't even try to. I caused quite a stir in one of the airport shops while trying to buy some water and orange juice with American money. As far as I could tell, the women in the shop were having a dispute about the current exchange rate and how much change I should get. Soon I realized that they were arguing over roughly .25 cents so I just made sure there was more than enough US$ to cover my purchase and walked away. Shortly after that, I learned the hard way that you are not allowed to film the inside of an airplane in China. I will talk about that in more detail later. I am not in Chinese jail at this point so it must have been ok. :) Our time is limited so I am going to go for now. We will be posting some live new pictures of Sophia in just a few hours and will update this journal entry then too.
THURSDAY, JAN 27TH UPDATE - OUR FIRST 24 HOURS
Well, we have made it through our first night with Sophia. It is Thursday, Jan 27th at 6:30am here in China. We have uploaded some pictures of gotcha day in the photo album so be sure and take a look at those. Yesterday morning we went down to a conference room in our hotel and filled out the paperwork to get a passport for Sophia. That took us about an hour. We then left our hotel at about 11:15am to go to another hotel down the road called the Lottery Hotel. We all filed into a small room and within about 5 minutes a government official and the orphanage director came in to say a few words about the children etc… This was a formality and, while the government official seemed to take it very seriously, I highly doubt that any of the adoptive families can remember a word she said. After that, a line of nannies carrying babies filed into the room. For the next 6-8 minutes it was complete chaos. They called out the names of the families one at a time and within about a minute there were camcorders, digital cameras and babies being passed around the room like crazy. Sophia was sound asleep when she came into the room and stayed asleep all the way until we were out of the building and on the bus. We were a little concerned that she was going to be confused when she woke up in a new world and we were right. She woke up in Steph's arms, which seemed to be ok with her. However, Steph passed her to me and in short – all hell broke loose. J She likes me just fine as a play toy and something to bang cups on but is not really sure about my ability to make her comfortable. We got back to the hotel at about 12 noon and Sophia was really concerned at this point. It took about an hour and a half to get her to do anything but cry but we finally got her calmed down. Thank God for stacking cups! I think we changed about 2000 diapers yesterday but I could be off by a couple. Sophia lets you know immediately when she is wet so that helps us newbies to know what we need to do. She was supposed to nap yesterday at about 2pm, but she was too scared to go to sleep again so she fought it off until about 4:30. Needless to say, since she napped that late in the day, she woke up pretty early this morning. She decided that 4am today was the right time to get the day started. Of course, now it is about 7am and she has had some breakfast and is sound asleep again – very much UNLIKE Steph and myself. Oh well, here we go down the road to parenthood. So much for my view of the last 24 hours, I am going to let Steph write part of this update too so that you can get both perspectives. Brian covered the nuts and bolts of how yesterday went down. I thought I would say a little about her personality. She is very vocal when it comes to crying and needing something. She makes no bones about wanting something or wanting something done for her. She loves to drink water. I have never seen anyone love water as much as this baby. In fact, I think water is the first English word she recognizes. I will ask her if she wants water and she will look for her bottle and point to it. She knows that her green spotted bottle has water and her orange spotted bottle is her formula or rice. She is already very attached to me, but it is not a secure attachment yet. She gets very concerned if I walk away from her. She likes to hug my neck right before she goes to sleep. When she decides she wants to sleep, she will throw her arms around my neck, bury her head on my shoulder or chest and immediately fall asleep. She even snores a little like her Daddy. But she will let me put her in her crib after I rub her back and let her sleep for a minute. She is pretty quiet most of the time, though the first word she said was “Da” and she said while looking for Brian. She seems to really like Brian, but she’s unsure of him holding her. She does not mind him feeding her or changing her, and she loves to play with him. I think she does not know quite what to think about a man with blond hair and blue eyes, and men did not take care of her in the orphanage; so having a man take care of her is new. However, she did reach for him yesterday for him to hold her. She stayed with him for a minute and came back. It may take a little time, but it has only been one day. She and Brian have started a game. He will kiss her on the head, she will laugh and smile and then, lightly butt him in the face with the top of her head to get him to kiss it again. This morning she did that to him and giggled, and then did it to me. I think she is warming up to us pretty quickly. She hardly cried at all this morning when she got up. We did figure out that she is teething and she may even have an ear infection. She keeps rubbing her right ear. The doctor is coming to the hotel to see the babies today, so maybe he can give her something for that. She loves having ambesol rubbed on her gums, after she gets past the taste. She quiets down immediately afterwards. She is not walking yet, however yesterday she did walk holding on to my hands towards Brian. She did not try to walk for long. She can stand up holding on to me or the bed, and she is very very strong. She has the tendency of throwing her head back when she’s upset and arching her back, but she does not do it for long. We try to figure out what is making her mad and correct it as soon as possible. Her cries are urgent and heartbreaking. But they are happening less and less often. She is a beautiful girl, and I have never seen such gorgeous big eyes. We think that her personality is tricky, strong willed, innocent and playful all at the same time. She is very bright, and she absolutely loves her stacking cups and keys. Today we are going to the government registration building and finalizing our adoption. We will also meet the director of the orphanage. This afternoon we may go to the Nanning shopping mall. We brought three pairs of shoes for Sophia but none of them fit. They are all way too big. We obviously were given the wrong measurement for her feet. Now, we’re waiting for her to wake up so we can give her some rice cereal and rustle up some congee - or as the orphanage calls it meat porridge. ????
FRIDAY, JAN 28TH, 8AM CHINA TIME
It is Friday morning at roughly 6:30am here in China. Yesterday we started the day by going down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. We have learned that this hotel is basically the main hotel in Nanning for adoption agencies to book people in who are adopting from this area. The entire 9th floor is full of adoptive families from various agencies, both American and European. The restaurant yesterday was jam packed with bright eyed, dazed and confused children and their equally dazed and confused brand new parents. We were able to get an omelet and some surprisingly good bacon. Of course there was also various forms of sushi, fruit and Conjee. Conjee is kind of a rice soup/paste dish with different meats. The children in the orphanage are fed this twice each day and they love it. Sophia likes the kind with preserved duck eggs. I, being a good father, felt it necessary for me to at least know what my daughter is eating so I tried some and it was actually pretty good. After breakfast we all gathered on the bus to go back to the same building where we picked up Sophia. The Government gives 24 hours for you to make your final decision about keeping the child. The Government official gathered us in a group and asked us a few questions like, Do you promise to keep this baby forever no matter what, Do you promise never to neglect, abuse or abandon the child etc… This is about the 3rd time we have answered these questions either in person or in writing. Then we exchanged gifts with the orphanage and got Sophia’s footprint inked onto another document. Sophia slept through the whole thing. After that, we all loaded back on the bus to go to the Notary office to have what I assume is the final adoption agreement notarized. This was a one on one meeting with each family going into a room with the notary and answering the exact same questions as we did just about 15 minutes earlier. U.S. bureaucracy is not even in the same league of complexity as China. To give you a hint, I had to show my passport in order to sign the bill for our room service Tuesday night. Once we were finished at the notary office, all of our official adoption business for the day was complete. The rest of yesterday was free time to continue our “on the fly” education of parenting. Yesterday held another big first for us – our first poopy diaper! This actually would not have been too bad except that Sophia decided that the best place for us to get this piece of our education was on a city bus in the middle of China. Shortly after we left the notary office, our guide thought we needed some American food and treated us to a stop at McDonalds and KFC. While I was in McDonalds being completely entertained by the experience of ordering fast food in a foreign language from a “1st day on the job” trainee, Sophia was on the bus with Steph and this set the stage for said education. I triumphantly returned to the bus with my Big Mac, fries and two large cokes to find a not so happy Stephanie and a stinky bus full of my travel companions. We all took it in stride though. Steph and I teamed up on the WMD that our lovely daughter had created and were able to get everything in order before the other group returned from KFC. We came back to the hotel and worked for a couple of hours getting Sophia fed and down for a nap. She loves to eat and drink. Steph even had her drinking water from a glass at dinner last night. What she does not like to do is sleep. She fights it off tooth and nail. So, by 3:45 she finally fell asleep. Perfect timing for her to nap before the 5pm doctors visit. Her checkup was healthy. We thought she had an ear infection but she does not. She did not have any upper respiratory funk or any rashes etc… The doctor gave us a clean bill of health so we feel much better now. After the doctor visit and dropping off our laundry we went to dinner at a restaurant next door the hotel. It is a really interesting place. There is a long line of order windows that each have a specific style of food such as Soups, Noodles, Fried Rice, Dumplings etc… You walk along with one of the people that work there and point to what you want. She then hands it to the cook behind the window and he marks down your table number and puts a stamp on your order card. You carry the order card from window to window picking out what you want. Then you go sit down and the food pretty much starts showing up immediately. The best part about this restaurant is that it has about 10 different kinds of Conjee and Sophia eats this stuff like there is no tomorrow. The other great thing about this place is the price. Steph and I had about 7 different dishes last night and the bill was 110Yuan or roughly $11 U.S. The people that work there are somewhat familiar with Americans and their new children so they don’t give us too much of a hard time for being bone headed. Last night’s dinner was particularly entertaining because as we arrived and got to our table, some of the cooks came running out of the kitchen pushing a box along the floor that obviously had a live animal underneath it. Turns out that it was a pet cat from nearby. We are pretty sure it was a pet because it had a collar on. Sophia made some real progress yesterday with her attachment to Stephanie and myself. She is more comfortable being on the floor and playing without Steph holding her. Also, this morning while the three of us were playing with the now famous stacking cups, Steph went left the room. Normally this would immediately turn on the tears with Sophia, but this time she just turned, watched and waited for Steph to return. This seems like a small thing, but it was a big step for us and for Sophia. Today we are going to a shopping mall of some sort and can hopefully get a fresh supply of diapers. We have learned that Sophia really really likes being outside so this should be a fun day for her. It will also give her another opportunity to stink up a public place. We will tell you all about this adventure tomorrow. For now we are going to go down to the restaurant and see if we can scare up some more bacon and conjee.
SATURDAY JAN 29TH, 3:30PM CHINA TIME
It is now about 3:30 on the afternoon of Saturday, January 29th – China time. We did not get a chance to add to the journal this morning because our schedule with Sophia was thrown off track and we did not have the time. Yesterday was our trip to the super market and to a local shopping mall. The supermarket was pretty cool. It was basically a “super Wal-Mart” type place that carried everything from clothing to household items to fresh vegetables. We picked up enough diapers to hopefully get us through the rest of the trip, some fresh water, Coke and a new outfit for Sophia. At the checkout line, there was this really nice elderly woman who started talking to us and asking about the baby. Our guide made up nametags for us to wear that say in Chinese what our names are along with our babies name and what we are doing here. Unfortunately we forgot to wear them yesterday so we could not tell the woman much. She knew we did not understand her, but she was happy to keep talking to us anyway which was pretty fun. She decided that Sophia was hungry and insisted that she show us the proper way to feed her with a bottle. I took some pictures of this scene and put them in the photo album so be sure and take a look. There are two exits from the super market, one on the side where our bus was parked and another on the other side. Lucky for us, in all the excitement inside the store, we got turned around and used the wrong exit. This meant that Sophia got the scenic tour of the service alley while we made our way around to the bus. In China there are so many people everywhere that nobody really cared where we walked. They are always more interested in what we look like than what we are actually doing. We dropped of our packages at the bus and then went upstairs in the same building to the shopping mall. This place was basically all baby and children shops, which is why our guide Michael brought us there. We bought Sophia a toy, a Winnie the Pooh hat and a very thick and warm jacket and pants set. Next we went to a Pizza Hut for lunch. We have found that ordering food is really not too difficult as long as we have a menu in hand that we can point to. Very few people here speak English at all so having pictures available really helps. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” could never be more true. By the time lunch was done, we had been out for a little over 3 hours and many of the kids were starting to get cranky including Sophia. In short, we spent pretty much all Friday afternoon and evening with her screaming and fussing and refusing to take a nap. We finally got her calmed down and in bed by 9:30 or so. There was a few minutes however around 5:30 Friday evening that she calmed down a bit while all of the families gathered in the elevator area of our floor to celebrate the Howard family's daughter’s birthday. Just like Sophia, she is turning 1 year old while we are in China. Sophia made a real spectacle of herself at the party. I mentioned earlier that she really like cameras and loves to show off when you are taking pictures. One of the men on the trip is a professional photographer and he got down on the floor and started taking pictures of Sophia. She was really hamming it up and striking some hilarious poses. I am going to try and get copies of these pictures if I can. After the party she landed in a pretty bad mood and wrestled with us most of the night. She woke up this morning in pretty much the same mood and was just down right mad until she finally took a nap at around 10:30. Since Sophia was so cranky this morning, we decided not to take her on the field trip of the day. Steph stayed behind with Sophia while she slept and I went with the group to visit Green Mountain park. This park is in the southeast part of Nanning and is set in some nice rolling hills. There is a Buddhist temple there. It was small, but pretty interesting. A few of the families had their daughters blessed by one of the monks and we all burned some incense in the tradition of the Buddhists that go there to pray and make offerings. From the temple, we went to the Green Mountain Pagoda. It was really our fist chance to spend any time up close to some of the traditional Chinese architecture. The Pagoda is 9 stories tall which is important. The number 9 in China is a very lucky number. The Chinese are fairly superstitious and have different meanings for most of the numbers ranging from good fortune and long life to the very unlucky death number of 4. In China for example, apartments on the 8th or 18th floor will sell for much higher prices than ones on the 6th floor, and apartments on the 4th floor will be sold at a big discount because 4 is such an unlucky number. We are taking it easy this afternoon while Sophia catches up on her sleep and then if she is up to it we are going to go down the street a couple of blocks to a local park. We are finished with our official adoption paperwork processes here in Nanning, but we are staying here until next Tuesday. I am not sure why we came here so early but my guess is that they build in some buffer time in case anything goes wrong. We are very happy to have this time to learn our new daughter and also how to be parents. Steph and I are pretty much running on fumes at this point but both of us have managed to work well as a team and neither of us are too sick so we feel fortunate. We have already had one of the mothers spend a little time in the hospital but we are not sure what her issue was. She is out now and seems to be doing great so I guess it was not too serious. We have a few more pictures of Sophia to upload (of course) so be sure and look for those. We have also taken a few more pictures of the area around Nanning and are posting those in the “China” album. Tomorrow our group is taking a trip south to BeiHai where the orphanage is that Sophia was raised in. This will be about a 6 hour round trip by bus so we are not going to subject Sophia to that. I will be going alone to take some pictures and videos so that we can have them for Sophia later on. Steph is going to stay here with Sophia and continue the very important bonding process. We have grown leaps and bounds as parents in the last 48 hours and Steph is doing an amazing job at learning how to communicate with Sophia and make her feel secure. That is about all we have for now. We will give an update on the BeiHai trip tomorrow sometime.
SUNDAY JAN 30TH - 10PM CHINA TIME
It is now Sunday evening at about 9pm. We did not get a chance to update the journal this morning because the group had an early start on the schedule. Today was the day that we took a bus trip down to the city of Beihai where Sophia is from. It was scheduled to be about a 6 hour round trip so we decided that this may be too much for Sophia to handle and she and Steph stayed in Nanning with a couple of the other families while I went on the trip. As it turned out this was a good move because the trip ended up being about ten and a half hours and we did not get back to the hotel until 7:30pm or so. I did not realize how emotional this trip was going to be for me until we were on the road. Once we were on the way, our guide Michael gave us a copy of the newspaper report from when our babies were abandoned. The government runs these adds any time a baby is abandoned. The adds are very short and basically just tell where and when the child was found and what name had been given to it by the orphanage. Getting copies of these abandonment notifications is a rare thing. Most families do not get to see these. This was just a wonderful coincidence this time that the orphanage was able to obtain copies. What makes this document even more wonderful is that it contains a picture of Sophia from when she was very young. Typically they only run the words of the ad and do not include the picture. Michael also was able to get local Beihai city maps for us and took the time to mark on each families map exactly where the orphanage and abandonment locations were. We arrived in Beihai about 11:30am and visited the beach for about 45 minutes while Michael found a restaurant for our lunch. This time of year is pretty slow for this resort area, but I could tell that it really gets busy during the summer. Even in the off season it was warm enough for a couple of the older kids that are with us to take off their shoes and wade out in the ocean for a bit. After lunch we drove down town to visit the orphanage. It was an unexpected surprise when the Orphanage director agreed to let us walk around the grounds and take pictures. We were not allowed to go into any of the buildings and we could only stay for 10 minutes but I was really happy just to be able to do that. The city just around the orphanage is pretty rough but the orphanage compound is contained in a courtyard area and is really pleasant on the inside. I took as many pictures and video as I could in the 10 minutes and will be getting those uploaded as soon as I can. After visiting the orphanage, we went by each family’s abandonment spot one by one. Ours was first since it was just one building down from the outside of the orphanage. Seeing the dirty sidewalk and rusty gate of the government building where Sophia was left was a hard thing for me. Much harder than I anticipated it would be when we left Nanning earlier this morning. I was able to handle these emotions fairly well when I thought about how fortunate it was that Sophia was left where she was. It is a government building on the same block as the orphanage and the people who found her would be government workers that knew the best way to handle an abandoned baby. As far as we can tell, Sophia made it to the orphanage the same day she was found which was most likely only a few hours after she had been abandoned. We then drove to each of the other family’s abandonment locations. A police station, a drug store, another government building of some sort and an outdoor market. All of these locations were just a short distance from the orphanage so the birth mothers knew that their babies would be taken care of. On our way out of town we visited a pearl factory and jewelry store. Beihai is a large producer of both freshwater and seawater pearls. We learned a little bit about how to tell real pearls from fake ones and also how to tell really expensive ones from lesser expensive ones. The women working in this jewelry store really enjoyed seeing all of the Beihai babies and their strange American parents. Of the time I have spent in China so far, I think that the people in Beihai are the nicest people we have met. I will admit though that I am a little biased since that is where Sophia is from. As it turns out, Steph made some great progress with Sophia today and when I returned she was delighted to see me. I was able to hold her and play with her for about an hour and she didn’t cry at all. She enjoyed her first bath tonight. I say enjoyed because up until now she has hated taking a bath. Tonight however she decided that she loved it and just kicked back in the tub and splashed like crazy, laughing and giggling the whole time. She is sound asleep now and Steph is on her way so I am going to see if I can get some sleep as well. We have a trip tomorrow to one of the local villages in Nanning so we will of course get some pictures and share that experience with you tomorrow sometime.
MONDAY JANUARY 31ST, 9:30PM CHINA TIME
It is now about 8:30pm on Monday evening and we are finally getting a chance to make a journal update. In the past 48 hours Sophia has really started opening up. Now we are seeing the lively and active Sophia that we were expecting from our original referral information. Consequently Steph and I have our hands full even more now than we did earlier in the week and have very little time to spend uploading pictures and journal entries. For that matter we are having trouble finding time to do little things like eat, sleep, bath etc. Today was a pretty fun day. We started the day by going on a short trip to a local Zhuang village. The Zhuang (sort of pronounced like Jong) people are the second largest group in China next to the Han. This village is about 45 minutes outside of Nanning in the middle of some really pretty mountains and limestone cliffs. We were able to take the time to walk through the village and meet some of the Zhuang people. One of them even let us come into her house so we could really get a good idea of how this farming community lives. The people in the village were very nice and seemed to find us just as interesting as we did them. Our guide Michael is half Zhuang and half Han and he assured us that it was not offensive for us to visit their village and take pictures. Some of the group felt a little strange at first but I really did enjoy seeing how people in China live outside of the hustle and bustle of the large cities. Eighty percent of Chinese people are farmers and live in villages like this one. The streets were all dirt/mud and the buildings were all built of brick and concrete with tile or wood shingle roofs. I will upload some pictures from this trip to the “China” photo album so that you can get a better idea of the village. After returning from this trip and a quick lunch back at the hotel, we spent the rest of the afternoon being dragged around the hotel by our increasingly active daughter. I was really happy to spend some time with Sophia alone while Steph tried to rest. I met a couple of the other dads out in our hallway/playpen/meeting area and Sophia played with everyone really well and never complained about Steph not being around. The bonding process for both Steph and myself with Sophia is getting much better each day. If we continue on this path then the long flight home will be that much easier because we will be able to share the load of holding, feeding and changing her. Later on this evening, all of the families met in the hallway so that Michael could distribute all of our final adoption documents. These included her Chinese passport. At this point all of our documentation and paperwork for the Chinese portion of the adoption is complete and now we just have to travel to GuangZhou (sort of pronounced like GwongJo) tomorrow to get Sophia’s U.S. passport and travel visa. In a way I am going to miss Nanning because it is what we in the west would consider “real China”. GuangZhou is more westernized and many of the people speak English so we will not feel as much like outsiders there. We will be staying at the White Swan hotel, which is supposed to be a fantastic 5 star hotel. We have learned that the words describing hotel quality in China are relative more to the other hotels in China rather than other hotels in the U.S. I have seen pictures of the White Swan and it really does look nice so I am sure it will be just fine. We are going to spend a little bit of time in the morning doing some shopping around this area before we leave. Once we are in Guangzhou, we will only be there for about 2 full days and we are not sure how much of that time will be available for looking around the city. We probably will not have another chance to update the journal until late Tuesday evening or possibly Wednesday morning but we will post again when we can and let you know more about our travel to Guangzhou and how Sophia holds up on her first flight.
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, 2005 - GUANGZHOU CHINA TIME
Today is Tuesday, February 1st, 2005 at approximately 11:30pm China time. We have just arrived in Guangzhou for the final phase of our adoption process. We have complete all of the Chinese requirements, now we just need to complete the U.S. requirements and get Sophia’s U.S. passport and travel visa. Today was mostly a travel day. We spent most of the morning and early afternoon packing up our stuff. Our hotel room was seriously starting to look like the set from Sanford and Son but we managed to get it all packed without purchasing additional luggage. We traveled by bus to the Nanning airport to catch a 6:30pm flight. I think we have talked enough about dirty diapers so I won’t bore you with anymore of those details. Let’s just say that our speed and efficiency at changing stink bombs in public places is getting pretty good. We were a little concerned about how Sophia and the other 7 babies in our group were going to handle their first airplane flight but our worry was not necessary. All of the girls handled the flight like just another ride in the stroller. We got lucky and ended up with an empty seat in our row so we were able to spread out and let Sophia have the seat between us. She pretty much just sat in that seat playing with the seatbelt and whatever else was within arms reach and only reacted to the flight when we touched down in Guangzhou. The pilots in China believe in fast ascents and descents and usually hit the ground pretty fast and hard so the bump caught her a little by surprise. No biggie though, she just looked around and cruised on like nothing had happened. We were not able to purchase an extra seat on this flight for some unexplained reason so we were really glad to see that we had this extra seat. We do have an extra seat booked for Sophia on our long Hong Kong to San Francisco leg and we are really happy about it. After watching some of the other families in our group on this short 1-hour flight who did not have the luxury of an extra seat, I can’t imagine trying to fly without it. Sophia is way to active to have squirming in our laps for 12 hours. From what I could see on our ride in from the airport, Guangzhou looks like a pretty nice city. It was formerly called Canton and what little mandarin Chinese I was able to pick up in Nanning is basically out the window at this point because everyone here speaks Cantonese. The White Swan hotel is truly an upscale hotel. The rooms are physically a little bit cramped but the quality of the rooms and the hotel in general is outstanding. Lucky for us our luggage is cram packed already because it looks like there could be some really good shopping right around our hotel. I’m sure if it comes down to it, Steph will talk me into adding one more piece of luggage to the load that Brian the Sherpa Williams is already packing around though. Just to add a little humor, we have discovered that our cute little Sophia snores a bit just like her pop. Steph has been really excited about being stuck in a hotel room, sleeping between Sophia and I on what basically amounts to padded plywood. Of course when Sophia snores, its “cute” – when I snore it is obnoxious. Sophia has started feeding herself crackers. Before she would just play with them but on the plane ride she somehow decided that she could eat them without our help. It is still amazing to me the times and places that these little ones learn to do things. I was concerned when we first got to our hotel because I was not able to access our website to make journal entries. After a few tries and some experimenting I was obviously able to make it work. This does not mean that it will necessarily work the entire time we are here. So, if we go a couple of days with no updates, then we probably have some Internet issue on our side. We are just 3 days from being home now and are looking forward to seeing everyone again and showing off our new baby girl. She is a handful and loves to have her picture taken so for the grandparents out there, get your cameras ready and we will see you soon.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2ND, 10PM CHINA TIME
It is now about 8pm, Wednesday February 2nd here in Guangzhou China. We have had our first full day in Guangzhou and it has been very nice. Sophia had a bit of a restless night but she slept in this morning so Steph and I were able to sleep until almost 7:30am, which was really helpful. For the most part we got the best night of sleep that we have had on this trip. Since we slept in this morning we did not have time for breakfast before meeting downstairs at 10am for our trip to the clinic. It is a bit colder here than in Nanning and is quite foggy with a little misting rain. The clinic is very close so it was easier for us to walk there than to take a vehicle. Because of the weather, all of the kids were bundled up pretty tight in several layers for the 10-minute walk. The first thing we had to do was get visa photos of all the girls. This time of morning is typically naptime for Sophia so just as we expected, she fell sound asleep on the way to the photographer. We had to wake her up for the photo, which was actually harder to do than I expected. We finally got her to open her eyes in what amounted to complete surprise for about 1 second and that is the picture that is now on her visa application. Pretty funny to see when you know the story behind it. In fact, one of the doctors at the clinic looked at her visa photo and asked if it was not the same baby because the photo looks so much different than what she actually looks like. After taking visa photos and getting copies made of Sophia’s passport, we went to the local clinic. This place was just short of a mad house. There were many adoptive parents and children going from room to room getting the basic checkups along with a large number of local Chinese citizens in for their various treatments. Sophia’s checkup was fine and even though she has some congestion and coughing, she was not running a fever so was good to go as far as the clinic was concerned. In the afternoon, we had a mountain of paperwork to complete. Our new facilitator in Guangzhou, Dave, asked for one person in each family to meet in his room to complete all of this paperwork for the U.S. Consulate. Since the White Swan has a kids playroom on the first floor, I thought this would be a good chance for me to take Sophia and go strolling while she took on the paperwork job. This worked out really well for Sophia and me because it gave us about 3 hours of quality bonding time. After playing in the playroom for a while and then strolling the hotel shops, I brought her back to the room and gave her a bottle and much needed diaper change. She seemed a little bit confused at first but I had hunger working for me and she was more interested in eating than wondering where her mother was. We got through the diaper change and the bottle with ease and then she snuggled on my chest and fell asleep for the first time ever. Steph returned from her mountain of paperwork to find a cute little Sophia sleeping on the bed and a happy daddy just beaming with joy. I was right in my estimate of how cool the area around this hotel is. The streets in this area remind me of Savannah. There are these cool moss covered trees in small parks down the center of the streets with shops on either side. The architecture is really nice as well. We have some free time tomorrow so we are hoping to spend some time shopping and taking pictures of the city. We like the feel of Guangzhou much more than Hong Kong or Nanning. I am sure that a lot of that is because being in Guangzhou means we are much closer to finally bringing our munchkin home to see everybody. As far as I know, all of our “stuff” is done here and we are just waiting now for our Consulate appointment so that we can get Sophia’s U.S. traveling documents and get the heck out of dodge. So far on this trip, there have been many twists and turns but all in all everything has been really smooth. If we had to do this on our own it would be basically impossible but the CCAI facilitators have been outstanding. They have a tremendous responsibility and have taken care of us every step of the way. We will get some pictures posted of Guangzhou tomorrow sometime so you can see another view of China. Until then we will sign off and see if we can steal a few minutes of sleep for ourselves.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3RD - 10:30PM CHINA TIME
It is Thursday evening at about 10pm here in Guangzhou China. Today was mostly a free day in Guangzhou. We are waiting for the Consulate to prepare Sophia’s travel documents so we killed time today by shopping in the neighborhood of the hotel. There are some really neat shops here and you can find almost anything if you look long enough. The architecture of the neighborhood is really fascinating as well. Although it was cloudy and rainy today, we did manage to get a few good pictures of the area and have uploaded those to the “China” album for you to look at. If I were going to come back to China for a vacation, Guangzhou would be high on my list of places to visit. The food here is a little pricier than in Nanning, but it is really good. For dinner tonight, we went as a group to a Thai restaurant nearby for our last dinner in Guangzhou. Some of the folks in our group were concerned because they had heard rumors of people getting sick from this restaurant but so far Steph and I have not experience any issues. We really enjoy Thai food and what we had tonight was really good. I was expecting it to be extremely spicy but even though I made sure to order it spicy it was much weaker than I would cook myself. I am not complaining though because we had a good time and enjoyed the food very much. We got a bit of a surprise from our facilitator at the end of our meal. He had arranged for the restaurant to bring out a birthday cake to celebrate Sophia’s 1 year birthday, which was two days ago. This was really cool and Sophia got a huge kick out of everyone singing happy birthday to her. She even ended up eating a few bites of the cake. Tomorrow is going to be a very hectic and busy day so this might be the last chance I have to update our website until we get back home. We have our consulate appointment in the morning and then have a little more shopping to do (I have some Chinese Yuan left that I need to spend) and then we have to have our bags packed and ready for pickup by 1:30pm. I also need to pick up as much black tea as I can carry in my luggage. I’m sure I can get it back in the states, but not at these prices! We meet our bus at about 3:15 in the afternoon and will begin the long trip home. We have roughly a 1-hour flight to Hong Kong with a customs check on both ends, then a short time on the ground in Hong Kong before anther customs check, and then we take off for San Francisco for about a 10-hour flight. A quick customs check and plane change in San Francisco then about a 3-hour flight to Denver where we arrive at approximately 11:30pm on Friday. We have met some really neat people on this trip. Before we left we heard stories of how people became friends on their adoption trip and we didn’t really think too much about it. Now that our trip is almost finished, we have a really cool connection with the seven other families in our travel group and plan to stay in touch with them as much as we can in the coming years to see how their little girls are doing. Anyone who may be reading this that is thinking about adopting a beautiful Chinese daughter, I highly recommend CCAI adoption agency. They have made this experience a wonderful and life changing event and are a real pleasure to work with. We have families from all over the country in our group and they all seem really pleased with CCAI. We will sign off now and get ready for our long day tomorrow. Sophia is of course already sleeping so that she is all rested up for the trip. Look out Singapore Airlines – here we come!
HOME SWEET HOME - SUNDAY FEB 6TH - COLORADO TIME
Right now it is Sunday morning at about 3:30am. We are slowly getting our internal clocks back on track but I found myself wide-awake and remembered that I never did a final journal entry to wrap up our trip so I figure now is as good of a time as any. Friday morning our group met in the lobby at 10:30 for our quick walk over to the U.S. Consulate office. By Friday morning all of the families were really ready to get this trip over and get our children home. We all maintained our attitude fairly well but it was obvious that we were all extremely exhausted and had pretty short fuses. At the Consulate office, we all gathered in a room and waited for the official to come in. Once he entered the room, he asked us one simple question that was something to the effect of “Do you promise that all of the information you have provided is true” – we all said yes as a group, and that was that. We were done. 30 seconds later we were out of there and heading back to the hotel to have our “red couch” pictures taken. There are red couches in one of the lobby areas of the White Swan hotel and it is a CCAI tradition to line up the girls from each group onto one of these couches and take their picture. Of course, this event took place at the usual nap time for many of the girls so getting them all to have their eyes open was hard enough, never mind trying to get them all to look at the same camera. After a few minutes of this madness, we headed up to our room to try and get our 300 pounds of stuff packed so it could be sent to the airport. At this point Steph and I were beyond exhaustion for the trip so the sequence of events was a little blurry. Sometime between 11:30 and 1:30 we managed to eat some lunch, do some last minute shopping, feed Sophia, change Sophia, buy an additional suitcase for the stuff we bought in China, pack our 7 bags and make one last minute run to the store for a couple of extra bottles for the trip. Our luggage was picked up at 1:30 and at 3:00 we all met in the lobby again to catch the bus to the airport. Our ride from the White Swan on Shamian Island to the airport in Guangzhou really gave us our first view of the majority of Guangzhou in the daytime. The island itself is where all of our pictures of Guangzhou were taken and it is quite a bit different from the rest of the city. Outside the island, it is basically like any other big city in China but it does look like it is more interesting. I think I took some pictures on the way out but can’t really remember. I will post those if I can find them. The Guangzhou airport is a super nice brand new facility about 45 minutes from the hotel and away from downtown Guangzhou. Our flight from Guangzhou to Hong Kong had a large number of adoptive families. Our group of eight and another CCAI group of 12 families. In all I would guess that over a quarter of the people on the plane were adoptive families. I felt a little sorry for the handful of other people on the plane but with the exception of a few random screams and fits, all of our girls handled this flight extremely well. Sophia fell asleep on takeoff and woke up just before we landed. The Hong Kong airport is also really nice and although it is huge, it is not too difficult to find your way around in. We got through customs and made it to our gate with just enough time to change Sophia’s diaper, help her slam down a bottle of formula and get Steph and myself some quality eats from Burger King. For the first time in our lives, Stephanie and I are able to be part of that wonderful “those traveling with children may board first” group. This did not apply until we were in the Hong Kong airport because on the “in China” flights – the gate opens and it is first come first serve for getting on the plane. The seats are assigned but it is every man for himself when it comes to getting on that plane and claiming some carry-on space. Anyway, we boarded our Singapore Airlines flight and found that we had some outstanding seats. A full three seat row by the window in front of the exit area so there was no one sitting behind us and we had plenty of room for all our stuff and the “Sophia survival pack”. Once again, Sophia handled this flight like a dream. Shortly after takeoff she fell sound asleep and was down for a good 6 hours or so. We got creative with our carry on luggage and the blankets and pillows and were able to make a fairly large area using the middle seat for Sophia to flip flop around in while she slept. During this time I was able to catch up on a little sleep as well. Stephanie was not able to sleep though and by the time we got to San Francisco 11 hours later (roughly 9am for us and 26 hours after our day had started) she was really exhausted. In San Francisco we had to retrieve our luggage and take it through customs, then recheck it with Frontier airlines. This was less hassle than I expected fortunately. Just before we left Guangzhou about 24 hours earlier, we had been given a packet containing all of Sophia’s U.S. Visa and entry information. We had to deliver this packet unopened to the customs officials in San Francisco. Once they took the packet and we made it through customs, Sophia became a U.S. citizen. This was a very happy day for us indeed. We got our luggage rechecked and started to make our way to the gate for our final leg of this journey. We had just enough time to relax at the gate, get Sophia changed and fed and just basically chill for about 45 minutes. This was when Steph dropped a bomb on me. We were going through the security checkpoint and as we put all our stuff on the belt to be scanned, Steph asked me if I had gotten her coat off of the Singapore Airlines plane. No, I did not have the coat, and we quickly realized that her coat had here drivers license and credit cards in it. Realizing that getting angry and panicking right smack in the middle of security screening at an international airport is a bad idea, I maintained my composure as best I could until we got through security and I could figure out a way to get her coat back. So much for 45 minutes of relaxing. After getting Steph and Sophia settled at the gate, I started my search for someone that could help me get in touch with the Singapore airlines gate where I was sure our plane was still on the ground. I was able to locate a Continental airlines employee and she called over to the other terminal and arranged for them to meet me at the international check in counter with the coat. This was about a 10-15 minute walk one way and I had almost exactly 30 minutes to get there, get the coat, get back through security and back to our gate. On my return jog, the security area that before had been completely empty of any other travelers was of course now jam packed with people. Once again I dumped my pockets, took off my shoes (Only in America do we have to perform this ridiculous shoe ritual), grabbed my stuff and headed for the gate. I made it with just enough time to get Steph a cup of coffee and then our happy little family boarded the plane with all of our belongings in hand. Once again, Sophia handled this flight like a champ. She fell asleep on takeoff and slept most of the way. The plane was not too full so we once again had a middle seat to spread out in. We had purchased an actual seat on the Singapore flight just to make sure we had room, but on the frontier flight we took our chances and it paid off. With about an hour left in the trip, Sophia got a little restless and cranky for the first time in this whole 19 hour flying madness. I dug through the survival pack and found the coveted cheerios and that bought us happiness for the remainder of the flight. Just as we landed, one of the flight attendants came on the speaker and told everyone on the plane about the 5 girls on our flight that were adopted from China and everyone gave a round of applause for our families and our new family members. Many of our friends and family were on hand at the airport to welcome us home and help us get all of our stuff back to the house. Sophia loves attention and really enjoyed seeing everyone even though she had no idea who they were. Slowly but surely we are getting our schedules back on track and more importantly we are enjoying eating home cooking in our own kitchen and drinking water straight out of the tap! This pretty much wraps up the journal of our trip to China bring Sophia into our family so I will sign off and go finish catching up on my sleep. Thanks for reading this and I hope you enjoyed it. We had a blast sharing our trip with everyone.
SATURDAY, FEB 19TH - 2 WEEKS AFTER GETTING HOME
This will be a short update but for the future adoptive parents out there that may be following this we thought it would be good to talk just a bit about how life has been now that we are home. From a health perspective, our little Sophia is doing great. She had a great checkup from the doctor and has started eating a wide variety of solid foods and also drinking whole milk instead of formula. The only real issues that we are continuing to deal with are adjustment problems. Sophia never sleeps more than 4 hours at a time and most of the time she only sleeps for about 2 hours before waking in a panic. This includes during the nighttime when she really should be sleeping about 9 hours. After talking with our pediatrician and our social worker, we are fully expecting this behavior to continue for another 4-8 weeks and possibly longer. The good news is that Sophia has finally started being a little more agreeable to spending time with me (Brian) so that I can periodically give Steph a much needed break. Many people told us prior to the trip about how hard it would be while in China. What they really should have told us about was how much more difficult it would be once we returned home. The first week after returning home was much harder than what we went through in China. This is partly because we were completely drained, both physically and emotionally and also because we had family in town. It was nice to have our family here, but it really distracted us from being able to get down to the business of getting Sophia adjusted to her new life. Our suggestion to prospective adoptive parents out there is to have your family wait about 4 weeks after you return before they come to visit. It is a lot to ask but in the long run everyone, including family members will enjoy the visit much much more. We can see little pieces of progress each day but day-to-day is still fairly difficult considering the lack of sleep that all three of us are getting. We will post another update in a few weeks to let everyone know what kind of progress Sophia has made.