Monday, November 27, 2006

Back to normal....

Well, Travis went back to work today and I am home with "the kids"... it has been great! Wow, transition to 2 kids is SOOOO much easier than transition to 1! It doesn't hurt that I am not recovering from pregnancy, labor, delivery, and major emergency surgery all while caring for a newborn... starting at 9 mos old having never been pregnant is actually pretty nice! She is more of a joy each day and Bayard continues to do really well.

It just hit us last night that we missed much of November and Christmas is just around the corner! Those "east coast" gifts have to get moving if they are going to make it in time! Hmmm, we have some work to do!

Speaking of work... I need to get some done while "the kids" are resting/napping...

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Ah, sleep. And siblings.


So, Amelia slept from 7:30-4am, then had a bottle, and went back to sleep until 7am! WAHOOO!!! Life is much better when not starved for sleep. Bayard is so cute with her. I asked him how it was going for him with Amelia here...

"Not so good mom"
"Why? What's up Bayard?"
"I just don't get enough time with my sister. You and Dad get to spend lots of time playing with her and I don't. I want more time to play with her."
"I think we can work that out Bayard."

Funny kid. Not at all what I expected him to say. He is really helpful with her. He entertains her and SO wants to be a part of taking care of her. She is big enough to actually interact with him, so that is nice. He was playing peek-a-boo with her tonight while I was making her dinner and she was VERY impatient! He had her smiling and even laughing. At the same time, he was feeding her the much loved Cheerios. Pretty cool sibling stuff. Bayard starts back on his regular school schedule this week which I think will be good too.

Well, both kids are in bed, so I need to take advantage and have some "me time"....

Oh, here are Bayard and Travis watching the Georgia v Georgia Tech game today...

Monday, November 20, 2006

How cute is she?!



Well, we are getting to know Amelia more each day, and she is adorable! Happy, smiling, today she giggled!

These pictures were taken in her room at bedtime the second day we were home. I know, those jammies are pretty girly. And how cute is she in them? Sleep is improving each night. We are hopeful for an even better night tonight! She is in bed right now.... sleeping, in her bed.... yes, we dosed her up with Benadryl... for the jetlag, and our sanity... we'll see. We head off to the pediatrician tomorrow morning to check in. I don't think she is going to have much to say as Amelia is looking really healthy and still pretty on track developmentally. Some mild gross and fine motor delays, but nothing really significant. She is still in the window of "typical development" just on the slower end for motor skills. Yeah! She is generally happy, smiley, and fairly easy going. She is quite clear about what she wants and will definately let you know if you aren't giving it to her, but she is quick to recover once it is resolved. She is also doing well on the attachment stuff. Much better than we expected at this point, so that is great news too! She still enjoys time with Travis, but no longer shows a marked preference for him. She is fascinated with Woobie (our Brittany Spaniel for those who don't know him). He on the other hand, showed little or no reaction to her with the exception of resuming the post he had at the highchair when it was last used and giving her face licks to check out the leftovers. She seems ok with that and watches him with great interest. Nice to have an 8 year old "baby/child seasoned" dog as opposed to a 4 year old "new to the kid thing" dog...

Bayard is excited to visit his school for a couple hours while we take Amelia to the doctor tomorrow. He is doing well with the adjustment. As well as can be expected I think. Some boundary testing and meltdowns over things like running out of juice or getting his arm caught in his jacket (things he took in stride before), but, all in all, big brother is coping ok and really likes to play with Amelia and is VERY sweet with her. First thing each morning he comes into our room (where she has generally been spending at least the last 2-3 hours of the night) and just talks quietly to her and rubs her back and sings her songs... "Hello to Amelia, so glad to see you, Good morning Amelia, so glad to see you"... So sweet.

OK, that is it for tonight. I am going to relish in some downtime while BOTH kids are sleeping!

Friday, November 17, 2006

We're home!

After 26 hours of travel, and two Thursdays (we gained a day on the way back), we are settling into home. Amelia and Bayard did great on the trip back. 3 plane rides, 4 different cities, and 2 different countries. Amelia got her "you are an american citizen" stamp yesterday when we arrived in LA. That was our last big milestone in this process. It is nice to be back, but, I kind of miss that "vacation feeling"... yeah, parts of the trip were challenging, but, there were no dishes to do, no laundry, no bills waiting to be paid, no bathrooms to clean, no garbage to take out... you know what I mean. Bayard, Amelia, and myself slept fairly well last night, Travis on the other hand is having a bit more trouble with the time change. We took turns with Amelia last night, she was still on China time and didn't really go to sleep until about 1am. But, she then slept til 8:30! Wahoo! I think a family nap may be in the cards for us this afternoon...

Amelia is the happiest baby the last 3 days! She is smiley and is liking sitting on the floor and playing with toys. She is fine going between me and Travis now. She has huge smiles when either of us walks in the room and says hi to her. She is able to sit alone on the floor and play while we are in the room doing something else for 5-10 minutes at a time-- that is pretty big progress!

Bayard has been going non-stop today. He seems to be really enjoying playing with his toys and just being at home. Although, as we were leaving China he said "I don't want to go home yet, I love China!"

All in all, we had a great trip. More pictures to come. I think we will keep doing this blog thing... so, keep checking in! Oh, thanks to all who left comments... it helped us to feel more connected to those of you back home. It was fun to think of so many people following our trip and our progress with Amelia!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Kaili





Kaili is the name of the town that is the capital of the region where the babies in our group are from. Guizhou is the province, and the smaller region (county if you will) is called Qiandongnan. Kaili is kind of like the county seat. It was a 2.5 bus ride each way on windy roads, so we chose not to go, but we really wish we had. Tracey's motion sickness and Amelia still adjusting to us didn't seem to like a good mix for 5 hours in a bus. Anyhow one of the families with us had an adventurous uncle along with them who spoke some Chinese, so these are pics from him. After seeing these we really wish we had gone, but unfortunately it just didn't work out this time. Maybe we'll be able to go again when we get back in a few years.

There are two ethnic minority groups here and there is a good chance that Amelia is from one of them (Dong and Miao). We'll never really know though, Amelia's birth parents and exact town are unknown.

The 3rd picture above is the orphanage where the babies came from. All were in foster care for most of the time, but they all passed through this orphanage and spent some time there.

Many thanks to Mike Bergner for making the trek to get us this info!!

Faster Internet connection in Guangzhou = more pictures




First pic is BWJ and Amelia sitting together.

Second is loading up to fly from Guiyang to Guangzhou, "taking the 3 ring circus on the road".

Third is from back in Guiyang, at the big central square where they were getting ready for some big Communist Party c weekend event. You can see the statue of Mao in the back.


Here is one of Bayard and Amelia doing some "shoulder ride".

The other is what I call the "Last Supper". Its all the babies from our adoption group here in the lobby at the White Swan in Guangzhou. Pretty funny. Amelia is the second from the left.

Last Day in Guangzhou

Wow. What a difference a few days and a new city makes! If you have ever been to Savannah, GA, you can imagine Guangzhou (well, just the little island part we are on). Really, it looks so much like Savannah it is a little eerie. The big trees with the moss, the colonial style buildings. Lots of British and French influence. The hotel we are in, The White Swan (check it out on the web, it is a remarkable place), is on Shamian Island. The Island is very small, you can actually see from one end to the other. It is right on the Pearl River. We have an amazing view of the Pearl River and Guangzhou’s main city across the river from our hotel room. Each night there is a lazer show. Really, I have not been to Las Vegas, but I can’t imagine that it has much more neon than this place. At night, the dragon boats, all lit up, sail around the river for dinner cruises. Pretty cool sight. Oh, and they pipe in music to go with the laser show. Generally it is classical or, believe it or not, opera. Yeah, a little weird. Bayard and Travis took the ferry across to the main part of Guangzhou today. Travis said that part is NOT at all like Savannah, you are definitely back in China over there, no colonialism to make the westerners more comfortable across the river! After being in Guiyang, it has been a nice break to be here. The majority of the families who adopt from China come and stay at the White Swan on Shamian Island, so, it is like adoption Disneyland. The shops and restaurants cater to westerners and the adoption crowd. That is a bit weird too. The first morning we went down for breakfast it was pretty surreal to see all these Caucasian families with Chinese babies/kids. I am not kidding when I say the entire restaurant was filled with us adoption folk. There are 38 families from our agency alone and there are at least that many from other agencies. There are entire floors of the hotel filled with adoptive families. I felt a little embarrassed and apologetic for being a part of it. What do the Chinese really think of us, of this phenomenon? That, along with the t-shirts, and other commercialism around the China adoption experience during this part of the trip have felt a little plastic.

On the whole, China is just so very different. I wish we had more time to really see more than just a few touristy areas. The people have been so warm and friendly, so patient with us in trying to communicate. They are very interested in Bayard and Amelia. Each person who has understood that we are adopting Amelia has had a huge smile and has looked happy for us and for her. I have been incredibly impressed with how the people use the parks. There is a wonderful park next to the hotel here. Each morning there is a large group of mostly older people (all Chinese, whether it looks like Savannah or not, we are still in China) all exercising in synch. Tai Chi it seems to be. There is piped in music and direction coming from speakers somewhere. The playgrounds tend not to have benches where the adults are to sit and watch, but equipment that is meant to be used by adults and children. There are always adults there exercising. I like the focus on keeping the body healthy. Shamian Island is quite clean and there is very little smoking here, unlike in Guiyang. A funny park story… so, we went with one of the other families here (they have 4 kids—8, 4, 2, and the baby- 10 months) to explore this little amusement park part by the river. They had the smallest rides I have ever seen! A little lady was sitting there, just waiting for people to come by to ride the rides. They looked like they had been there since the 50’s. I think she may have been working there then too. She was very nice and friendly and encouraged the kids to ride. So, all the kids, with the exception of the baby hop on this one ride. It is little carriages with covered tops and a bench for 2, meant to go around in a circle. She starts up the ride and White Christmas starts playing! The ride lurches forward and jerks around the track about half way and the lady starts picking up the ride and helping it along! The 2 year old starts crying and bails, the lady motions for the 8 year old to get off, and she keeps pushing it around the track while Bayard and Emma (4 year old) sit with blank faces next to each other in the little car! It was hilarious! The lady was so nice, she had the kids get off and let them ride each of the other rides (only 3 others). The others worked fine. And Western Christmas music continued to play! The kids had a great time. It was definitely a highlight!

Amelia makes progress in settling into our family every day. Today was our best day. She is pretty funny. She is smiling more and today actually seemed to really enjoy time with me. She has some similarities to Bayard as a baby which we find funny. She is VERY vocal (lungs are working just fine…), very quick to let you know when she likes or doesn’t like something, pretty social, enjoys being in a restaurant or somewhere where there is a lot going on, sleeps well (ok, the first year he didn’t, but since then…), is a great eater, and just seems to have a similar temperament. She has a very strong grip, strong legs and arms (she can pull herself to stand, but has very little torso strength!). She has a pretty good attention span. And she seems to like books. We are looking forward to getting to know her more. Bayard is doing well. He has shown some jealousy and has had a couple meltdowns, but all in all is hanging in there. He says he misses Woobie and school. He has said a few times “ I bet Kassy misses me.” For those of you who don’t know, she is one of his neighbor friends. Having Amelia has highlighted how big he is. And it has reminded me a few times that he is still only 3 and still needs us to help him adjust to his new role as big brother. He said the other morning “I think I will take the batteries out of my ears” as he was tired of little sister’s crying. At the same time, he is excited when she plays with him without crying and he just wants to hug her all the time. He and Travis went a bargained for a dragon shirt that I have no doubt he will want to tell everyone about. He is pretty proud of it. He has a heightened interest in dragons since being here. He is planning his dragon costume for next Halloween. He has also discovered “karate guys” and enjoys working on his karate moves. He gets ideas from the Tai Chi people in the park as well as the Jackie Chan movies he and Travis have been checking out on the TV.

Anyway, tomorrow is our last day here. We will be back in Portland on Thursday! (we gain a day on the way back). We have had a very interesting trip. We keep talking about coming back to China sometime when we can devote more time to seeing much more of the beautiful country that we haven’t really been able to see this time. We feel like we have gotten just a snapshot of this huge and amazingly diverse place.

More in person… it is time for bed. We are off to the US Consulate tomorrow to do our last bit of adoption paperwork. See you all soon!

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Guangzhou


Well Guangzhou is very different that Guiyang. Its the 6th largest city in China, about 10 million people is what our guide said. We're staying at the White Swan Hotel which is very western, so much easier to navigate the surroundings. It actually feels like a vacation now. We;ve got a nice room, with a cool view of the Pearl River, the hotel is very large with a pool that Bayard loves to swim in. There are lots of western families with newly adopted babies so its kind of surreal....strange juxtaposition of western onto Chinese.

We've got to do a few more things with the US government leading up to our immigration finalization for Ameila at the consulate on Wed. Then we fly home on Thursday.

Things are getting better with Amelia. She really likes to be outside, go out to eat, be out where people are. She and Tracey are getting closer, but she still prefers me if we're both there. We're still working at it though and they;re having more and more happy times.

Ok this was just a quick post from the coffee shop, we'll write more tonight....

Friday, November 10, 2006

Last day in Guiyang

This was our last full day in Guiyang. In the morning, we got Amelia’s final documents from the Chinese government, and also her passport. This completes just about all of the Chinese portion of the adoption process, next comes the US side in Guangzhou.

So with one day left to roam around, we went to the book store to try to find some Chinese kids books and also maybe some CDs with kids’ music. Like many of the other things we’ve seen in China, the store was pretty cool, mostly due to the many contrasts. On one hand, they had stacks of new books about how to be successful in business, “Tony Robbins-esque” motivational stuff, newspapers, popular novels, new computers for teaching kids English, etc. But the drain pipe coming out of the building had water and blood running out onto the sidewalk, the floor was dirty, and the official at the checkout line had a thread-bare military uniform that looked 40 years old and he was wearing sneakers. Outside it smelled like exhaust, cigarette smoke, and bad moth ball breath.

We had lunch at the Chinese restaurant at the hotel, stir fried vegetables and dim sum. Pretty good, but so much smoking in the dining room was hard. We decided we needed to get out of the room in the afternoon, so we walked to a new park about 20 mins away, that we had seen on the cab ride to the book store. There was lots of decoration at the entrance; apparently there is the big autumn Communist Party festival/event this weekend. Tracey will probably kick me for telling this story, but when we were in the cab earlier that day and had seen all the decorations, Bayard had asked what they were for. Our local guy Michael said it was for the Communist Party event, and Bayard asked what the Communist Party was. Tracey said it was one of the political organizations in the Chinese government……then we said actually it is THE political organization in the Chinese government. You kind of forget that things aren’t the same in the US. Sure you can go to Wal Mart, but you can’t vote, and 1.3 billion people minus one….is not that big of a deal. An individual person is not as important here as in the US.

Anyhow back to the park. We saw lots of amusement type rides and Bayard and I rode some kind of tank thing with a cannon on it, but we decided not to try the ones that could maim us if they happened to break…remember 1.3 billion minus one. We saw a cool wooded area where about 30 old men had brought their birds in cages and hung them in the trees. The birds were all singing and the men were hanging out, apparently they all come here to take their birds to the park, never seen anything like that before. There was also a market with lots of meat, vegetables, mushroom, dried chili peppers, Buddhist beads, jade, etc. But the one thing that really stood out was the dried hog faces for sale. They were about the size of Frisbees with ears sticking out….whoa. Bayard was really excited that we found a playground, but it was kind of hard to find a piece of equipment to play on because all the octogenarians were using them to work out. One guy was trying to chop down a tree with his fore arms (think Jean-Claude Van Damme movie with a really old Chinese guy) then he made it across about 3 of the monkey bars, finishing his workout with some leg waving while holding on the tree he never could chop down. Bayard finally got going on an apparatus, but then got mobbed by a group of 10 year old girls in matching track suits. I think it was the Guizhou Experimental Middle School, but there are lots of track suits that look alike here. So they were all trying to take pictures with him, pick him up, say “Hello” and giggle. We did pictures with each and every one of them, then he decided he was done with being a rock star, so we headed back to the hotel for dinner.

During this whole afternoon, Tracey was going hard core with Amelia, battling through the screamy times with her in the chest pack. Amelia still has a very strong preference for me (Travis) when we’re both around, so we are trying to get her some more Tracey time to even things out. She is happy, eating well, sleeping well, and has the softest skin you can imagine, very bright shiny eyes, exceptionally strong-willed and squirmy. She is pretty tuned in to what is going on, so we’re off to a good start.

Next stop is Guangzhou tomorrow, it’s the capital of Guangdong province in southern China if you want to check it out on a map or Google Earth.

More pictures



Here are two more from village the other day...

Thursday, November 09, 2006


Seeing if I can get a few pictures to go up......

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

More on Guiyang

So, I left off last night at our trip to the “ancient Chinese village.” We went to dinner that night at a restaurant near our hotel. It was pretty nice and the food was relatively good. Bayard’s favorite was the preserved egg. Really, he keeps asking when he can have more preserved egg. Nice to have an adventurous eater for a kid.

Wed…

We were off to another village. This time of the Miao (like “meow”) people, likely Amelia’s heritage (there are a large number of different cultural groups here within China). Bayard was a little resistant, and to be honest, I wasn’t that excited about another experience like the day before either, however, this was completely different. It was great actually. The people there were expecting us and dressed in traditional clothing and basically put on a show for us. Apparently this group likes to drink, a lot. Our guide gave us the lowdown on the bus before we got there. The tradition is to be greeted by a man with a water buffalo horn filled with rice wine. Each person is to take a sip. It was recommended that we each keep our hands behind our backs as if we touched the horn, we would be expected to “bottom up” or drink the whole thing! The people sang traditional songs and danced traditional dances in which they included people from our group, including me (Tracey)! It seems I am now married to one of the village men. Then, at the end, it was expected that we have a “musical conversation” – they sang a traditional song, then we sing one, etc for 3 songs each. On the bus we practiced three songs that we felt would best reflect our culture…. Picture a large group of Americans singing the following incredibly off key…Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday, and You are My Sunshine. It was pretty funny. They had all of us laughing. Bayard was much relieved and had his share of laughs as well. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

To comment some more on the pollution… the air is rarely clear. It is mostly hazy from pollution and it always smells of car exhaust and garbage and other more unfamiliar odors. On our way to the Miao village yesterday we saw coal mining and power plants set up right next to people’s homes. Many of the young children also wear split pants and no diapers, so when they need to “go” they just stop and squat in the middle of the city sidewalk, then, much of the time, their parents pick it up like we do for our dogs. However, not everyone is as conscientious… There are just so many things here that are so very different from home.

On wed afternoon, Bayard, Travis, Amelia and I took a walk a few blocks from our hotel (toward the Walmart!) and decided to head down this stinky alley way. You turned left off the sidewalk and headed down about 8 stairs into a market. A lady at the front of the market by the stairs was cooking stinky fermented tofu which is quite pungent. Then, we realized we were in a meat market. Clearly, refrigeration is overrated. The meat was all out on tables and hung on hooks. Once we got past the stinky tofu, the smell was actually better than out on the street. What struck me most was not the piles of cut meat, or the hanging ducks and pigs with bodies intact including heads, but the dogs that were hanging, skinned and cleaned, ready for purchase. Yes, I said dogs. I had heard that many parts of China enjoy dog meat, but I don’t know that I really thought it was a mainstream food until yesterday. Such a different culture. This is by truly an adventure. I have never been somewhere where I stand out so much not just in my appearance (I am actually relatively tall here!) but more so in my social understanding/social skills. I have been to other countries, other large cities, but never somewhere where I was this foreign. I keep thinking, there are 4 Chinese for every 1 American. Many more people live like this than how we do. Very interesting.

How is Amelia doing you ask? She is making progress everyday. She smiles more and more. She is very cute! Our day today has had little or no crying! Wahoo! She continues to sleep really well, all night long! And two naps a day! Bayard is very cute with her and wants to help so much! She definitely checks him out. She still prefers Travis, but is continuing to warm up to me. Travis is sleeping with Bayard and I am sleeping with Amelia. Last night she wanted full body contact all night, but slept really well—8pm-7:30am! She wakes up for a bottle at around 4:30 or 5 and then goes right back to sleep. It is great! As for her development, she is sitting up, but is a bit wobbly and can’t get herself there. She is definitely NOT crawling, but LOVES to stand and is pretty stable. We plan to nip that in the bud! No exersaucer for her! Lots of time on the floor when we get home and I am sure she will catch up. She doesn’t seem to have any health issues at all. We sent a camera to her foster family a few weeks before we came on the trip and we had the pictures developed yesterday. Wow. They really loved her. They had a lovely home and she is a beaming, happy child in those pictures. They gave our family quite a gift in loving her so much. I have no doubt that she will be able to settle happily into our family in large part because they made her such a part of theirs.

Today (Thursday) we had a down day. Just hung out and played. Talked to other people in our travel group. Went to the park by the Walmart that the enormous statue of Mao looks over with his hand raised high. There are some grassy areas, but none are available for sitting or walking on, only concrete paths. Again, just different from our concept of a park. Amelia is napping right now and Bayard is watching Dora (the DVD player was a good buy!). We have one more day here (we get our notarized copies of our adoption documents and Amelia’s Chinese passport tomorrow) and then Saturday we are off to Guangzhou for the US government part of the adoption process. We will meet up with a bunch of the other travel groups from our adoption agency. They all picked their children up from different provinces. We are more than halfway through our trip. We are looking forward to moving on to the next phase. Then it is back home. More later….

A few more days in Guiyang

Well, 2 days have passed without a blog entry. Believe it or not, we have been rather busy. Our second day with Amelia was less screamy than the first. She is definitely checking us out and slowly trusting us more. She is a great sleeper (yeah!) and is eating well too. So, those are two big hurdles down. She has a great affinity for Travis and is warming up to me. She has smiled and played with Bayard some too.

Here is the breakdown of the last two days adventures…

Monday… We met in the lobby of our hotel, all 8 families with babies in tow. We are quite a novelty here in Guiyang. We headed over to a government building to do some paperwork for the adoption. In all the chaos of the day before and our first morning with Amelia, I had completely forgotten why we were going on this outing. I just knew I needed a diaper bag with bottles, extra clothes, diapers, etc – all that baby gear we haven’t carried around in a couple years! We all sat in a dank and stuffy room with intermittently crying babies (Amelia sat happily with Travis the entire time!) for 2 hours signing official looking papers written in Chinese. At the end, we were given a little red book with our official adoption paperwork! “Congratulations! You are officially parents!” we were told. Ah, THAT is why we went on this outing!

The rest of the day was spent around the hotel.

Tuesday…

Back on the bus for a tour to an “ancient Chinese village.” Wow. I wish we could get the pictures to go up on the blog. It was like walking back in time. I don’t even know how to describe it. I would like to say that it was beautiful and paint a more positive picture, but in reality, I found it more sad. There were vendors lined up on somewhat narrow alleys selling “local handicrafts” and then there were food vendors alongside what appeared to be people’s homes. It was difficult not to notice the filth mixed in with everything. Much of the China we have seen seems polluted and dirty to my western eye. This village was no exception. The “squat potties” which are common in China (the clean modern ones are ok, just a porcelain hole in the floor that you “squat” over, no flushing, so they can be fairly stinky even in a clean modern bathroom), but the ones in the village, well, there was a small open air kind of building with two concrete hole/shoots that led out to the field behind the building. There was plenty of raw sewage there to let you know where to go if you needed to, which, unfortunately, I did. On the upside, Bayard found a great wooden sword there he is excited about. He has been doing lots of karate moves and slaying dragons with it (he was inspired to do much karate when we saw the HUGE Bruce Lee statue in Honk Kong—again, wish we could get pictures to go up!). On the downside, Bayard actually got really scared at the village. The people here stare at us a great deal and like to come up and touch Bayard and look at Amelia. They have a different social more around personal space and it kind of freaked him out. Then, just as we were helping him calm down some, an old lady who had most likely never been to a dentist, and had one empty crusty eye socket (yes, I am saying she was missing an eye.) came up and got in his space. He got pretty freaked out. He has been such a trooper this whole time. He is hanging in there.

OK, getting late, will post more soon….

Saturday, November 04, 2006

The big day was much sadder than we expected

We got to Guiyang last night and checked into the hotel. Got the best night sleep so far, everyone made it to about 6:30am. Westerners are much more of novelty here than in Hong Kong. Lots of people look twice as they pass us on the street and many want to touch and hold Bayard. He’s not really digging that, so my new job is to act as his body guard while at the same time trying to be friendly and smile.

Michael our adoption agency rep here let us know that they will bring the babies to the hotel at noon, and that will make a trip to Wal Mart at 9:30am to pickup up supplies beforehand. I thought I had heard him incorrectly…..we flew 7000 miles around the world to go to Wal Mart? But sure enough we found ourselves in the Guiyang Wal Mart this morning right across from a huge statue of Chairman Mao. You can all draw your own opinions about that.

So at 12noon we went down to Michael’s room and everyone gathered in the hall to get the babies. The foster families and orphanage directors were there and they handed over the babies one by one. It was exciting, surreal, and very emotional. These Chinese foster families had been taking care of these kids for over 6 months and now were giving them up to us in a hotel hallway.

We tried to let them know how much we appreciated their taking care of Amelia, but words just didn’t get the feelings across. We did a few hugs and pats on the shoulder as we all took pictures together, but then was it, they went down in the elevator and we went into our hotel room. It was really hard to see them have to walk away from these kids and know that they will never see them again.

Amelia began to cry as soon as they handed her over, which really let us know she was clearly very well cared for. She was very sad and mad to be taken away from her foster family. We wrapped her up held her about an hour and a half until she fell asleep.

She seems healthy, very tuned in to what’s going on around her. We’re thankful to have what looks like a good start to things with her. We've got the rest of her life to have great days, but this one turned out to be much sadder than we had expected with seeing her foster family say goodbye to her.

Don't want to end this on a sad note though, we're very excited and looking forward to getting to know each other over the next week here in Guiyang. Stay tuned.....

Friday, November 03, 2006

We're Here...!

Well, we made it to Hong Kong. The 14.5 hour flight really wasn’t that bad. Bayard enjoyed a couple hours of Dora the Explorer and Little Einsteins and then slept for about 6 hours. We ate a few times—Bayard was given special “kid’s meal” and it was clearly geared for the “American kid”…mac and cheese, corn dogs, fish sticks and fries, jello, and a Lilo and Stitch backpack with various toys inside! Pretty funny.

The Hong Kong airport is new and HUGE!!!!! Very orderly. Customs went quickly. Then we walked out into the sea of mostly Asian faces with signs calling to those they were meeting. We were greeted by two lovely Chinese women with a huge sign with our adoption agency name on it. It started to get a bit more real at that point. We were the first of 3 families to arrive in that wave of our travel group. The other two came in shortly after us. Bayard made fast friends with Joanne, one of our guides and walked with her through the crowded airport while Travis and I wrangled our bags to the bus. We were off to our hotel.

A 16 hour time difference is a big deal. We are still working on adjusting. We are all pretty much awake at 3-4 am HK time. Bayard is such a trooper! The time thing will get better I am sure.

We’re staying at the Regal Kowloon Hotel and its been pretty nice. The food has been good, lots of different Chinese dishes to try and also some western stuff as well to fill in the gaps. We had a big lunch with the travel group yesterday, Chinese family style with lots of tasty dim sum.

Most of yesterday (Friday) was taken up by the required HK “tour.” A somewhat painful bus ride through the windy and congested streets of HK with the rest of our tour group (8 families in all). For those of us (Tracey) prone to motion sickness, well, it was even more painful. Lots of stops at shopping areas and a decent amount of encouragement to spend some dollars. It gave us an opportunity to get to know our group a bit better and Bayard has made great friends with a 5 year old little girl named Sage who is here to meet her mei-mei (little sister) as well. She was adopted from China 3 years ago. She is adorable and a good match for Bayard. They have been holding hands and chatting all around HK. Our group is full of really nice families who seem to be pretty easy going.

Its been good to have a gradual adjustment to Asia here in HK, still lots of English and western stuff. Our flight to Guiyang is at 6pm this evening, we’ll see how different things are in PRC.

Tomorrow we meet Amelia!