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….