Journey to Jenna - CHINA

JENNA - Present Day 2010

2010-01-02T04:17:00.000-08:00

Jenna and Ryan, 12-28-09.

Jenna with big sister Leah, 1-1-10.

Jenna's First Grade picture - Fall 2011.

Introduction.

2009-02-06T13:32:00.000-08:00

Present Day = February 7, 2009. I wrote this journal entry (this story) for Jenna's journal back in July 2007. I transfered it to this blog and finished it on March 29, 2009.

Note: Since after a time nobody left any comments I decided to use the comments to keep a running commentary. This blog just took too much effort for something like that to go unused. Feel free to check them out, or you can just ignore them.

Brett

Ryan, Leah, and Jenna 2-12-2009

In March 2006 we decided to adopt a daughter from China. After adopting our daughter Leah and sons Alexander and Benjamin from South Korea – we were going to adopt through the Holt-China program. When we received and scanned over the big red book that explained Holt’s China adoption process in detail we were a little overwhelmed. Adopting from China looked a lot more difficult than adopting from Korea. It started out as Cheryl’s idea (as usual); she has wanted to adopt a daughter from China since at least 2004 (as far as I know). Add to this the fact that she had an ally in Leah, who had been praying for a little sister for quite some time. They finally got me onboard and we decided to get started heading down the long road of adoption again. We started out in the regular program but also decided to be in the waiting child (special needs) program simultaneously. It proved to be a good choice because as it turns out if we would’ve only been in the regular program we would still be waiting (possibly years) longer for just a child referral. So our road wasn’t as long as it might’ve been. Skipping all the boring paperwork stuff and jumping to…

First before our story I wanted to post another China story...

The Bridge

The old woman squats uncomfortably outside her tiny shack while washing the laundry. The muddy ground from last night’s storm has made her ordinarily calming chore a necessary nuisance. With crooked and arthritic hands, she finishes her rapid scrubbing and expertly wrings out the last piece of clothing. The repetitive task always gives her a chance to reflect on the vagaries of her difficult life. Deep lines etched in her face reveal years of accumulated wisdom and incessant worry.

Her aching arms overloaded, she struggles to rise while trying to prevent her only pair of slippers from becoming covered with the muck. Heaving an exhausted sigh, she slings her pail of soiled water into the street, narrowly avoiding soaking a passing bicycle cab and its occupant. Words of apology are not expected or needed in this small and overcrowded community, so she slowly turns to take the clothing inside. She climbs the creaky stairs to the frigid, unused second story to hang the laundry on the metal bar outside her window. In this biting cold, the clothes will need many hours to finish drying, during which time she will ignore the nagging pain in her hands in order to work at her knitting.

The old woman collects used sweaters and knits colorful scarves from the scraps of wool she unravels. With another scarf ready to sell, she will be able to buy meat and dumplings to prepare a special meal for her daughter’s annual trip home. She is too proud to admit to her family that her usual diet consists only of rice and green vegetables. The old woman has never accepted help from anyone, and this time will be no different. She will just have to work harder and faster to earn the money needed to make this visit special.

Later on, from the corner of her eye, she spots a small boy sitting on the first step of the ancient Bridge of Luck. The bridge has covered one of the city’s most famous canals for over one thousand years; she longs to hear the stories it could tell. It used to carry only the weight of horses, bicycles, and people, but now must withstand a daily barrage of cars and trucks. On the pedestrian side, with his finger the small boy is tracing the carvings of dragons and phoenixes embedded in the old stone. He was a healthy-looking boy of six or so, with the darker skin and wider eyes of a person from the countryside or a minority village.

Judging by the thickness of his arms, his mother probably let him hold the baskets when his family brought in last season’s crop. The old woman is troubled to see he is dressed poorly, with only one thin layer of tattered clothing to protect him from the bitter wind. She notices he is not active as a normal boy of his age should be, but instead appears to be in a state of anxiety or bewilderment.

“Not another one,” she mutters under her breath.

Every month at least two or three children, sometimes even helpless newborns, are abandoned at this bridge. The parents superstitiously imagine this is one last gift to bestow on their offspring – leaving them at a place they believe will bring eternal luck.

Back in my time, she muses, we would take care of our own children no matter what the cost or burden.

These days, however, many children are discarded because their parents cannot afford them, are displeased with having a girl rather than a boy, or are ashamed to raise a child with a disability. For the old woman, the rescuing of these unfortunate waifs has been her lifetime duty. This time enough is enough, and she was determined not to become involved.

Does no one take responsibility for their own flesh anymore? She thinks despairingly. They know government policies put restrictions on how many children a couple can raise. The mothers should be thinking of this before being so irresponsible with their men. They don’t consider the inevitable problems of parenthood before becoming pregnant, because they know how easy it is to commit this act of cowardice – this abandonment – after their babies are born.

She thinks disapprovingly of how China continually boasts of the many improvements and successful developments of the last century, but this one subject remains an unspoken blemish mostly hidden in shame from the rest of the world.

Perhaps she is wrong and this boy is only out exploring the city, or maybe his parents have left him for a short time and will return. With a last worried glance, she returns to scrubbing her stone floors.

Several hours and chores later and following a small meal with several cups of green tea to help ease her hunger, the woman prepares to lie down for her much anticipated afternoon nap. As she reaches to close the curtain, she can’t resist another look. She is struck with the realization that the boy on the bridge is blind. He has stopped crying and has ventured a few steps from the bridge, using his chubby hands to feel the way. He was calling for someone.

I am not taking another child to the orphanage, the old woman argues with herself. Let someone else do it for a change. The many children and babies she has delivered to authorities over the years have burned holes in her heart and haunted her dreams at night.

She is now a wrinkled old woman with tired bones and a jaded mind. Why can’t she live out the remainder of her life without further turmoil? Why had her family’s ancestors chosen to make their home in front of this ironically “lucky” bridge? Why was it she who’d been selected to witness such sadness? Had this also been the fate of her mother and grandmother, who had lived here before her? If she’d had any other place to go, she would have left a decade ago, of this she is sure.

As she stands at the window regressing into her past, she spots someone approaching the other side of the bridge. The young woman wears a tired expression as she silently creeps closer. She squats in a nearby doorway, making it obvious she has come to spy upon the boy, though it is equally plain to see she doesn’t want him to know she is there.

The old woman watches. It is his mother, she thinks sagely. What a cruel thing for a wretched old thing like me to witness.

Though disgusted, she cannot pull herself away from the unfolding drama. Wrapping herself in an old quilt, she pulls up a chair to keep vigil. She can see the mother is becoming worried, wringing her hands helplessly while observing the many people casting pitying glances at her son but not offering him help. The cold night is coming on fast, and she is clearly fighting a battle within herself; she probably wants to run to him and hold him close one more time, but does not want to prolong the agony of the inevitable.

From the window, the old woman can see the wash of tears falling silently down the young mother’s scarlet cheeks. She struggles with her mixed feelings of anger and empathy for this young woman’s plight. She battles the knowledge that she could either rescue this boy or watch him suffer through the night.

The old woman returns to her kitchen and prepares a heaping bowl of hot rice porridge. Resignedly, she lays her near-finished scarf across her arm.

Oh, the many children who have worn my scarves, she laments. She allows herself only a short moment to sift through the memories and faces of those in her past before focusing on the current situation.

With one hand on her trusted cane and the other holding the food and scarf, she hobbles out of her home and toward the boy. As she moves closer, the young, desperate woman notices her and prepares to flee. The old woman solemnly stares into her eyes, giving her a knowing nod of compassion. Methodically, she continues to work her way through the evening traffic, pausing to let the hordes of foot and vehicular traffic pass. The mother stares, her shoulders bent in a stance of shame but relief evident in her haunted eyes.

The boy whimpers once more as he stumbles over the uneven walkway and back to the steps of the bridge. He is not brave enough to go farther and wants to stay where his mother can find him. She promised she was coming back, but now where was she? Why was she taking so long? He wants to smell her familiar scent and be led back to his safe, comfortable home. He is tired, cold, and very frightened. He has tried to act like a big boy but can no longer stanch the flow of tears.

The old woman stops in front of him and stoops to give him a reassuring pat on the head. She wraps the unfinished, multicolored scarf around his shoulders and begins speaking to him gently. He is at first scared by the intrusion into his dark, private world but the soothing sound of her grandmotherly voice and the warmth of the scarf calms him. Lowering her aching body, the old woman sits down beside the boy and offers him the steaming food.

Behind her son, the heartbroken mother blows a soft kiss into the air, says a silent goodbye, and slips away into the dark. As the boy begins to devour his first meal of the day, the old woman mentally prepares herself for a sleepless night consoling this latest unlucky child.

“Don’t worry little one,” she whispers, “for now you will have a warm pallet to sleep on and tomorrow your new life will begin.”

Kay Bratt – Silent Tears – pgs. 376-382.

July 10, 2007 - Getting Ready.

2009-02-06T13:29:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Below is the Itinerary for our journey to China...

NW = Northwest airline
NW 5657Y 11JUL WE Cedar Rapid/Minneapolis 1245P 145P
NW 19Y 11JUL WE Minneaplis/Tokyo 305P 505P + 1 day (arrival on 12 Jul)
NW 11Y 12JUL TH Tokyo/Beijing 625P 920P

July 12 Thursday arrive Beijing from Tokyo by NW 11 (9:20pm).
Please meet our English-speaking tour guide and driver at airport exit for transfer to hotel after going through immigration and customs - Novotel Peace hotel.

July 13 Friday Peace hotel (B/L)Please meet our English-speaking tour guide and driver at hotel lobby for tour to Great Wall and Hutong Lane.

July 14 Saturday Peace Hotel (B)Free day

July 15 Sunday Peace Hotel (B/L), 9:00AM, orientation at Dong Qu Guo Ji Mansion. Half day tour of Tiananmen Square and Temple of Heaven.

July 16 Monday(B)Airport transfer Beijing/Changsha CZ3124 (11:15am 1:35pm) (local guide has the ticket). Airport pick up Dolton Hotel. Child handoff in Civil Affairs Bureau in the afternoon.

July 17 Tuesday Dolton Hotel(B) Morning, adoption registration and notarization at the C/A office, 3:30pm shopping at Wal-Mart.

July 18 Wednesday Dolton Hotel(B) Optional activities arranged by Holt. Schedule to be announced by your Holt escort (Embroidery Museum).

July 19 Thursday Dolton Hotel(B) Optional activities arranged by Holt. Schedule to be announced by your Holt escort. Visited Jenna SWI in Zhuzhou City and Shennong Park (Finding Place).

July 20 Friday (B) Airport transfer Changsha/Guangzhou CZ3387 (4:50pm 6:10pm) (local guide has the tickets). Please meet your guide at airport and transfer to hotel - White Swan Hotel.

July 21 Saturday White Swan Hotel(B)10:00am-11:00am paper work checking at the meeting room. 11:30am- 11:45am baby visa photo taken.

July 22 Sunday White Swan Hotel(B)Optional activities arranged by Holt. Schedule to be announced by your Holt escort. (Church and the Pearl Market).

July 23 Monday White Swan Hotel (B)11:00am-12:00N visa medical exam 3:30pm-4:30pm exit meeting at the meeting room.

July 24 Tuesday White Swan Hotel(B)Optional activities arranged by Holt. Schedule to be announced by your Holt escort. (Six Banyan Temple).

July 25 Wednesday White Swan Hotel(B)2:45pm-5:30pm Consulate Oath-taking and pick up visa - Guangzhou Zoo.

July 26 Thursday(B)Your guide will take you to airport. Guangzhou/Tokyo NW 10 (8:20am).

NW 10Y 26JUL TH Guangzhou/Tokyo 820A 200P
NW 20Y 26JUL TH Tokyo/Minneapolis 340P 1240P
NW 2805Y 26JUL TH Minnapolis/Cedar Rapid 450P 555P
_______________________________________

This day was a long one. It was our last day before Cheryl & I departed for Beijing, China on the first leg of our trip to receive our daughter Jenna. I made sure that our lawn was mowed so the grass wouldn’t be too high when we returned in 2 ½ weeks. Cheryl had to pack our children’s clothes and toys they would need while they were staying with their grandparents. We also had to load up 3 dog houses, 3 plastic dog kennels, one large chain link kennel, dog food, and 3 dogs for a trip to Heather & Bill’s house where they would be staying. Without any help and without being able to drive to the spot where the dogs would be to unload all this stuff – this ended up being a huge task which wore us out. We got it done just before dark and went to get something to eat. Then we dropped the kids off at the grandparents. I was having second thoughts about leaving the children behind – especially since Ben was so upset that we were leaving. It was too late however, so we finally went home to finish packing after 10 p.m. The packing lasted until pretty late and we only managed to get a few hours sleep until the next day.

Addition: This is a later addition. This blog does or has been read by some people who have made comments to me personally about it. One of the comments was I don't have many pictures of Jenna early in the blog (besides the couple right at the beginning) So the following are a few of the pictures Jenna's caretakers gave us on the night we received her...

These are pictures of Jenna taken earlier in the year at her orphanage.

July 11, 2007 - On Our Way To CHINA!

2009-02-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

This is departure day! We drove our 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan to the Cedar Rapids Airport and parked it in the long-term parking area. Just before 11 a.m. we and our 4 bags of luggage arrived at the computer check-in at the Northwest/KLM check-in desk. We got our boarding passes and checked the 2 large bags and went through the security checkpoint. Once we cleared we proceeded to our gate. At 12:45 p.m. we flew Northwest/KLM flight 5657Y to Minneapolis and we arrived there on time at around 1:45 p.m. We each bought a slice of Godfather’s Pizza for lunch on our way from Concourse C to G. I found out at some point here that I left our digital camera’s SD memory card in our computer at home. I think it was when I tried to take a picture and saw that there was only enough memory left for 8 pictures (instead of the 347 or so pictures you would normally have with a 1GB SD memory card). So I stopped at a little shop and bought a 512MB SD memory card for our digital camera. Then we went to our next gate to catch Northwest flight 19Y to Tokyo/Narita in Japan. We departed Minneapolis at around 3 p.m. July 11th, and we arrived in Tokyo at around 5 p.m. on July 12th. Since Tokyo is 14 hours ahead of Central Standard Time this means that it was (26-14 = 12) a 12 hour flight. I let Cheryl have the window seat and I sat in the middle. It was a pretty long flight but they fed us a few times and they showed a few movies – Firehouse Dog, The Bridge to Terabithia, and some Ice Cube movie that I didn’t watch. As usual I didn’t sleep much at all - so it is now…

July 12, 2007 - To Tokyo, then Beijing, China.

2009-02-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

The Far East.

China Provincial Map - Beijing.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

So it is 5 p.m. and we are in the Tokyo/Narita Airport. We have a short layover so we head right to our next gate. At our gate we ran into the first family from our group who would be on the same flight. They are Rebecca & John from Wisconsin. They are going to China to receive their son Cai. We only had e-mail contact with them previously – this was the first time we met them in person. At around 6:30 p.m. we are on Northwest flight 11Y heading for Beijing, China. Beijing is roughly 13 hours ahead of Central Standard Time so we gain back one of the 14 hours that we lost on the previous flight. I remember we were on an Airbus A330 jet and each seat had its own movie screen with a computer where you could pick your own movie from many selections. I picked “Never Been Kissed” an older movie with Drew Barrymore. We were even fed a couple of times on this 4 hour flight. We arrived in Beijing at 9:20 p.m. so it was dark. Now we are in Communist China. I am an old soldier of the 80’s and we were programmed to think of China as our “foes” or enemies back then. I remember that the airport was pretty large but it wasn’t very busy. It looked like a huge aircraft hanger but it also looked somewhat modernized. We handed in our customs cards that we had filled out on the plane, cleared security – passports stamped, collected our checked luggage and zipped through customs. We were with John and Rebecca by this point and we went out into the waiting area and saw our guide Sherri holding a Holt sign with our names on them. So there were us with Sherri and 3 other families. She led us outside of the airport terminal to a parking area that was about a block away. There were some older ladies following us who kept trying to grab my luggage away from me – they were very persistent. By the time we were almost at the bus I finally gave up one of my bags. The bags were loaded into the bus luggage compartments and both the old ladies wanted a tip from me. I gave one of them a dollar and the other one got mad (she didn’t do anything but try to grab luggage from me). It was kind of bizarre but it was just a small preview of what was to come.

Part I – Beijing (China).

The Peace Novotel Hotel Lobby.

The Novotel Entrance.

So this bus drives us for about 40 minutes or so to the Novotel Peace Hotel in Beijing. This hotel looks pretty impressive to simple people like us – it has a gold revolving door at the entrance. You walk inside and the floors are all marble with marble columns, and a large marble staircase in front of us, first in the center and turning off both directions. There is someone playing a piano off to our right and lots of elegant looking furniture in the lobby. We go to the front desk to get us checked in and we find out that they switched us from a regular room to a suite. Sherri asked us if this was OK and we said sure as long as they don’t charge us the difference. The bellhop eventually led us to our room on the second floor – 2617. It was a suite that had a bedroom with a large bed and closet – the closet had a programmable lockbox. Since it was a suite it had another room that had a nice bathroom off of it. The shower in this bathroom was clear glass, very nice but we had to always turn the water on only halfway or the drain would overflow and flood the whole bathroom. The room had a couch, a love seat, and a desk with chair. It also had a large coffee table, and of course TV & fridge (wet bar). We soon learned not to use the wet bar – unless we wanted to pay $5 for a candy bar or a coke, or $4 for a bottle of water. I soon found out that a LAN cable connection was provided for computers so I would be able to have internet access with our laptop computer. It wasn’t free – it ended up costing close to $50 for the 4+ days we were there. I could hook up our power strip using only an adapter (no converter was necessary) and I could power the laptop, and recharge the digital camera and video camera’s batteries simultaneously. We did eat and drink some stuff from the wet bar, but we were hungry and didn’t know our way around yet. This was our first night in China.

Cheryl on the computer in Room 2617.

July 13, 2007 - Great Wall and Hutong Lane Tours

2009-02-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Friday, July 13, 2007

We woke up and went downstairs to our first breakfast buffet (we always got an excellent breakfast buffet everywhere we went). They had too much variety to mention it all but I tended to keep my breakfasts American – eggs, bacon, sausage, French toast, toast, potatoes, and orange juice – very good, and much better than we are accustomed to eating each day. One thing we did just about every day was exchange our traveler’s checks into Chinese currency – known as renminbi (RMB) or “yuan”. The typical exchange rate while we were in China was 7.55 yuan = $1 and we have found that it doesn’t deviate much from this rate. I typically exchanged between $100 - 200 at a time – sometimes this would last 1 day, and other times 2 or 3 days. Cheryl would do the same (though usually less). The currency exchanges we used were at the hotel desks.

Chinese Currency (renminbi) front side.

Chinese Currency (renminbi) back side.

So 100 yuan would = $13.25, 50 = $6.62, 20 = $2.65, 10 = $1.32, 5 = 66 cents, and 1 = 13 cents at this July 2007 current rate. The smaller 5 and 2 on the bottom right are less than one and are worth 7 cents, and 3 cents respectively. Shopkeepers don't like it when you try to lay these on them, and the same goes with the coins. They are worth so little that the shopkeepers will give them out as change, but they don't like to receive them as payment.

The Novotel Hotel - Beijing (middle of picture).

There are several differences between our trips to Korea and this trip to China. In Korea we were mostly on our own, but in China we almost always had a guide who took us around to everywhere we went. This was both good & bad. It was good because they knew about the places we went to and how to get there. They took care of the transportation, admissions & tips (paid by us up front). They all spoke good English and could do translations when necessary. It was bad because they were always in a hurry and we were always rushing from place to place when we were with them. We are the types who like to really check things out and we often felt like we were rushed (and we were). In Korea since we were on our own we felt like we could take as much time as we needed. Another difference is that in China we were with a group of 9 families who were all adopting special needs children. There were only seven families in the Beijing part of this trip and they are…

Note: It seems weird to remove these families last names (and home cities) from this story but they deserve their privacy.

Frank & Kelli from Nebraska who adopted a 2-year-old girl named Yu Jiao Jiao (McKenzie) from Jilin Province. She has spinal bifida and we considered adopting her ourselves at one time previously.

David & Karla from Oregon who adopted an 18-month-old son from Jiangsu Province. They also had a 3-year-old daughter (Alayna) with them whom they adopted previously from China.

Brandon & Linda from Washington who adopted a 7-year-old girl named Ellie from the Zhejiang Province. They had 2 children with them, Braylon and Lila.

Ladell & Michele from Iowa who adopted a young daughter (Mia) from the Shaanxi Province. They also brought their 16-year-old daughter Ashley along for the trip. Mia’s special need was a birthmark on her face.

John & Rebecca from Wisconsin who adopted a 13-month-old son (Cai) from the Yunnan Province. Cai was born with a VSD, or a hole in his heart.

Roger & Trish from Oregon who adopted a 2-year-old daughter (Zori, heart problem) from the Jiangxi Province. They also were joined by their 21-year-old daughter Cathay, who just finished service in Afghanistan.

We are the seventh family - Brett & Cheryl from near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Our 3-year-old daughter Xiao, Wen Xin (Jenna) is from the Hunan Province (Zhuzhou SWI). Jenna has a repaired cleft palate and a large birthmark on her neck and scalp.

Great Wall map near the parking lot at Mutianyu.

Getting back to Friday, July 13th - we all met Sherri in the lobby at 9 a.m. to load up the bus and head for the Great Wall at Mutianyu. This was about an hours drive north of Beijing.

The Great Wall (postcard).

The Great Wall (or Changcheng) was built starting at 500 B.C. (or roughly 2,540 years ago). At least 20 states and dynasties were involved in its construction over a period of 2,000 years. The wall was built by up to 1 million soldiers and it has 1,000 fortified passes and 10,000 beacon towers. Many of these soldiers died of exhaustion and malnutrition. It is 3,975 miles long, and it’s constructed of rammed earth, stone, and brick. The Wall was first built as barriers between states, but when China united under Qin in 221 B.C. the existing sections of the wall were linked together to protect the new China from the Mongol invaders from the north. It is a matter for debate as to whether the Wall was ever truly successful as a defense for China. Its main function was as a convenient conduit across difficult terrain and as a means for the passing of information. We arrived there at about 10:30 a.m. and Sherri told us we could go our own way, but we had to be back by noon or we would have to find a taxi back to Beijing (nice). So we walk through a gauntlet of a vendor village uphill while locals are trying to sell us crafts and t-shirts. One lady had a camel that you could get a picture with for $1.

A sign on the way to The Great Wall.

The Vendor Village.

Eventually we reached a cable car lift with orange cars that can seat up to six people. They take us up the steep hills leading to the wall. We rode a car up to the wall with Ladell, Michele, and Ashley until we reached an overlook to the wall. We took some pictures here of us with The Wall in the background, then we climbed the last few steps to The Wall. We could either go right or left and we chose left. Left was the direction that we could see the best from where we were and it looked pretty cool so we thought we would check it out. It was a hazy day (as usual around Beijing) but The Wall still looked awesome – it was just “majestic” – pictures can’t really do it justice. The view is cool every direction that you look. The wall winds up and down on the ridges of these hills. Looking over the wall on either side you are looking down into a valley. The walkway of the wall is wide – at least 12-14 feet across, and it is probably 20-25 feet up from the ground. The surface of the walkway is bumpy and often has uneven steps taking you up or down. The beacon towers are like small almost mazes and they often gave us relief with a cool breeze.

Cheryl before the big climb.

Looking toward our way back.

A small panoramic view.

It is a workout walking and climbing this wall - no doubt. We hiked until we got to a part where the wall was crumbling. There was a sign there that said “no tourist section, please do not pass.” It was a difficult climb to get to this spot – then we had to go back the same way. I took digital photos on the way there and digital video on the way back. The video is kind of funny because all you can hear is heavy breathing from myself, and every once in awhile I would bark at Cheryl telling her we have to step it up or we will have to take a taxi back. I must confess I have the distinction of barfing over the side of The Great Wall. On the way back I was starting to feel a little queasy, and at some point I stopped the video and barfed up my breakfast over the side of The Wall. Once I was done I was OK again. Maybe I should’ve handed Cheryl the camera. We made it back to the cable car lift at about 10 until noon. When we got back to the village an old lady practically tackled me to get me to buy a Great Wall t-shirt from her. We did buy some shirts (they were like $4 apiece). We made it back to the bus at the same time as some other families – so we worried needlessly.

On the way back we stopped at a Chinese restaurant. It was pretty good – different dishes placed on a large lazy-Susan type table and we just help ourselves. I remember the ceilings of the main room had plants covering the whole ceiling – I couldn’t tell if they were fake or real. If they were real how do they keep leaves from falling into the food?

The restaurant ceiling.

They had cold Cokes – I remember that because I drank one plus two extra. Before we left I was looking for the waitress to pay her for the 2 extra cokes I drank (the meal was prepaid for by each family) but I didn’t see her anywhere. When we left we visited a small cloisonné shop that was near the restaurant. We saw how these copper vases, figurines, and bowls were forged and painted. At some point while we were listening to a guide the waitress ran up to me to get the money I owed her for the extra cokes – it would’ve probably came out of her pay had she not found me. They cost 5 yuan (66 cents). Next we checked out this vast shop that had a lot of cool (and mostly expensive) cloisonné items.

Cloisonne Shop.

We bought some Chinese Zodiac figurines - one each to represent each member of our family according to the year we were born. We purchased a tiger for me, 2 dragons for Leah & Cheryl, a ram for Ben, a monkey for Jenna, and a horse for Alex. It wasn’t cheap at all I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, but we didn’t come to China to be cheap. I remember the bill was 1,940 yuan ($257 – paid by Visa card)

Our Chinese Zodiac Figurines.

I can say we left China with no regrets – not once did we think “I wished we would’ve bought something” later. We bought whatever we wanted to buy that was within reason. If we ever return to China I’m sure we learned some lessons. Besides the salesman at this shop was a very nice personable young man with a good sense of humor so I think he deserved our business. Soon we were back on the bus heading to Hutong Lane back in Beijing.

Fangjia Hutong - Dongcheng District - Beijing (postcard).

Hutong Lane is old Beijing courtyard houses. They can be traced back to the Yuan Dynasty when the Mongols built Dadu (Great Capital), which later became Beijing. Basically they are traditional residential compounds with houses around courtyards. There are 3 kinds of courtyard houses, large, medium, and small. All of them were built in accordance with a strict set of rules. There were two large buildings nearby that faced each other – The Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. The Bell Tower in Beijing, located at the north end of the central axis from south to north in the ancient capital city, was built in 1272, and was burnt down in a fire. The Bell Tower was rebuilt in 1420. Again it was destroyed by fire. Construction of the present tower began in 1745 and was completed in 1747. The Bell Tower stands 47.9 meters high (136 feet), and it is characterized by double layers of upturned eaves, covered with black glazed tiles and edged with green glazed tiles. The whole building was built of brick and stone. Being the time-keeping center for the capital of Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the Bell Tower has enjoyed over 700 years of history. It is a reddish-brown building with yellow designs, and other more intricate designs of green, blue, gray, black, white, and red.

The Bell Tower - Hutong Lane.

Cheryl and Brett

We toured Hutong Lane on the back of a rickshaw – a bike with a bench seat for 2 to the rear of this bike. At one point we stopped and toured an actual home. They are stone and brick houses that resemble shanties, but they are probably not as leaky. They are old and I am spoiled so it isn’t anywhere that I would want to live – but it was interesting to tour. I did notice that they had a problem with disposing of garbage in a cleanly manner.

Cruising Hutong Lane.

We visited a tea shop where we learned from a delightful young lady about different kinds of tea, and with her sense of humor she made an uninteresting subject (to me) worthwhile to listen to – I even took some video. At one point she poured tea into a Buddha -looking tea pot with a spout, and tea came out the spout and all the sudden the Buddha-like man was taking a pee. She called him “pee pee man”. Later we checked out the tea pot shop and a couple of the guys in our group were looking for pee pee men that they could buy. At some point during this tour Cheryl accidentally knocked our digital camera out of my hands with her bag and it crashed to the ground landing on one of its corners before coming to rest. It still works but the battery/SD card cover doesn’t close unless held closed by tape and/or rubber band. Back to the bus to return to the Novotel for the day, where we ate dinner and Cheryl had to get some copies made at the resource room before the orientation. It wasn’t long before I decided I wasn’t going to go this whole trip without ice. We had been warned to avoid drinking tap water or using the ice in China because it can be contaminated and make us sick. However I need my drinks cold or they will make me sick anyway so I always called housekeeping to get ice each day – sometimes twice a day. They probably always called me “the ice man” because I ordered ice so frequently – everywhere we went. I don’t think I ever got sick from using ice in my drinks in China (I’m blaming the barfing incident at the Great Wall on the orange juice I drank that morning for breakfast, and also on the fact that I’m not in good physical shape). So ends our first full day in China’s capital city. Tomorrow is a free day for us, and for most of the others it is orientation day.

July 14, 2007 - Tian'anmen Square - Temple Of Heaven Tours.

2009-02-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

Saturday July 14, 2007

Today was supposed to be a free day for us to do as we wished. The David and Karla and ourselves have our orientation on Sunday after which we were to have a Chinese lunch, and then go to Tian’anmen Square and The Temple of Heaven. The other families had their orientations and lunches today and afterwards go to Tian’anmen Square and The Temple of Heaven. We decided to do the lunch at noon and the tour today. It turned out to be a good thing because it rained on Sunday when David and Karla took the tours. So after eating the breakfast buffet we were free until lunch (while the others were attending their orientation with Les Whittle back at the hotel). So Cheryl and I walked down to Beijing’s shopping street, which is just a couple of blocks from the Novotel. We checked out the foreign bookstore, which had some interesting books, maps, and books for children. We bought quite a few books here. I bought another SD memory card for our digital camera – a 1GB one because the one I bought back in Minneapolis was filling up fast.

Beijing Foreign Languages Bookstore.

Beijing's Shopping Street.

A couple of different times friendly young persons came up to us and started talking to us and asking us questions (speaking very good English) about where we were from, first time to China etc. The first was a male and the second was a female – both in their early 20’s. It turned out that they were both trying to bring people to an art exhibition on shopping street at a place called the “Artistic Mansion”. We told them both that we didn’t have time to go, but it was nice talking to them.

The Artistic Mansion on Shopping Street.

Toystore and the helicopter.

We checked out a really neat toy store where a lady was flying a remote control helicopter around the store. I bought my backpack here that I ended up carrying the cameras around with me everywhere else we went. Cheryl bought a belt pack to help her carry some smaller stuff around with her. We didn’t want to make any large or bulky purchases because we feared airline baggage weight limits at this point in our journey, and we knew that our bags on the way to China were already pretty full. We checked out everything that was on the street without really looking for anything in particular, and eventually we stopped at one of the open air stands for refreshments. I am as usual taking pictures. Soon it was time to head back to the hotel to meet the others for lunch. They had all just finished their orientation and were pretty excited. Most of them had just received more information about their child and received more pictures. We were joined by Les Whittle for a Chinese lunch and it was another lazy-Susan type help yourself to whatever is there. Les Whittle is a British guy who has been working with Holt in China since the early 90’s. He seemed like a nice guy who likes to live in China. He seems like he is Holt’s man in China – he kind of runs the network (so to speak). The only family of the seven of us that isn’t present is David and Karla (with little Alayna). After lunch we went with Sherri and she loaded us on the bus to go to Tian’anmen Square.

Gate to the Forbidden City - Tian'anmen Square.

Birds-eye view of Tian'anmen Square (postcard).

Tian’anmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) is the south gate to the Imperial (Forbidden) City – built in the 18th year (1420) of Emperor Yongle’s reign in the Ming Dynasty. The Tian’anmen Square is a symbol of China & the capital Beijing, and it is the largest city square in the world. The building to the north (with Chairman Mao’s picture) is Tian’anmen, the entrance gate to the Forbidden City and the square is directly to the south. In the center of the square stands the Monument to the People’s Heroes, behind which is Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall. To the west is the Great Hall of the People and to the east is the National Museum of China. There are also 2 separate gates to the south of the square. The square serves as the site of grand assemblies on important and festive occasions. It was also the site of a disaster in 1989 when hundreds of students protesting for democracy were killed by Chinese soldiers representing the government.

Tian' anmen (note: you can always tell if it's a postcard by the blue sky).

National Museum of China.

A Monument to the People's Heroes.

Gate-tower over Zhengyangmen.

The Great Hall of the People.

Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall.

Sherri gave us about an hour to walk around so we walked around the outside of Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall and took some pictures. This is where I bought the couple of waving Mao watches (like 2 for 50 yuan or $6.63), and I bought a large kite and about 4 smaller kites that some people were flying in the square. It seems like the guy charged me 100 yuan ($13.24) for all 5 kites.

Waving Chairman Mao watches.

At one point a police car came racing up and all of the vendors just bailed out in whatever direction they could (it was kind of funny). I noticed like at The Great Wall taking pictures around this area really shows Beijing’s pollution problem. Because of the expansiveness of this square buildings in the distance were often lost in the haze. That is why in the picture version of this story I have supplemented our pictures with some postcard photos that are not hazy and show a more birds-eye view. The next place we went to in Beijing was the Temple Of Heaven, which isn’t far from Tian’anmen Square. Like the Tian’anmen Square it was also built during the 18th year (1420) of Emperor Yongle’s reign (Ming Dynasty). Under continual reconstruction and enlargement, The Temple of Heaven was finally completed in the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. This place was a huge landscaped compound of 273 hectares (675 acres), where the Ming and Qing emperors went to worship heaven and pray for bountiful harvests. The Temple Of Heaven is the largest and best-preserved ancient sacrificial architectural group in the world. Some of its famous architectures include the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, Circular Mound Altar, Imperial Vault of Heaven, Red Stairway Bridge, Long Corridor, Fasting Palace, Divine Music Administration and more than 600 ancient architectures of the Ming & Qing Dynasties. The Imperial Vault of Heaven is known as “Echo Wall” for its magic acoustical effect and it is the representation of Chinese ancient acoustical architectures. In addition there are Nine-Dragon Cypress, Seven-Star Stones, Sweet Spring Well, Posts of Watching Lights, Firewood Stoves, and large areas of cypresses. In 1918, the Temple of Heaven was opened to the public as a park. A lot of the buildings are reddish-brown in color with blue & green designs, and roofs. Since blue and green are 2 of my favorite colors maybe that is why I liked this place so much. Inside 2 of the circular buildings – the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests & the Imperial Vault of Heaven there is very intricate and colorful artwork on the walls and ceilings.

Temple of Heaven artwork example.

The Hall of Gathered Happiness.

Birds-eye view of The Hall Of Prayer For Good Harvests (postcard).

Hall Of Prayer For Good Harvests.

Echo Wall.

Birds-eye view of The Circular Mound Altar (postcard).

The Circular Mound Altar.

I took several photos of most of these impressive architectures and actually filled up the remainder of our digital camera’s memory – so I also took some pictures with our 35mm camera. I was so impressed with this place I told Cheryl that I wanted to work here on the grounds keeping and maintenance crews. The last place we visited here was the Circular Mound Altar which was a 3 leveled circular altar with nine steps to get to each level, and at the upper terrace there were nine circular rows of marble stones to walk across to reach a raised round marble stone in the center called the “Heavenly Center Stone”. This is the place where the emperors of the Ming & Qing Dynasties worshipped heaven on winter solstice every year – the official read aloud prayers to the God of Heaven; his voice was loud and resonant as if he was communicating with the gods.

The Temple Of Heaven.

Looking back toward The Imperial Vault of Heaven.

Looking toward the main gate.

On the way back to the Novotel we stopped at a place called the Jade Market. Cheryl and I thought this place was really cool. It was a 5 floor store that had jewelry related items on the 4th & 5th floors, but on the first 3 floors it was like a large flea market where they sold just about anything you could think of – it had electronics including video games, computers, cell phones, ipods, cameras and accessories, CD players, radios, etc. There were souvenirs of all types including rugs, clothes, t-shirts, scrolls, artwork, toys, statues, vases, etc. Just about anything you could think of and we could talk them down in price quite a bit. I bought a 2GB SD memory card for about 220 yuan ($29.14). We bought some shirts and some scrolls. I bought this weird dolphin electric massager for 20 yuan ($2.64). We also bought a nice pedicure kit for some ridiculously low price.

The Dolphin Massager (with attachments).

A typical Chinese electrical socket.

If we wouldn’t have been on the first leg of our trip we would’ve bought more. When we got back to the hotel it was getting around dinner time so we decided to check out the big mall on shopping street. Later we looked around for a good convenience store to buy normal supplies such as water, pop, snacks, etc. and we found a good place about 1 ½ blocks from the Novotel. Tomorrow we have our orientation – where we will find out about what is going to happen for the rest of our trip – including the most important part which is the journey to Hunan Province to receive our new daughter Xiao, Wen Xin (Jenna). On this night I woke up at about 2:30 a.m. and decided to go out and take some night pictures of Beijing. Obviously I should’ve gone out earlier because by this time a lot of the neon lights were off – but I did get the picture of the sleeping policemen on shopping street.

Catching some zzzzzz's on Shopping Street.

A neon sign outside our hotel fire escape.

July 15, 2007 - Our Orientation and The Forbidden City.

2009-02-06T12:11:00.000-08:00

Sunday July 15, 2007

After eating another breakfast buffet we met Sherri and David, Karla, with little Alayna in the Novotel lobby to drive over to Les Whittle’s office somewhere in Beijing. So we got to see more of the streets of Beijing and I took some more pictures. It was raining off and on in the morning.

The Funnel Building.

The CCTV Building

What this building will look like in the future, and a bit of background information.

CHINA

Nikolas Koenig, Conde Nast Traveler
CCTV Headquarters, Beijing

When Beijing had a building spree in advance of last year's Olympics, the Bird's Nest Stadium and Water Cube aquatic center snagged all the airtime. The capital's most recent revolutionary work, though, is just about to open and has already made headlines—the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, behind the main structure, went up in flames in February. Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas's OMA firm has taken the soaring skyscraper form and turned it on its head—and its side—to create a twisting, blocky doughnut. Home to China's state television network, the structure is a loop of diagonal steel webbing. For the CCTV Headquarters to become a reality, the power of an authoritarian state was required: The plans violated Beijing building codes, so a panel was convened to inspect and approve the radical design. "I cannot imagine it going up anywhere else," says Ole Scheeren, OMA's leader on the project (86-10-62103210; cctv.com).

Les Whittle in his offices.

The orientation was at these offices. Les gave us a slideshow presentation and a red book. We saw new pictures of Jenna, and we learned her sleeping, eating, and playing habits. We learned the itinerary for the rest of our trip – in Jenna’s Province (Hunan) in Changsha, where we will receive Jenna and do her adoption registration and notarization. We also learned what would happen at Guangzhou where we would complete all the visa paperwork and complete Jenna’s adoption.

New Jenna Photos from "The Red Book".

Jenna is a Monkey.

In larger print it says...People born in the Year of the Monkey are the erratic geniuses of the animal cycle. Clever, skillful, and flexible, they are remarkably inventive and original and can solve the most difficult problems with ease. There are few fields in which monkey people wouldn't be successful but they have a disconcerting habit of being too agreeable. They want to do things now, and if they cannot get started immediately, they become discouraged and sometimes leave their projects. Although good at making decisions, they tend to look down on others. Having common sense, Monkey people have a deep desire for knowledge and have excellent memories. Monkey people are strong willed but their anger cools quickly.

A Historical Summary of Jenna's Province "Hunan".

In larger print it says...Situated in the river valley along the lower reaches of the Xiang River, Changsha is the capital city of the Hunan province. The recorded history of Changsha can be traced back over 3,000 years. Tomb relics from primitive times witnessing the earliest of human activities have been discovered in the region. During the Spring and Autumn Period (770BC - 476BC)the area developed into an important town within the states of Chu, one of the seven warring states that existed before China's unification by Emperor Qin. After Emperor Qin unified the country, the town was set up as a county and later became the capital city of a state in the early Han Dynasty. In the dynasties that followed, the city experienced several expansions and during China's Qing dynasty (1644-1911) it developed into the political, economic, and cultural centre of Hunan Province.

Although not as ancient a capital city as Beijing, Nanjing or Xian, Changsha also has rich historical heritages including old wall remains, tomb sites, and religious temples and buildings. In 1904, after the signing of the 1903 Treaty of Shanghai between Japan and China, Changsha opened to foreign trade. The 'most favoured nation' principle allowed foreigners to establish themselves in Changsha, and large numbers of Europeans and Americans arrived to build factories, churches, and schools. Yale University established a college here, which eventually became a Medical Centre.

Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao) was born in 1893 in Shaoshan, a small village not far from Changsha. Hunan No. 1 Teachers Training School is where Mao attended classes between 1913 and 1918, he returned as a teacher and principal from 1920 to 1922. Today the village has become a memorial place for Chinese people to remember this extraordinary man. People erected a statue of the Chairman and have preserved the house he lived in as a tourist site.

Le Feng, a model worker and party member, was a Communist soldier whom the Communists lionised in 1963 after his death in a car accident. Posters of him selflessly assisting citizens, with his ever smiling face inculcating a sense of selfless duty to the nations comrades. A museum in Changsha shows photographs of him smiling over a washtub full of dirty socks.

Changsha people boast that they are the best gourmets in China and here people spend a lot of time eating. Xiang cuisine is one of the 'eight cuisines' in China and has a fine and delicate appearance and a hot and sour taste, the hot and heavy taste is an equal competitor to the spicy food of Sichuan. No matter what the features snacks are, 'stinky tofu', 'sister's rice' balls, or the spicy shrimps, the many types of delicious local food will not disappoint visitors.

Changsha people are also renowned for their acting and have created various traditional folk art performances of their own including the local operas, story telling, drum opera, acrobatics and other dramatic styles.

The famous "Stork" Card from Holt International.

The red book was a Godsend – it had 4 new pictures of Jenna along with the information I mentioned above. It also had historical information about the Hunan Province. It was like seeing the future of our whole purpose for being here in China. All during this adoption process up to this point we received such a small amount of information about Jenna. We know that in the future Jenna will have questions for us about her past, and there is just so much that we don’t know. One of our main goals while we are here in China and visiting Jenna’s Province was to try to find out as much as we can. As you will see later in this story I believe we accomplished as much as we could hope to toward this end.

China National Childrens Theater - a cool building on the way to The Forbidden City.

When we arrived back at the Novotel Cheryl & I decided to walk to the Forbidden City. It is actually located right down the street from the Novotel probably about 5 blocks away. Sherri told us that they were doing a lot of construction and renovation there (to prepare for the 2008 Olympics), so we would be limited in how much we could see. Sherri was our guide during our time in Beijing and she works for Lotus Travel. She was a lady who was probably in her 50’s age wise. Sherri spoke English well, was full of information, and knew the answers to most of our questions. The Forbidden City was a large ancient city that was actually to the north of Tian’anmen Square.

The Forbidden City Entrance.

Taihe Gate Square - The Forbidden City.

The Three Great Halls of The Forbidden City.

The Watchtower

The Forbidden City Watchtower (postcard).

The Forbidden City (now known as The Palace Museum) was the Imperial Palace during the Ming & Qing Dynasties. Over a span of more than 560 years, 24 emperors lived here. It houses a great variety of rare cultural relics and works of art. Covering 720,000 square meters (178 acres), the Forbidden City is the largest and most complete complex of ancient palatial structures in existence. It is basically a very large palace complex with many similarly architecture buildings that are all surrounded by a high stone wall, and a moat. All of the buildings are the same reddish-brown color, and their roofs are yellowish-orange slanted slate oriental style. It is a very cool place to see but there was significant portions of it currently not open to the public (us).

The Forbidden City Pavilion Of Eternal Spring (postcard).

Gates of Military Prowess.

On the outside of the wall Cheryl & I were walking back along one of the moats (or canals) and a lady shoved a Forbidden City book in my hand. I was going to buy it until I noticed it was written in German. I told her several times “I cannot read this book” but she probably didn’t understand & wouldn’t let me give it back to her. After several attempts she finally reluctantly took it back.

The Old Man on the block.

On the way back to the Novotel we stopped at the shopping street and we ate dinner at McDonalds and walked around the Mall – which was 6 or 7 stories high. There was a lot of construction going on there but there were still a lot of people around. It was pretty interesting to see what kinds of things are popular with the younger Chinese generation.

The Mall on Shopping Street - Beijing.

A Funky Vehicle near our hotel.

Since we knew we were leaving Beijing early tomorrow morning to go to Hunan/Changsha to receive our daughter Jenna – we decided to go back to our hotel room and start packing for our next flight. I went down to the desk to check-out and settle our bill for internet use, room service, items from the wet bar etc. The bill was 692 yuan ($94 – paid with Visa card) of which roughly 2/3rds of this was for internet use. We would turn in our card keys in the morning after one last breakfast buffet. Most of our group has already departed to their respective provinces to receive their children earlier on this day. We will depart early tomorrow morning and we will be the only Holt family going to Hunan.

My overall impression of Beijing – the capital of China is (despite the fact that it is huge (15 million people); crowded; and very hazy and polluted) it’s very impressive with its mixture of the ancient sites we visited and the new impressive buildings and architecture. Everywhere we went there were new buildings under construction. They are preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games which will be held in Beijing. I think it would be both exciting and absolutely crazy to live here. Cheryl & I had a very good time here. I took a lot of pictures and video to help my memories along, but they can’t really do what we saw any justice. Fortunately we have some aerial and panoramic photos of professional quality that were in the books and postcard packets we purchased at every ancient site we visited to help supplement our story somewhat better. They also provided us with the facts to describe these places better than we could have otherwise.

Part II - Changsha (Hunan Province of China).

2009-02-06T12:04:00.001-08:00

July 16, 2007 - GOTCHA DAY! (Monday).

At around 7 a.m. we went downstairs to eat our last breakfast buffet at the Novotel, and then we went back upstairs to get our luggage. In the lobby we turned in our room cards at the front desk and we met up with a lady who wasn’t Sherri, who took us to the van that would take us back to the Beijing International Airport. We left at 8 a.m. or so and arrived at the airport in a little under an hour. We received our new boarding passes for our flight to Changsha. We checked our luggage, went through security, and then we proceeded to our gate which was in a large circular area of the airport.

The Circular Gate Area - Beijing Airport.

Our China Southern Flight CZ3124.

Loading up our plane to Changsha.

Our Departure Gate.

Our China Southern flight CZ3124 departed Beijing at 11:15 a.m., and as soon as we got above the clouds we saw the blue skies again. This flight took a little over 2 hours and we were flying south. This jet we were on was of the puddle jumper variety – small but comfortable and it seemed to be running OK.

China - Hunan Province - Changsha.

Hunan Province's location within China.

Map of Hunan Province - Changsha & Zhuzhou City.

Looking down on Hunan (Jenna’s homeland) it looked very rural and very green with lots of agriculture and plant life. There were lots of square and rectangular rice paddies, and at times it even looked like a jungle down there, and I noticed that the soil was red. Changsha is another large crowded Chinese city with over 2 million people but this is only a fraction of the size of Beijing. Pollution doesn’t seem to be a problem here, for there were sunny blue (partly cloudy) skies all around. We arrived at the Changsha Airport at around 1:30 p.m. After we found our checked luggage and made it through security we met up with our new guide Shirley Wang. Shirley was a lot more personable and upbeat than Sherri our guide in Beijing. On the drive to our hotel we found out that she was an English teacher at a university, and she didn’t live in Hunan. In other words she had to travel here to be our guide, but she had been a guide here before so she was somewhat familiar with Changsha. Our driver was a young man in his mid 20’s and he drove a Toyota van that had good air conditioning, which was a good thing because Changsha was very hot and very humid. It reminded me of what it’s like in the summer in Florida. We soon noticed that Changsha had several palm trees – a sure sign that the temperature never gets below freezing here.

The Dolton Hotel Waterfall.

Looking Up at The Dolton Hotel.

The Dolton Hotel (side view from a distance).

We made it to our new hotel – The Dolton Hotel, which didn’t have a gold revolving door out front. It did however have a big working waterfall there. It had very friendly valets/bellhops as you enter who immediately help you with the doors and our bags. The lobby is just as fancy (if not more so) than the Novotel’s – marble floors, columns, and stairways. Up above there is a huge chandelier. We are amazed that apparently we can afford to stay at such a place. Shirley helped us check into our room 3122 on the 31st floor and told us to go up & relax and meet her back here in the lobby at 5 p.m. at which time we will go to the Civil Affairs Office to receive our daughter. As you can imagine we are pretty excited! It has all come down to this – how will it go? This will be our 4th time meeting and receiving a new child and we know it’s a time that is filled with so many different emotions and different results. Will our new daughter fear us and think we are strange, or will she go with the flow and adapt to us quickly? Will the rest of our time in China be a struggle for all 3 of us, or will it continue to be a good time that we will never forget? How much will we be able to learn about the 3+ years of our new daughter’s life that we were not there for?

The Dolton entrance.

The 31st Floor elevators.

We noticed that the elevators didn’t have a 14th floor (it had a 15A and 15B floor). I asked Shirley about this and she told us that 14 is an unlucky number and is associated with death in China. However the numbers 6, 8, & 9 are lucky numbers. Shirley mentioned that a lot of Chinese are obsessed or at least superstitious about numbers. Room 3122 at the Dolton was a regular room with one large closet (with a lockbox) to the left, a decent sized bathroom to the right that had a picture (sticker) of the 2 poong poongies on the toilet lid (the fart king & queen of Korea and maybe even China).

Poong Poongie.

It had a shower/bathtub which turned out to be important. There were 2 good sized beds that were a little softer than the hard bed back at the Novotel. There was a desk with chair, a large dresser, TV, fridge, and a table with chairs. I ordered some ice and grabbed a $4 coke (yes I’m laughing) from the wet bar. We cleaned up, changed clothes and relaxed. I hooked up our laptop computer the same way as before and got online. We found out that the internet connection at this hotel was free. Soon it was 5 p.m. and time to go meet Jenna at the Civil Affairs Office so we met Shirley and the driver down in the lobby. The drive in the cool Toyota van to the CA Office took about 15 minutes.

The Changsha Civil Affairs Office was a non-descript brick building that was just off a main street. We took the elevator up to the 3rd floor and went to a waiting room where we immediately saw our pretty little pixie girl Jenna and 3 ladies from her orphanage. Jenna walked up to me and let me pick her up, and I gave her a hug. I held Jenna for a little while as the ladies were all talking with Shirley and Cheryl (with Shirley translating as usual). Jenna had the photo album that we had sent to her orphanage earlier and she pointed at a picture of me and then at me, and she did the same with Cheryl. We knew Jenna would be small, but she felt incredibly light to me. Jenna weighs about 27.5 lbs. and is 34” tall – pretty small for a 3-year-old. Soon I realized I wanted to get video of this occasion so I handed Jenna off to Cheryl and got the camera out to take video. Jenna seemed like a very pleasant-natured, very cute little girl. The following is some of what they told us about our new daughter… They said her main food is cow’s milk based formula & congee, meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, noodles, & rice. They said she loves to eat and doesn’t pick at her food. Her eating schedule is at 7 a.m. she eats noodles, steamed bun, congee or cake and 8 ounces of formula. At 11:30 a.m. she eats rice, pork, and vegetables. Wen Xin eats dinner at 5:30 p.m. They also mentioned that she snacks on fruits and snacks between her meals. Wen Xin eats with a bowl & spoon by herself. She is potty trained and when she has to go pee she says “niao niao”. She wears diapers at night and sometimes wets at night. They give her praise by telling her she is beautiful and that everybody loves her. They discipline her by telling her they don’t love her anymore (what!?!) We hope that maybe something was lost in translation but maybe not. Wen Xin’s sleeping schedule is bed time 8 p.m. – 7 a.m. with a nap from 12 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. so apparently she sleeps over 13 hours total each day. She sleeps alone on her back with the lights off, and she prefers a quiet environment. She is bathed each night about a half hour after supper – she loves baths. They mentioned Wen Xin loves to sing & dance and she likes new and colorful toys. She loves outdoor activities, and she loves to play on the playground preferring the slide. They said that Wen Xin has no dislikes whatsoever. She is able to walk freely and go up and down stairs, and she can run and jump. She can reach objects high up with the help of a chair (in other words we have a climber). She can express her feelings with simple actions. She can put on and take off her shoes (never had shoes with shoe laces). She is able to turn the pages of books and draw with a pencil. She can say simple Chinese words like “hao nai nai” (good grandmother), “lai” (come), “hao” (good), “niao niao” (pee pee), and “cha” (tea). Wen Xin is able to follow simple orders such as “take the chair”, “bring the cup”, and “bring younger sister here”. She is able to mimic some actions of adults. When she is angry or upset they calm her down by taking her out to play (we didn’t ask if this still works at nighttime). They also mentioned that Wen Xin has no allergies. I was trying to ask the questions we had while videoing everything and it was quite a balancing act, but it sure helps us with remembering all of their answers. It was sometimes hard to hear Shirley’s translations because she was talking so softly. I also asked them if Wen Xin is shy or outgoing, and how does she get along with the other children, and they replied that she was outgoing and gets along very well with the other children. I must say I was thinking she seems almost like a dream.

Throughout this discussion Cheryl was holding Jenna and she was very quiet and calm. Whenever someone said something to her sometimes she would give a quick smile. One of the ladies was the orphanage director for the Zhuzhou SWI (Social Welfare Institute), and the other two ladies were caregivers of Jenna and the other children she lived with. They told us that Jenna still sleeps in a crib. They gave us a photo album that was inside a Zhuzhou SWI bag (a nice little souvenir) with several pictures of Jenna that were probably taken earlier this year, but there was one picture in it that they took when they first received Jenna when she was 1 ½ months old. This is the earliest photo of Jenna that we have. Jenna must not have been aware that she was going to be left behind with strangers because when she became aware that was the case she began to get distressed and soon started crying. Everyone was trying to calm her down. We asked the director if we could receive the note that was with Jenna when she was found (her finding note) and she said “yes”. We also asked if we could visit the orphanage and see where Jenna lived – to which she also said “yes”. We had some paperwork we had to fill out and sign for the orphanage. Fortunately we wrote down what questions we wanted to ask them before the meeting or I think I would’ve had trouble remembering them. During these visits my brain is on information overload and there are so many emotions involved as well. Meeting our new child is a very momentous occasion – one we will never forget. When the 3 ladies left Jenna continued to fuss but we soon were able to calm her down. She wasn’t happy but she was calm. Tomorrow we would have to come back to this office to do Jenna’s adoption registration and notarization. Basically what this means is Jenna will officially become our daughter. On the ride home Jenna remained quiet & calm and she was watching all of the traffic. There is always a lot happening in these large Chinese cities – it was now between 6 & 7 p.m. and the streets were busy and noisy, lots of car horns honking. Cheryl & I were pretty pleased with how things went, what we learned, and with how Jenna was doing. We were glad that we were going to get to visit Jenna’s orphanage and maybe even her finding place – the spot where she was abandoned at 1 ½ months old. I remember wondering what Jenna was feeling, probably a combination of scared, confused, sad, yet curious. I could tell that she was getting more comfortable with Cheryl all of the time. I had a good positive feeling that things were going to be OK.

Jenna's double vision.

You looking at me?

On our first night with our new daughter Jenna we found out that this small, shy little girl was actually quite playful and spunky. It took her a little while to completely come out of her shell back in room 3122, but when she did she showed us her personality. I ordered ice as usual and we ordered room service. Cheryl ordered some kind of Chinese dish with noodles and meat with sides of different fruit. I just ordered chicken nuggets with fries. We fed Jenna from both of our plates and she ate enthusiastically. She especially liked the noodles and the fries.

Eating noodles with mommy.

Later I gave Jenna some M&M’s and she gobbled them right up. She was my buddy until I ran out of M&M’s. We gave Jenna a magnetic drawing pad and she drew us some scribbles. Jenna is an explorer who needs to check out her surroundings. Later Cheryl gave Jenna a bath which Jenna loved – she was splashing and laughing, having a good ole time. It was great to see her smiling and laughing so much.

Jenna after her 1st bath.

Since we discovered that Jenna still slept in a crib we called down to the front desk to have them bring a crib up to our room and they soon delivered a wooden crib. I took several pictures of Jenna & Cheryl on this night, and there is one picture that I got of Jenna laying in her crib and Cheryl laying on the bed next to the crib and they are looking at each other with fondness.

Goodnight Sweet Princess. Tomorrow we begin our lives together.

Jenna and Cheryl went right to sleep and I stayed up and typed up an update to send to friends and family. I didn’t send an update every night, but I sent at least 5 or 6 while we were in China. It almost seems unreal that we began this day in Beijing and here we are now in a new place with our new daughter – what a day!

July 17, 2007 - Registration Day - Shopping at Wal-Mart.

2009-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

We awoke around 7 a.m. and Jenna was still sleeping. She is a good sleeper just like her caretakers told us. We woke Jenna up just before we went down to the breakfast buffet. New hotel – same great breakfasts except this place had even better breakfast buffets than the Novotel. I know that I never left breakfast wanting and often ate enough that lunch was usually unnecessary. It was pretty clear that Jenna was bonding with Cheryl before me (which is typical and quite expected) so Cheryl minded Jenna while I fetched the food for us all. I’m not complaining because Cheryl pretty much had to carry Jenna everywhere we went to help facilitate the bonding process, and also because Jenna didn’t like to walk much – she likes to be carried. Cheryl had her carrier and Jenna is very light, but it still gets hard sometimes I’m sure, but Cheryl is not a complainer. We soon verified that Jenna loves to eat fruit and vanilla yogurt and a little bit of everything else. We could definitely tell that having so many choices of things to eat was new to Jenna and she was taking full advantage.

When we were finished at about 8:30 a.m. we went to the lobby to meet Shirley and we entered the Toyota van to head back to the Civil Affairs Office. Another hot & humid day in the 90’s in Changsha but the AC was working in the van. We arrive at the C/A Office around 9 a.m. and there are 3 other families in the waiting room. One was a mother with a 3-year-old daughter with short hair, who seemed to have cerebral palsy. The mother wasn’t a single mother; the father had to stay at home in North Carolina to watch the rest of their children. Another family there was from Alexandria Kentucky and had 2 Chinese daughters – one who was 4 or 5 whom they previously adopted, and a 4-year-old daughter that they were adopting this trip. It turns out this daughter was from the same orphanage as Jenna and knew her well. There was another family there who had a young biological daughter and they were adopting a 3 or 4-year-old daughter (we never spoke so we don’t know anything about them). We all took turns doing the adoption registration. This waiting room (like many other place in China that we noticed) had air conditioning blowing cold air in, but they also had the windows open which allowed hot air from the outside to also blow in. They don’t seem to be aware that not only doesn’t this allow the a/c to work but it is really inefficient power wise. The only cool place in this room was standing right in front of the a/c vents. The waiting room had wooden benches around the perimeter of the large room and row of wooden benches in the middle of the room. I remember it also had several maps of China on the walls, and a drinking fountain with warm water.

Jenna and Cheryl in Changsha's Civil Affairs Office.

When it was our turn we went into an office with 2 young ladies, one of whom is very pregnant. It appeared like the pregnant lady was training her replacement. They took a picture of the 3 of us (which later appeared on our adoption registration) and they asked us some simple questions like will we promise to always care for our daughter and meet her needs. Then we had to sign some paperwork and Jenna had to put her foot on a red ink pad and give them her footprint. Then they congratulated us on the successful adoption of our new daughter as we wiped the ink off of Jenna’s foot.

Jenna's footprint on her adoption registration.

Then we had to go back out to the waiting room to wait to get all of the necessary papers notarized. We found out later that Shirley was busy working at getting us the necessary governmental approval that would be necessary for us to visit Jenna’s orphanage. It seems we only had the orphanage director’s permission but we also needed the government’s permission to visit the orphanage. Soon we went into a large fancier office with leather chairs and long tables and a young man in a military uniform was behind a large desk. He was the notary and apparently I had to pay him some money before he would notarize our paperwork – 600 yuan ($80). So I paid him and he notarized the necessary paperwork. Then the army notary congratulated us and we were finished with Jenna’s adoption from her province! Now it is about 11 a.m. and soon we are in the van riding back to the Dolton Hotel. On the way back I noticed a small shop that had stuffed animals in its front windows. Cheryl & I both noticed that it had a couple of stuffed Pikachu’s. Pikachu is a Pokemon character that is our son Alex’s favorite. In fact he brought a stuffed pikachu home with him from Korea and he loved it – he took it everywhere until he finally wore it out. We asked Shirley & the driver if they could turn around and go back to that shop. So we went back and Shirley & I went inside this shop. It turns out they sold children’s beds here at this shop. I asked Shirley to ask the lady shopkeeper if the Pikachu’s were for sale. She replied that they were just decorations, but that she would sell them to me for 150 yuan ($20 – or $10 per pikachu). I agreed and paid her 200 yuan ($27) and told her to keep the change, and I thanked her because obviously she could’ve easily said “no sale.” So now we had 2 new stuffed pikachu’s – one pikachu for Alex and another for Jenna.

The Pikachu's we bought in Changsha.

A recent picture of Alex and his Pikachu Army.

So we left Shirley in the lobby back at the hotel. We were going to meet up with her later for a trip to the local Changsha Wal-Mart so we could shop for some toys and clothes for Jenna, and some supplies for us. Back at the room we just had snacks for lunch and we decide to take Jenna to the playroom that they had at this hotel.

Jenna in the Dolton's playroom.

Jenna's friend from her orphanage.

A view of Changsha from the 33rd floor playroom.

Same view from a different direction.

The playroom was up on the 33rd floor and had a large panoramic view of Changsha from the front of the hotel outward. The playroom had a lot of toys of all types and Jenna enjoyed herself every time she played here. One of the families that we met at the C/A office was also at this playroom. Their names are Tim & Jackie (the ones from Kentucky) and the 2 Chinese daughters. The daughter they just received (Gracie) was 4-years-old and her and Jenna were from the same orphanage and they knew each other. Gracie’s special need is syndactyly (webbing of hands and feet). Her hands were corrected but her feet still had some webbing. Gracie is a very cute, active, and a sharp child. She is roughly ½ year older than Jenna but significantly more advanced mentally & physically, except Gracie had very skinny arms & legs (maybe related to having synactyly). The kids had fun playing and we talked with this family for awhile. They were also going to visit the same orphanage – but since we are with different agencies we have different guides and drivers. They were still waiting for the government’s permission to visit (like us). We would run into them often – sometimes at breakfast and sometimes at the playroom on the 33rd floor. We even ran into them once in the lobby of the White Swan in Guangzhou. Cheryl actually had e-mail contact with Jackie a couple of months before we came to China through a Zhuzhou Families Yahoo website. Tim mentioned that they arrived in Changsha the same day we did, but they received Gracie at the C/A Office before we were there to receive Jenna. Jenna was there earlier while they were there and he introduced himself to her. Our paths just kept crossing again and again it seemed.

At 3:30 p.m. we met Shirley in the lobby and we went to the local Wal-Mart. It wasn’t a very long drive – only about 10 minutes. The Wal-Mart on the outside looked like any other shopping area in China (except for the familiar blue & white sign saying “Wal-Mart”). Inside it looked like a normal Wal-Mart except for it had 2 or 3 floors and it had escalators between the floors. The carts were slightly smaller and they had grooved wheels which allowed the carts to ride the escalators securely. So I’m pushing the cart and Cheryl is carrying Jenna in her carrier, and she is being a quiet trooper as always. We looked for toys for Jenna – bath toys such as rubber duckies, balloons, a talking cell phone, a doll, etc. We bought her some Chinese music CD’s and some kids DVD’s popular with Chinese children (according to the salesperson). We bought her some cute outfits and pajamas. We bought various snacks and beverages. We bought another piece of large rolling luggage with a lock and strap (we are allowed to fly with another checked piece of luggage now that we have Jenna). At one point while we were there a young girl (maybe 14 or 15-years-old) came up to me and said hello to me and I replied “hello, how are you” back to her. She giggled and ran off. A little bit later someone came up behind me and slapped me hard on the back - I was wearing my backpack so it didn’t hurt or anything. I looked to see who it was and it was that same girl running off again. Kind of a strange occurrence – maybe she was doing it on a dare or something. By the time we were done shopping we had a cartful. The total of the bill was 980 yuan ($129.80) and I had wanted to pay by Visa card. Turns out Wal-Mart in Changsha doesn’t accept Visa so I had to hand over 1,000 yuan. We were able to load everything up in the suitcase and we just rolled it out to where our driver parked. It’s not like they have a parking lot where you can wheel a cart out and load up your vehicle with groceries.

I remember while we were shopping at Wal-Mart it was the first time I had the conscious thought of ‘hey – I’m a white guy in China’ - it just didn’t occur to me before. Probably because this is the first place we went to in our trip where I was aware that we were being noticed way more than normal. We are accustomed to being a couple faces in the crowd where hardly anyone notices us and we are comfortable with that. I’m also not really conditioned to use race and/or color as a qualifier for any person. People have both similarities and differences and often race/color is one of many differences between people. Now here we are in a place where we are unusual enough to be noticed a lot – we are a White couple with a Chinese child. It felt kind of weird but it’s certainly not the first time I’ve felt that way. I understand why we are a puzzling sight for them to see. Everyone has their own opinions about what is normal and it is just human nature to be curious about something or some people who are different from their idea of “normal”. I remember once someone asked me how I can raise children that are all a different race/color than me. I basically replied that their race/color isn’t even a factor – I don’t think of them as being a different race/color, I just think of them as my children whom I love dearly. It’s the same with the fact that they are adopted – I know they are adopted but I don’t think of them that way. It is absolutely a non-factor – they are our children “period”. If others feel the need to add the qualifiers such as “race/color” or “adopted” that is fine for them but for us it is unnecessary. I don’t think I’m in denial – I just think that qualifying words just muck things up. I like to keep things simple whenever possible and it’s almost always possible. The bottom line is all the feelings that we have in our hearts for our children made such qualifiers completely unnecessary and useless.

Back at the hotel Jenna had fun playing with her new toys, especially her cell phone. We ordered room service again – Cheryl ordered a rice dish of some sort and I just ordered a hamburger with fries. I like rice as much as the next person but when it has too many other things in it that I can’t identify then I have a problem with it – however Cheryl & Jenna have no such hang-ups. Jenna once again helped us eat with much enthusiasm. Jenna later took a bath with her 5 new little rubber duckies and again with all the splashing, squealing, and laughter. Jenna loves it when Cheryl holds her in her arms and spins around; she also likes to throw herself backward so she ends up upside-down, then Cheryl lifts her back up. Jenna seems to love to laugh so she should fit right in with our family. So far our hotel room seems to be Jenna’s favorite place, she becomes visibly excited every time we come home (or the closest place we have to a home in China). Tomorrow we are going on a tour of an embroidery museum. The Hunan Province is famous for its world class embroidery art and clothing. It is also well known for its extremely spicy food and as the birthplace of Chairman Mao. So how could we not visit an embroidery museum? I was looking at a book that was in our hotel room about the Hunan Province and it showed a lot of scenic pictures and had some interesting information about China & the Hunan Province. I later asked the front desk if these books were for sale and they said yes – for 100 yuan ($13.25) – so I bought it for us, and so Jenna could see these beautiful pictures of where she lived her first few years and probably her homeland (we assume). Once again Jenna slept through the night no problem.

July 18, 2007 - Hunan Embroidery Museum Tour.

2009-02-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

We got to sleep in a little later than normal this morning, we woke up a little before 8 a.m. and had to wake up our little sleeping beauty again when we were ready to go down to the breakfast buffet at the coffee shop. Not only does Jenna sleep a lot but she is a heavy sleeper as well. After breakfast we met Shirley for our trip to the Hunan Embroidery Museum at 9:30 a.m. It was just a short drive away from the hotel and it was also just off of a main street. It had a nice koi pond out front. The front façade of the building was sheet metal but the whole building wasn’t sheet metal.

Shirley, Cheryl, and our driver in front of the Hunan Embroidery Museum.

Cheryl, Jenna, and Shirley (our guide).

Inside there were many pictures of all sizes of landscapes, different animals and wildlife, portraits of different people, flowers and trees, etc. They were all framed with metal or wood frames and some had stands. The pictures were all stitched with very fine colorful thread. It was very impressive artwork and it was all for sale if you had thousands to spend. We just had to settle for pictures of some of these pictures from our camera and some of them turned out OK. I liked the landscape pictures but Cheryl liked the flower and wildlife pictures. They also had some clothing – Chinese traditional outfits and accessories, all embroidered. We purchased an outfit for Jenna and bought some purses and coin purses.

Anyone have room for this one?

A landscape picture.

The Tigers.

Floral Picture.

Chairman Mao meets the people he oppresses.

Next we went to another building which is the factory where the ladies do the stitching for the items that are sold in the shop. There is another scenic koi pond between these 2 buildings. In the factory we entered a large room where there were several rows of long tables with ladies busy stitching various pictures. There was a banner hanging across the back of this room that said “Fashion a state stitch work in Full pashion to Honour the country” in English with Chinese characters below this sentence.

Where the embroidery artists work.

A work in process.

It seemed like a very casual atmosphere where some converse with their neighbor, and I remember one lady was even talking on a cell phone – but they were keeping busy with their stitching. I just walked around to each of the stations to see what they were doing and they paid me no mind. One lady was working on a really cool picture of a tiger that she was copying from a photograph – her embroidered picture looked exactly like the photograph (except she wasn’t finished yet). Almost all of what they were working on was very impressive. I don’t know a lot about art but I know good art when I see it and this was excellent art. I can see why it is so expensive to buy. Cheryl was carrying Jenna in her carrier as usual and she was being inconspicuous as usual.

Back in the a/c cooled Toyota van we were back at the hotel by lunchtime. It is hot and humid outside as usual. Shirley showed us the form she received by fax that was approval from the powers-that-be that gives us permission to visit the Zhuzhou SWI (Jenna’s orphanage) so she told us we could go tomorrow. She let us know that since it was an unscheduled trip that we would have to pay for the transportation (whatever it may be) to which we said “no problem”.

Orphanage visit approval.

Since we were the only Holt family here in Changsha at the time and Shirley was our exclusive guide she decided not to collect petty cash from us up front for admissions and tips. I told her to make sure she lets us know when it is appropriate (or expected) for us to give a tip and how much (because we have no clue about such things in China). Shirley told us when they dropped us off at the airport when we leave that I should give the driver a tip of 300 yuan ($39.75) or 50 yuan for each time he drove us somewhere. While we were still standing by the front door of the hotel I mentioned that I wanted to go to the shop next door to buy a couple of cold cans of coke. Shirley looked kind of surprised that I would want to venture out into Changsha by myself so she offered to come with me. It was kind of funny but I didn’t let on – it was just next door. Add to this the fact that I have no reservations whatsoever about going out and about any place in China. Shirley just felt like our safety was her responsibility. So we went to the shop and I bought my 2 cans of coke for 5 yuan.

The little shop next door.

We liked Shirley – she was probably around our age and she was always a pleasant person and never complained about anything. She showed interest in us as people and she often interacted with Jenna. Plus she was knowledgeable about her job and she did it well. Of all the people (Chinese) we met in China she was my favorite.

Back at the room we had more room service food for lunch, and then Cheryl and Jenna headed for the playroom for awhile while I sent out some e-mails on our laptop computer. At some point Shirley called us up and asked us if we would check our adoption registration paperwork, as well as the abandonment paperwork to make sure there were no spelling errors. She told us that they were being very careful because a family that was in Guangzhou recently for their child’s visa had spelling errors on their paperwork from the province so that family actually had to return to the province to get it redone correctly. Just imagine the added costs involved with that kind of error. Later I decided to walk around the neighborhood and check out the streets of Changsha on foot. It was around 5 p.m. so the streets were very busy. I took some pictures whenever I saw something I thought was interesting.

The "Overseas Chinese Building".

Changsha school children.

The "Space Needle" building down the street from our hotel.

Since I was alone I was inconspicuous – hardly anyone gave me a second glance. I didn’t go into any shops or anything – I just wanted to look around and take pictures. If I would’ve seen a music shop I would’ve went in – back in Beijing I saw a few music shops from the bus and I thought I would love to check out a music store in China. In the back of my mind I was looking for a good place to eat that wasn’t hotel room service, or a Chinese restaurant. No such luck on that count but now I know what the streets of Changsha are like. At one place they were doing building construction in front of a bunch of shops. The builders were working outside on the sidewalk cutting plywood and they didn’t have the area cordoned off. As a result people were walking right through this work area. I’m guessing they don’t have anything like OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Admistration) in Changsha.

Changsha construction area.

A bit later I was walking past a building and a door opened up in front of me and several men came out and rushed past me. They were all wearing flak jackets and some were carrying short-barreled, pump-action shotguns. A couple of them were carrying leather bags which they loaded up into the back of a waiting van, which sped off after it was loaded. The storm troopers climb into another van that also sped off. I thought about taking a picture but I figured they might take my camera (and they had all the firepower). Then I remember the guy singing & playing his acoustic guitar in the underpass walkway (a walkway that goes under busy streets). He was pretty good and was aided by the good acoustics of the underpass.

The Guitar Man in the underpass.

An older building.

I also remembered seeing that a lot of the high rise apartment buildings were older and many windows had window unit air conditioners. I wondered how secure they actually are and whether some actually come loose and fall to the ground below – some of them just looked dicey to me. For example some of them had pieces of 2x4’s for bracing – well wood rots over time, especially untreated or unpainted wood. I have always liked walking the streets of big cities – there is always so much activity going on that it is exciting to me. I guess if I had to do it everyday it would get old quickly but it isn’t something I do much because we live in a rural area.

The "V-shaped" building in Changsha.

I call this one "the Dolton Rocks" because they are cool rocks on display at the Dolton.

Back at the Dolton for supper, having about gotten completely sick of the room service options for a meal, I decided to try the take-out option. Since we now have Jenna skipping meals is no longer an option. In the room menus it says that you can call the concierge to order pizza from Pizza Hut and he can do it for us. They had a menu with different sizes and toppings but a lot of the toppings were strange – like corn, potatoes, fish, etc. There was one that seemed good – pepperoni. I called down to the concierge for him to have a large pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut delivered to our room. Within about 40 minutes it was delivered to us for the price of 190 yuan ($25.16) which included the cost of the cab to deliver it to us. This is cheaper than most room service meals and it tasted just like they make at home – good! Jenna liked pizza as well. It was nice to eat something that was somewhat familiar to us (other than the excellent breakfast buffets – I mean it’s not like we were starving). Jenna’s in a happy playful mood as usual and we are playing silly games with her – she is easily amused. She loves Cheryl and is OK with me as long as I don’t pick her up – she’s not ready for that yet. Jenna’s way of telling us she has to go potty is standing by the bathroom door and pointing inside and saying “niao niao” (pee). She tells us she has to go poop by pointing at her butt, and grunting with a pained expression. She isn’t quite big enough to climb up onto the toilet by herself. Jenna’s way of telling us she wants a bath is to take her clothes off and streaking around the room. Jenna gets her bath as usual and it’s soon time for sleeping. Tomorrow we will visit Jenna’s home for the last 3+ years, the Zhuzhou Social Welfare Institute (orphanage).

July 19, 2007 - Journey to Zhuzhou SWI - Jenna's Finding Place.

2009-02-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

Thursday, July 19, 2007

We woke up Jenna, got her dressed and went down for the breakfast buffet just after 7 a.m. Later we met Shirley in the lobby and were surprised to find that our driver would be our usual driver. We thought we were going to have to take a cab or something. Our destination this morning (Zhuzhou City) is about 100 km (62 miles) away from Changsha.

Our Trip Map from Changsha to Zhuzhou City.

Shirley told us that the driver would take us to the orphanage and the park (Shennong Park – Jenna’s finding place) for 250 yuan ($33.11). I gave him 300 yuan. Shirley mentioned that neither she nor the driver had ever been to this orphanage before but she was going to call for the orphanage for directions once we get to the city – they were expecting us there. Before we left we asked Shirley if she could explain to Jenna that we were going back to her orphanage just to visit, and that when we left she would be coming back home with us. Shirley explained this to Jenna and I have no idea how much she understood. So off we went on this interesting journey feeling pretty good. We were expecting that we would have to ride in some crowded cab that may or may not have air conditioning, and who knows how much a trip such as this would’ve cost. Now we are riding in a familiar vehicle that is roomy and has good a/c, and the price seemed very reasonable to us. I remember once I was talking to Tim about the prices in China and he mentioned that we had to try to see the costs of goods and services in the same frame-of-reference as the Chinese, not by our own experience of the costs of goods and services back home in the U.S.A. Maybe that is easier for him because he had been here in China before, but I had a hard time doing this – I couldn’t help but use my own frame-of-reference of prices that I have from living in the U.S.A. As a result when someone would tell me how much something would cost I would think “well how much would a similar item or service cost back home”, and then I would compare the two. I simply don’t have nearly enough experience in China to see things the same way the Chinese see them. I can see where Tim is coming from though – he believes that in China you should try to negotiate lower with any price, and they will let you know if that price is negotiable or not. My view is sometimes it’s probably inappropriate to even try to negotiate the price – we sometimes should just pay the price if it’s a good or service we want or need. Speaking of Tim, they were going to be making this same trip today but they will arrive at the orphanage at a later time after we have left. So we are riding through Changsha in the cool Toyota van in a south-easterly direction and I’m taking more pictures out the windows. This was always somewhat hampered by the fact that this van has tinted windows and is usually traveling at a high rate of speed. We only ride on the expressway out of town for a short time and then our driver takes the government roads, which are best described as “the scenic route”.

The 3 Riders.

An old abandoned Sinopec station.

Transporting windows.

The rural farmland.

So on this drive not only did we get to see more of Changsha, but we saw several villages and lots of rural area (farmland). It is clear that agriculture is important in the Hunan Province. I saw several farmers working their fields with and without machinery. I saw women washing clothes in creeks and ponds. Some of the villages looked very poor and one had a landfill right off of the main road. Overall the countryside was beautiful – often very lush and green despite the fact that the soil is a reddish color. We went through one town that had several farm implement stores and some which sold heavy equipment such as cranes, road graders, bulldozer’s etc. Another town near Zhuzhou had several shops which sold all terrain vehicles and cart-like vehicles similar to John Deere Gators.

The Gator-like vehicles.

Our driver as I mentioned earlier is a young man in his 20’s and he is a very bold and aggressive driver. He drove like he owned the road and I do believe that he did own the road. Several of his exploits caused Cheryl and me to giggle. He has amazing depth perception and could squeeze into the tightest spots, and create space where just an instant before there wasn’t any. He played chicken with vehicles and rarely was the one to back down. I was amazed that there didn’t seem to be any scratches or dents on his van. He was driving a van with a manual transmission (clutch) but it felt like he was driving one with an automatic transmission. He was without a doubt – the road warrior of Changsha.

Riding through Zhuzhou City.

A casual rider.

Near the Zhuzhou SWI Orphanage.

Soon when we reached Zhuzhou City, Shirley called the orphanage and asked for directions on how to get there. It took a couple of different calls and the orphanage person talking on the phone directly to the driver, but we made it there sometime before 10 a.m. We go through a brick and iron gate, down a curved driveway to our right and we are there. It is 2 large white buildings which sort of resemble older style hospitals. I notice that most of the windows are open & some have curtains which are flapping in the breeze. The breeze in Hunan is not cool – it is hot, and the fact that the windows are open means it’s hot inside these buildings. These 2 buildings which face each other toward the driveway are on a little over an acre of land which is surrounded by a brick wall. There are apartment buildings all around on the outside of these walls. There is a decent sized playground for the children on the orphanage property. One of the ladies who we met a few days earlier when we first received Jenna came to greet us and she guided us to the building to our right. This building seemed like it was an administrative building and we walked into a large room that was just inside the entrance. There was a young man here who introduced himself as the assistant orphanage director. He thanked us for adopting Xiao, Wen Xin and he explained that the goal of their orphanage was to find homes for all their children. We told him thank you for caring for Jenna so well, and that it was a privilege for us to adopt Jenna as our daughter. He explained to us that the Zhuzhou SWI was the largest and best orphanage in the Hunan Province for special needs children, and that there were only special needs children at this orphanage, anywhere from 200 – 300 at one time. I remember we thanked him for allowing us to tour the orphanage. He gave us a gift of some Chinese collector stamps – which are now part of a collage that I made for Jenna that is hanging in a hallway at home. He also gave us Wen Xin’s finding notes (there were 2 of them). We asked Shirley to translate them and she just said that it was her birth date.

The Zhuzhou SWI Administrative Building.

The Assistant Orphanage Director and us.

Jenna's Finding Note Cover.

Jenna's Finding Note.

Shirley going over paperwork with the directors.

Next the lady guided us to the other building across the way which was where the children live. We decided earlier that we would just let them guide us and show us what they wanted. We had already seen the indoor playroom and classrooms in pictures of the photo album they gave us at the C/A office when we first received Jenna. There was a red banner with white letters across the front above the entrance that read “Thanks every Family’s love for the kids.”

Jenna's Orphanage

Inside Jenna's Orphanage - heading toward her living area.

It was a clean place that had murals of children’s pictures everywhere that were cartoons of children playing, done by the same artist – it was like a motif or theme throughout the building. We noticed similar pictures in the background of some of the photos we received from China of Jenna. The orphanage resembled a hospital on the inside as well – lots of white tile.

Outside Jenna's "area".

Looking down on the orphanage playground.

Another view of the playground.

Jenna's Playroom

An unoccupied classroom in Jenna's orphanage.

They gave me permission to take video and pictures as long as I didn’t focus on any individual child resident of the orphanage. I was somewhat surprised but in a good way. They showed us a room where some of the children are taught how to do different crafts. It was very hot inside the orphanage and most of the children we saw were wearing shorts, light shirts and either barefoot or wearing flip-flops. None of them seemed to be doing much, for instance we never saw any children playing. They were just kind of hanging out. Jenna’s rooms where she lived were on the 4th floor. It was an average sized room which had a couple of counters and sinks. Straight back from this room was a bathroom with a squatty potty, and to either side of this room were the rooms where the children slept. They were mostly filled with wooden cribs. There were probably 10 children in these rooms when we visited ranging in ages 1 – 5. The oldest was a 5-year-old girl. There was a boy who was about 4 and the others were significantly younger (but no infants – all toddlers). Most of the younger children were sitting on stools – possibly being potty-trained the hard way (sit until you go) but I can’t verify this is true. Most of these younger children were wearing split bottom pants – which I presume were designed with squatty potties in mind. There were 4 women caregivers there but I suspect that one or two of them were just there just to see Jenna. Jenna didn’t look too happy to be there – in fact she seemed somewhat withdrawn. The older children tried to interact with Jenna and she just wasn’t giving them much in return. The caregivers were all happy to see Jenna and were also trying to get some sort of response out of her – but she just looked at them. I felt bad for them but what could I do? Who knew what was going through Jenna’s mind at this time. They showed us the wooden crib that Jenna slept in each night, and I took a picture of Cheryl holding Jenna standing behind this crib.

Cheryl with Jenna by her wooden crib where she slept each night.

The older children trying to talk to Jenna.

I took several pictures and was also taking video at the same time. At one point Cheryl let Jenna get out of the carrier and put her down, but she didn’t want to stay down for long. Later Cheryl put Jenna down again so she could go to the bathroom and one of the caregivers tried to assist Jenna and she started to get upset, so she left her alone. I wish Jenna would’ve been happier to visit her former home one last time, but I think I can understand why she wasn’t because I think it was all very confusing for her. I’m still glad that we went though. We could look out the window and see the playground where her caregivers mentioned she loved to play. I remember Shirley asked us if we had any questions for the ladies, and the only question I could think of is how Jenna got along with the other children – was she shy or outgoing. They said that she wasn’t shy and got along with the other children very well. Up to that point we just weren’t seeing any evidence that this was true (note: now that we know Jenna much better we know that it probably was true). At one point the 5-year-old girl said something to everybody and Shirley translated it as “I know I’m never going to see Wen Xin again”. That is probably the truth so what could anyone say. It is so sad that many of these children will not be adopted and will have to grow up in this orphanage. I’m sure the orphanage does everything they can but the Chinese government limits the number of children who can become available for adoption. Although this orphanage is clean and the children are cared for as well as they can – it would be a dismal place to have to grow up. The resources are low and I don’t think the children receive a good education or much individual attention at all. A loving, caring, attentive family is what all of these children really need, and many also have special needs which need extra medical attention and care. I felt good that we could remove Jenna from this fate, but also bad that there wasn’t anything we could do for the rest of the children who are left behind except to pray for them.

This was Jenna's home for over 3 years.

Soon it was time to leave and one of the caregivers, and the older girl & boy followed us to the gate by the stairway which we would go down to leave. We told them goodbye and went downstairs, and they stayed behind on the 4th floor behind the gate. When we reached the exit to the building there were a lot of older children there – mostly teenage boys. I don’t know why they were all there.

Outside of Zhuzhou SWI.

When we got outside and went to get in the van a young man with a camera asked us if he could take our picture, and we said fine. We posed for a picture, and then he asked if he could interview us. Shirley kind of shook her head “no” so we said we couldn’t answer questions. The orphanage director lady showed up to tell us goodbye, and she also told Shirley that they gave us too many notes (they also gave us Gracie’s, the other familie's new daughter’s note). So we returned that note to her. Since we have been back I’ve read on various China forums that there is some question as to whether these finding notes are real or fabricated by the orphanage. We can never really know for sure of course, but I don’t really understand what their motivation would be to fake these notes. I guess I would have to assume the finding notes are genuine unless proven to be fake.

At around 11:30 a.m. we left the Zhuzhou SWI and headed for Shennong Park in this same city. According to the abandonment paperwork Jenna was found in this park in late June 2004, when she was 1 ½ months old. She was found by a ticket office by the lake in this park. Our driver found the park pretty easily and it had a large oriental pagoda style gate for an entrance.

Shennong Park Entrance - Wen Xin's (Jenna's) Finding Place.

The amusement rides to our left as we entered Shennong Park.

We had to pay admission to enter this park and as we entered the park there were amusement rides just to our left. Shennong Park was a pretty good sized park that was very nice with lots of trees, green grass, curving blacktop walkways, lotus ponds, and the lake. It was very clean and the predominant noise we could hear was of cicadas. It didn’t take long to find the lake – it was a small lake that had a small island out toward the middle of the lake. The ticket office was actually for boat rentals, canoes, paddleboats, etc. We took some video and pictures of Cheryl holding Jenna at her finding place. There was a family there watching us probably wondering what we were doing – they made it into some of the pictures as did Shirley.

Various pictures inside Shennong Park.

Lake in Shennong Park.

Pagoda in the Park.

The boathouse / ticket office by which Wen Xin was abandoned.

Jenna's Finding Place was by this ticket office.

As we were leaving we bought some refreshments at a small stand and we tried to buy something for Shirley but she refused as usual. Jenna’s birthmother picked a nice place to leave her daughter where she would be found for certain. We can’t even imagine how she must’ve felt, and the sorrow she almost certainly continues to feel for leaving her daughter behind. I wish she could know that Wen Xin is doing well, and her health issues have been (and will continue to be) taken care of.I was feeling bittersweet on the ride home back to Changsha. Jenna was feeling tired because she slept most of the way home. On one hand it felt good that we had more information to share with Jenna about her past, and more things to show her when the questions may come about such things in the future. We still don’t know anything about her birthmother or family, or where she is from. It probably will never be possible to find out because the birthmother had to break laws to abandon Wen Xin the way she did, so she doesn’t want to be found. China’s system is just so messed up in so many ways and there isn’t a high value placed on each human life. I thought about that 5-year-old girl with so much spunk and personality just going to waste back at that orphanage. The older she gets the less chance she has of ever being adopted. I wish we could’ve told them “we’ll bring this child home with us as well and pay whatever fees later.” With our systems (China’s and the U.S.A.’s) the way they are this is just impossible. All of those children deserve a chance to live their lives outside of that orphanage with a loving family to care for them. We made it back to the Dolton Hotel at around 3 p.m. and we were all pretty tired so we just chilled out back at room 3122. I did what I usually did which was check the e-mail and write notes about the day. I also sent updates to friends and family via e-mail. Tonight will be our last night in Changsha. Tomorrow at 4 p.m. we head to the airport to go to our last destination in China, which is Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province. There we will receive Jenna’s IR3 visa which will permit her to enter the U.S.A. With this visa Jenna will officially become a United States citizen, but we will still have to wait to receive her COC (Certificate of Citizenship) in the mail for however many months the BCIS decides it will take to send it to us. Note: we received Jenna’s COC in the mail on September 3, 2007. For Leah, Alex, and Ben since they were adopted by us from South Korea they received IR4 visas, which means they never really officially became citizens until we paid for their COC’s and we receive them. It has been over 6 months since we paid for these COC’s and we have yet to receive them. For our last supper at this hotel we decided to order Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza once again. Later I decided to take the digital camera out to take some nighttime photos of Changsha. I was on the streets around 9 -10 p.m. and the weather was still warm and the streets were still pretty busy – as usual there is lots of noise, color, and neon all around. Some people were eating meals out on the sidewalks on card tables and folding chairs, others were playing cards and other games. I walked past an auto repair place that was still open and working. It struck us that despite how many vehicles there are on the roads in China there didn’t seem to be a lot of auto repair garages or gas stations. All the gas stations seemed to be of the same company ‘Sinopec’ so I guess they have a state-run monopoly. A couple of times I would pass small groups of young guys and as we passed each other some of them would stare me down with menacing expressions on their faces. I just smiled and nodded toward them – not expecting any sort of reply. It was an obvious contrast compared people you pass during the daytime who keep to themselves and don’t look toward me at all. I saw one guy riding a bike on a busy street and a dog was following along with him. I thought that didn’t look too safe but the dog has made it through life this long anyway. It is interesting to me some of the scenes you witness on the streets at night. Our hotel which looks pretty impressive during the daylight looks even more impressive at night.

A Changsha nightime photo.

Changsha Business Street at night.

A bowling alley?

The Dolton Hotel Lobby.

The Lobby Chandelier.

The Dolton Hotel Entrance at night.

Back at room 3122 Cheryl was getting Jenna ready for bed after taking her nightly bath and she was in good spirits as usual. It is pretty clear by now that we have a new daughter who is a happy joyful girl, but who seems to become withdrawn when strangers are around. She needs to be in her zone of comfort, but when she isn’t she doesn’t get upset or throw fits. She just becomes like a little turtle and sort of withdraws into her own shell. Well tomorrow is departure day and there are no plans to go anywhere until we leave for the Changsha Airport.

July 20, 2007 - Leaving Changsha

2009-02-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

Friday, July 20, 2007

We had nowhere to go for awhile so we slept in and went to our last breakfast buffet at the Dolton Hotel coffee shop. Then we went back to room 3122 and started to pack for our next leg of the journey to the Guangdong Province. Now we had 3 big suitcases instead of just 2 so we tried to distribute the weight evenly between the 3 and really had no problem whatsoever packing. Cheryl ordered room service for herself and Jenna but I just had some snacks. Cheryl took Jenna for one last trip to the playroom on the 33rd floor and I just hung out in the room. At some point I got up and looked around at all of the shops that are inside the hotel, but I didn’t buy anything. Apparently Cheryl did the same thing at some point and did buy some stuff. She bought Jenna a doll and a couple of embroidered flower stands and some other doodads. Cheryl mentioned that she ran into Jackie who told her Gracie didn’t take going back to her orphanage well at all – lots of crying and screaming apparently. Gracie probably thought they were taking her back there for good. They were heading to Guangzhou as well that day but they would be there earlier than us. We took all our packed luggage down to the lobby at about 3:30 p.m. and I paid our bill of 468 yuan ($62) at the front desk with my Visa card and we turned in our room cards (keys). We met up with Shirley here and soon the driver came and we loaded our luggage on the Toyota van and headed off for our ½ hour drive to the Changsha Airport. I took some last pictures of Changsha and the countryside on our way to the airport.

The Road to the Changsha Airport.

A Lily Pond.

Some apartment buildings.

On the way to the airport the driver and Shirley were into some heavy discussion that we couldn’t understand but we could see that it was making Shirley somewhat upset. Cheryl & I were obviously curious about what this was all about.

A statue at the airport.

Changsha Airport Terminal.

Soon the driver pulled up to the front of the airport and we unloaded our bags onto a push cart. Then I paid the driver 400 yuan ($53) for tips for everywhere else he took us besides the orphanage. He actually smiled a little bit, and we got him to pose for a picture with Shirley. Then we left and I pushed our baggage into the terminal. We soon found out what the discussion was about earlier. The driver told Shirley on the way to the airport that he had to pick up some other people while he was there, and that she would have to find her own way back to Changsha. Now I’m thinking I wish I could get some of the tip I gave the driver back. She actually apologized to us for raising her voice back in the van (despite the fact that it was directed toward the driver). We offered to pay for a taxi or bus ride for her to get back but she refused. She at least accepted the Iowa Hawkeye shirt we gave her – so that was at least something. I guess that’s all that guides are allowed by Holt to accept from us – little inconsequential gifts of little value. So we go to check our 3 large bags and every time I set one on the belt it sets off the overweight alarm. We figured out it was because I leaned on them as I set them down, therefore adding more weight. It must happen a lot because the ticket lady kind of shrugged it off. Then Shirley gave us our tickets at the security checkpoint and we hugged her goodbye and thanked her for all of her help. As I mentioned earlier she was an awesome guide.

Shirley and our driver.

So we make our way to our next gate for our China Southern flight CZ3387 to Guangzhou boarding at 5:30 p.m. Jenna as usual was doing fine strapped up to her mommy. The gate area was a large circular room that we reached by a downward escalator. There were only a handful of people in the whole area.

Our gate area at the Changsha Airport.

It said our flight was delayed and it stayed delayed until we finally boarded at around 6:45 p.m. The plane didn’t taxi up to the gate – we had to take a bus out near the runway to get to the plane. Despite the fact that the plane was about 1 hour late, several passengers magically appeared just before we hopped on the bus. We left the bus and boarded the plane and soon found our seats. I had the window seat with Jenna in the middle and Cheryl by the aisle. Finally puddle jumper #2 was flying us toward Guangzhou – we were airborne. We were flying in a south-easterly direction again and since Hunan was hot and humid, could Guangzhou be even worse? Jenna did just fine on her first flight with us – probably her first flight to anywhere in her young life.

My overall impression of this portion of our trip to the Hunan Province – of Changsha and Zhuzhou City is WOW! What a ride! What a rollercoaster of different emotions with everything that surrounded our main purpose of this whole experience – to receive our beautiful new daughter Xiao, Wen Xin (Jenna). There is so much that I want to remember that I don’t think it’s possible to ever forget. Now looking back on this time it almost doesn’t seem real, but it was because our daughter is with us and growing more each day.

Part III – Guangzhou (Guangdong Province of China).

2009-02-06T00:05:00.000-08:00

China Area Map - Guangzhou City in the Guangdong Province.

Guangdong Province' location within China.

Guangzhou City's location within Guangdong Province.

July 20, 2007 – Friday

Yes it’s still the same day as above. We arrived at the Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou for the last leg of our trip to China at around 9 p.m. We picked up our luggage and soon ran into one of our next guides. Her name was Joyce and she is a younger Chinese lady (maybe in her late 20’s) who works for Lotus Travel Agency. Joyce seemed kind of flustered, probably because as it turns out she had to find 4 different families, and get us together so we could all take a bus to the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island. Fortunately for us we were the last family so we didn’t have to wait around much like the other families probably had to wait for us. Brandon & Linda with son Braydon, and daughter Lila, with their new 7-year-old daughter Ellie were one of the three other families besides us. The other 2 families we hadn’t met yet because they didn’t go on the Beijing leg of the trip, and they are…

Patrick & Denise from Brooklyn, New York, who adopted Joseph, a 3 (maybe 4) -year-old son from Zhejiang Province. They also had 2 daughters with them, Marie & ? whom they adopted previously from China.

Kurt and Kathy from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who also adopted a son from Zhejiang Province. They had also adopted children from China previously.

Jenna and Cheryl at the Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou.

Waiting for our 3 bags of luggage.

Hey look - It's Tiger woods!

The Baiyun Airport waiting area - waiting for more families.

Outside onboard our bus to The White Swan on Shamian Island.

So we were with the Zhejiang Province contingent at this time. Our bus was waiting right outside the airport terminal so our luggage gets loaded onto the bus and we all climb aboard. There are 8 children and 8 adults (not including Joyce and the bus driver). I’m thinking to myself that usually you hear about girls being adopted from China but in our whole group there are 4 boys and 5 girls, but they are all waiting children so boys are more common than they are with the non-special-needs program referrals. We arrive at the White Swan Hotel just before 10 p.m. and get off the bus. The White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island in Guangzhou is on the Pearl River. Everywhere you look you see neon lights so it is pretty obvious that this is like a resort area. Even the boats that are floating on the river are covered with colorful neon lights. As we are walking up to the entrance on the lower level of the hotel there is a stone walkway that is lined with different stone & jade statues on both sides, and mixed in with them are large cloisonné vases and other artwork. It is pretty impressive but is only a small introduction of all that the White Swan has inside. Inside the hotel there is artwork everywhere of about every type – on the walls, in the halls, in the shops, etc. The check-in counter is to our right and we are all waiting around this fancy but dark lobby area with plush furniture. Joyce helps us get our assigned room, the card keys, and the card that gains us entrance to the breakfast buffets each morning. Our room is 1212 on the 12th floor so we head up to our room to wait for our luggage to be delivered. On the way there we passed several fancy shops with clothes, artwork, souvenirs, etc. There are huge jade sculptures of a clipper ship, a giant frog, and other designs, and we come to a very large indoor waterfall which comes out of a pagoda and falls into a large koi pond. That’s something that we didn’t see everyday until that week. This place is like a giant art museum/hotel which again is obviously for the wealthy, so once again – what are we doing here? I suppose it is nice to stay in garish places such as these at least once in our lives, and I do appreciate good art – we just can’t really ever afford to buy any that isn’t some type of facsimile.

So we ride the elevator up to our room 1212 on the 12th floor, and when we get off the elevator there is a young lady attendant there to greet us who asks us “what room?” to which we tell her 1212, and she points the direction we need to go. As far as I know (I’m just assuming because I never went to every floor in this hotel) there is an attendant on every floor and they are wired to each other and a central command post (like our secret service). They are there to greet you when you come home to your floor, and they are there to push the elevator button when we leave. They also run small errands assigned to them by central command, such as getting a bucket of ice for a particular room and other tasks that can be performed quickly. I wondered if they all were karate experts and doubled as hotel security (I know – I’ve probably watched too many Jackie Chan movies). Our room has the same layout as our last room at the Dolton – enter and to the right is the bathroom – nice with large sink, shower and bathtub (no poong poongies on the toilet lid this time). There’s a large closet to our left with a lockbox that we program with the combination. Next is a drawer, TV, desk and chair on the left. LAN cable with internet access by the desk and it costs 300 yuan (around $40) for 1 full week. On the right there are 2 comfortable beds with a nightstand between them. This table has switches & variacs which control all the lights and the TV on/off and volume control. There is a wooden crib for Jenna, and a table with 3 chairs. Next we have the fridge / wet bar which has the same types of items for outrageous prices just like everywhere else we have been. We lucked out and got the river view – the Pearl River is right outside our window. It’s like a lightshow every night but the curtains are so thick they keep the lights out when you want them out. The room is pretty nice and Jenna seems to approve as well, and our baggage soon arrived. It’s been a long day and it wasn’t long before we all hit the sack, but I had to get the laptop computer up and going with internet access first. Not much for us happening tomorrow – just a paperwork meeting and then we take our children to get their visa photos taken. Seems like a simple leisurely day to me, we just have to make sure we wake up in time for the breakfast buffet tomorrow morning.

Shy Jenna in our new hotel room.

Our bunny sleeper.

July 21, 2007 - Our First Day in Guangzhou.

2009-02-05T23:58:00.000-08:00

Saturday, July 21, 2007

The view of The Pearl River from our room 1212.

Woke up for our first day in Guangzhou. Cheryl & I got ready and then we awakened Jenna and got her ready to go down to the breakfast buffet. The breakfast buffet is located down near the lobby next to the waterfall / koi pond. It is called the “River Garden Coffee Shop”. One whole side of this large area has big windows looking out at the Pearl River. There is sometimes a boat floating around outside that has someone leaning over one side picking up trash out of the river. We walked over a wooden bridge at the entrance, showed our breakfast cards to the hostess and were shown to our table. We saw several of the families we haven’t seen for 6 days or so and met their new children. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits for obvious reasons. Just like always – a different place but the same breakfast buffets that just seem to get better with each new place. I loved this place – I wish I could eat breakfast there everyday until I die. Then I realized that we would probably not see the rest of our family who are not here in China with us again so I changed my mind.

Koi Pond - The River Garden Coffee Shop is to the left.

The White Swan Indoor Waterfall.

We returned to our room after breakfast and at 10 a.m. I had to go down to the 4th floor to room 432 for a paperwork meeting. I had to bring along a whole list of adoption paperwork that Cheryl completed earlier in the process – mostly USCIS paperwork and the adoption registration paperwork that was completed back at Jenna’s province. Only 1 parent per family was allowed at this meeting (no kids) and it had to be me from our family because at this point Jenna wouldn’t stay with me alone. Despite the fact that the only involvement I had with a majority of our adoption paperwork was to sign them in the proper place – I was our representative. The whole purpose of this meeting was to meet Katherine, who was Holt’s leader in Guangzhou. Also we were there get the necessary paperwork together, properly filled out, completed, and organized so it can be sent to the U.S. Consulate. That way our children’s U.S. IR3 visas can be completed to allow them to leave China and enter the United States as eventual citizens. This was our whole purpose for being in Guangzhou so it’s an important meeting and Katherine is there to get us through this and make sure everything is done correctly. I was probably the most ignorant person there because when Katherine would say OK pull out form I - 423A or whatever – I didn’t know what she was talking about most of the time. So let’s just say that I tested her patience. Somehow with a little help here and there I muddled my way through. I’m sure if there would’ve been a dunce cap nearby Katherine would’ve put it on my head with pleasure. Katherine also told us that they wanted to collect 1,200 yuan ($159) from each family for petty cash – to pay for the bus rides, 2 dinners, admissions, tips, etc. They would keep itemized lists of what each family spent and return any unused funds (or collect more – whatever may be the case) before we leave Guangdong. So I gave her our 1,200 yuan.

The Visa Paperwork Meeting with participants.

Later at around 11:30 a.m. we all met at the main lobby entrance near the elevators to get ready to walk over to the shop where we get our new children’s visa photos taken. This was the first time that all nine families of our group were together at one time. There was lots of talking and catching up going on, and children playing (except for shy Jenna who was sticking close to mommy). I was taking pictures and video of all the beautiful children.

Our Whole Group.

Soon Joyce and Katherine guided us all out the front doors and we walked to our right a little ways down Shamian South Street until we entered the Ye Ming Zu photo shop next to the 7-Eleven. Here each of our nine children posed one-at-a-time for their visa photos. I remember they also sold souvenirs at this shop and on display there were several photos and marble chiseled pictures and I noticed they had one of Jesus and another of Hilary Clinton next to each other. I thought to myself what an odd pairing. When we were done we went back to the White Swan Hotel. We had the option of going with the group to get like a full-bodied massage, but we decided to give that one a miss.

Walking east on Shamian South Street - going to the Ye Ming Zu Photo Shop.

Inside the Ye Ming Zu Shop - Jesus and Hillary Clinton - like oil and water.

Jenna's visa photo.

Rebecca with Cai, and Joyce (our guide) to the right.

Shamian Island Map.

Shamian Island, formerly known as Shameen Island, from its Cantonese pronunciation is an Island in Guangzhou City, Guangdong province, in China. It was originally a concession given to European and American traders operating in the Guangzhou area by the Qing Dynasty Government in the 19th century. The island’s name means “sandy surface” in Chinese. The island covers an area of .3 square kilometers (74.1 acres) and is a gazetted historical area that serves as a tranquil reminder of the colonial European period, with quiet pedestrian avenues flanked by trees and lined with historical buildings in various states of upkeep. The island is the location of several hotels, a youth hostel, restaurants, and many tourist shops selling curios and souvenirs. Various bronze statues are scattered around the island which depict life as it was during earlier periods on the island, as well as from more recent times. For example, one statute entitled "A gentleman, a lady and a darn woman" shows a Western couple watching a Chinese woman darning cloth. Another depicts the changing appearances and stature of Chinese women, with a woman from colonial times in traditional clothing, a slightly taller woman from the early or mid 20th century wearing a cheongsam, and a relatively tall and slender young Chinese woman wearing shorts and talking on a mobile phone. The U.S. Consulate used to be right down the street from the White Swan Hotel on South Street. The old English style building is still there but the actual U.S. Consulate building moved into Guangzhou City about 40 minutes away.

Cheryl, Jenna, and I explored South Street a little bit – we checked out the several souvenir shops that are right near the hotel and we bought something to eat for lunch at the 7-Eleven. Later I explored most of Shamian Island on my own while Cheryl & Jenna hung out back at the hotel. Shamian Island isn’t very large – it’s basically 5 blocks wide by 3 blocks deep. It has Shamian 1st through 5th streets that run north / south and there are 3 streets that run east / west – south, main, and north streets. Its boundaries that separate it from Guangzhou City (which is the 4th largest city in China according to Joyce) are canals on the east, north, and west, and the Pearl River is to the south. It is filled with lots of fancy old English style buildings. It has 2 churches - one is Christ Church (that we later attended) and there was a Catholic Church there as well.

Cheryl and Jenna by the Shamian Island sign.

The Old Catholic Church

A Old English Style residential area.

Down 4th Street (looking North).

A Wedding Photo Shoot.

There are 2 parks. One (Shamian Park) is right down the street from the White Swan Hotel on South Street and it’s also on the Pearl River. It is just a nice tree lined park with lots of flowers, walkways, a small amusement park, and a place where people go to sing and dance. We would also see people exercising doing Tai chi, stretching, and dancing. The other park in the middle of the island had a nice playground for the children to play on with some different and interesting looking playground equipment. The island had several restaurants – Chinese, Thai, & Lucy’s (which served American style food). It had the Deli Shop with Baskin Robbins ice cream, and the 7-eleven for snacks and such. There are other hotels on the island but they are nowhere near as big and fancy as the White Swan Hotel. Beyond Shamian Park there was a sports complex that had tennis courts which were in use day and night. There was one nice sized grocery store, and last but not least many different souvenir shops (and we probably bought things from all of them but a couple at some point). Shamian Island definitely has more of an English feel to it because of the architecture of the buildings, most signs are in English, and it is way more calm and serene then Guangzhou City which is a typical busy, noisy, crowded Chinese city. Shamian Island is like a calm oasis within a crazy city. At night the island looks more Chinese because there are lots of colorful neon lights everywhere.

Dusk on The Pearl looking toward Guangzhou.

Jenna and Cheryl by the "wild horses" jade statue.

Jenna playing with balloons.

Back at the hotel at room 1212 we ate our dinner and I blew up about 20 balloons of all different colors and Jenna and I played with them for awhile. Outside looking out the window there was a green laser light show going on with lasers shooting from the RenMin Bridge to the east of us to the White Swan and the Jiang Yue Hotel across the river. The lasers were also coming from some building on the other side of the Pearl River. The laser show combined with all the usual neon lights made for quite a light show.

The Laser Light Show on the Pearl River - looking toward the RenMin Bridge.

Soon it was time for Jenna’s bath (typically Jenna took her bath at night and we each took showers in the morning while Jenna’s still sleeping). Also in this hotel someone arrives at our room each night to turn-down our beds. I have heard of this before but have never been anywhere to witness it in person. Tomorrow at 10:45 a.m. we are supposed to meet to go to a service at the Christian Church.

July 22, 2007 - Shamian Chapel of Guangdong Christianity.

2009-02-05T23:52:00.000-08:00

Sunday, July 22, 2007

We went down for our breakfast buffet at the coffee shop and later met at the glass doors by the elevators on the 1st floor to walk over to the Shamian Chapel of Guangdong Christianity, which was just a couple of blocks to our left down South Street. Joyce guided our group there but didn’t stay to attend. All the Midwesterners were present - John and Rebecca, Ladell, Michele, and Ashley, Frank and Kelli, and us. The chapel was under renovation because there was lots of scaffolding set up in rear of the church where we enter but there were still lots of people at the service. It looked very much like the older wooden turn-of-the-century churches like the ones in small Wisconsin towns that I sometimes attended when I was a child when my family visited relatives. It had the wooden steeple in the middle which was probably a bell tower. We were fortunate to get there early enough to find seats because some people were left standing in the aisles.

Shamian Chapel of Guangdong Christianity.

Inside the church bulletin.

Inside the church there were old wooden pews on both sides and the altar up front. The lyrics to the songs we sang are projected to a wall screen to the right of the altar – sometimes in both English (phonetically) & Chinese and other times just in Chinese. There is maybe an assistant pastor or mc who runs the mass and the pastor who preaches the sermon, and they each use the same translator who speaks good English so we had no trouble following along with what was happening. It was a lively church with lots of participation and I thought they went out of their way to make sure us visitors were included. It was very much like our church at home in the respect that everyone seemed glad to be there and there was lots of fellowship. I remember that the sermon was based on Exodus chapter 29 about the anointing of Aaron and his sons. Toward the end the pastor wanted some people to come forward and give some testimonies. At first nobody would come forward and it seemed like he wasn’t going to let us go until someone came forward. The first one to go up front was Ladell. He talked about how his family came here to China to receive their new daughter Mia, and how he was so grateful to God and to the Chinese people for being so welcoming to them, and he mentioned that we are all brothers & sisters and God’s children and how it was a privilege to be here. (Note: I’m paraphrasing here from memory but I believe this is the gist of what Ladell said). After the translator repeated his words in Chinese he received a thunderous applause. Then 3 more people went up front and gave their testimonies, we sang one more song, and the mass was over. I don’t remember where we ate lunch so I’m not going to mention it every time. We ate at Lucy’s for lunch and dinner several times, and we bought subway sandwiches at the subway shop a couple of times. A couple times we ate at restaurants but I will mention them later.

Inside during service.

Shamian Chapel (under renovation).

Kelli, Frank, and Yu Jiao Jiao.

While we were at church some of the others hopped on a bus and went shopping in Guangzhou at an area that sells electronics. After lunch we shopped at some of the nearby shops on South Street. I bought a couple of different Chinese flutes/recorders in front of the Gold Dragon’s Place. At this shop we bought several different traditional Chinese outfits for Jenna (at least 5 of them) and we bought some regular purses, coin purses, and t-shirts for our kids. The nice lady that ran the shop told us that she was trying to sell the shop because she is afraid that her business will be bad when the White Swan closes for renovations at the end of 2007. She mentioned that nobody wants to buy her shop for this same reason. At the Bug Corner shop (ladybug motif), which is right next door we ordered a black marble chiseled photo of our children that would be a copy of a wallet photo of our first 3 children, with another wallet photo of Jenna incorporated into the picture to make them look as one family. We bought a few other souvenirs from them as well including a colorful poster of Jenna’s name that I put in a poster that I made for Jenna that is hanging in a hallway at home. We also bought a large stamp and ink pad that had Jenna’s name in English and in Chinese. The marble picture, poster, and the stamp pad would take them a couple of days to make so we would come back on Tuesday to pick them up.

The Chinese Flutes from Shamian south street.

Our children in marble.

A "Jenna" display that we have hung in our hallway at home.
The stamps on the bottom-left are the stamps we received from Jenna's orphanage assistant-director. The picture of the 2 children on the bottom-right is the picture that was on the bag her orphanage gave us, and it represents the motif of the artwork all around her orphanage.

At around 2:30 p.m. we loaded up into a bus in the White Swan parking lot to go to a Pearl Market area in Guangzhou. I think the whole group came along except for the Gradys. It was our first time of driving through a bit of Guangzhou in the daylight although the market wasn’t very far away, maybe a 10 minute drive. I remember we passed a McDonalds and I made a mental note of where it was located thinking we could walk there at some point for a meal, but we never ended up going there. The Pearl Market was a 2 story building that had many different glass counters/shelves at many different stations or stalls throughout the building. It was mostly pearl and jade jewelry in necklaces or bracelets but they had many different jade figurines and statues of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. We asked the prices of a few different statues and they were way expensive – obviously they should be the real deal as far as authenticity because they were charging as if they were. After getting sticker shocked a few times we decided we were just there to mostly look, not to buy. Neither Cheryl nor I are interested in jewelry. We did buy a few colored glass crosses for necklaces and other things that we thought Leah might like, but they were inexpensive. We checked out both floors a couple of different times, plus some of the shops that were on the same street as the Jade Market building. We were there longer than we wanted to be but we had to wait for all of the others in our group. It wasn’t like the Jade Market back in Beijing which also sold other items besides pearl & jade. I took some pictures of some buildings and street life in Guangzhou on our short drive back to the hotel.

The Pearl Market of Guangzhou.

Some Pearl Necklaces and other doodads.

Some Jade statues.

More colorful knick-knacks and doo-dads.

Guangzhou street photo.

Near the Pearl Market.

Pink buildings in Guangzhou.

When we arrived back at the hotel we had Jenna try on several of her new traditional Chinese outfits and she modeled them for us while I took some pictures. She is a beautiful model for sure.

Jenna in Peach

Jenna in Purple.

Jenna searching for toys.

Jenna in Blue.

On this night Cheryl wanted to hang out back at the hotel with Jenna so I went out and took some night photos around Shamian Island. A bit about the weather – hot and humid just like back in the Hunan Province, but not unbearably so. Just about everywhere on the island has good air conditioning except for some of the souvenir shops. I noticed at the playground there was always a lot more children playing there at night than there was during the day. I assume this is because it is a little bit cooler at night and often too hot to play on the playground during the daylight. I stopped and watched a couple playing tennis near the park at night under the lights, just for 5 minutes or so. Next I stopped and ordered a burger and cold coke at Lucy’s restaurant (my first of several visits here). I took some pictures around the White Swan when I got back there, and by the time I made it back to room 1212 Cheryl & Jenna were ready for bed. It was time for me to check the e-mails and send out some updates. Next on the agenda for tomorrow are the visa medical exams for our new children.

The White Swan Hotel at night.

July 23, 2007 - Visa Examination / Chinese Meal

2009-02-05T23:44:00.000-08:00

Monday, July 23, 2007

The White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island in Guangzhou City.

Cheryl and Jenna having fun in Room 1212.

We woke up just in time to get ready for the day and to catch the breakfast buffet before it closed down. Jenna loved breakfast just as much as we did and usually was in good spirits when she knew she was going to get to eat some good food. Today was the day that Jenna was to be examined at the health care center they have here on the island as a required step to receive her visa in a couple of days. We all met at the glass doors going out onto South Street at 10:45 a.m. and we walked with Katherine about 4 blocks until we reached the health care center on Shamian North Street. I took video and photos of this occasion. The results of this examination is the last bit of paperwork that is necessary for the U.S. Embassy to acquire so they can complete our children’s visas – which as I mentioned earlier will allow them to leave China and enter the United States legally as eventual citizens. Inside the clinic we had to answer 4 questions on a form and sign them. There were 3 stations that each child had to go through. First Jenna went to the station where she was put on a scale and weighed, and then they laid her down and measured her height. Next Cheryl took Jenna into a room where a doctor checked her hearing reaction using squeaky toys, and she looked inside both of her ears, and checked her birthmark on the right side of her neck & scalp. Then the doctor checked inside her mouth with her light visor and the wooden tongue depressor, probably inspecting her surgically repaired palate. For the last station an older lady doctor checked Jenna out while providing instruction for a younger doctor who was observing. First she checked Jenna’s head circumference, then she has Cheryl take off Jenna’s shorts and the doctor checked her heartbeat and felt around her liver / abdomen. Jenna starts to complain and cry just a little bit here. The doctor then checked the flexibility of Jenna’s legs by bending them back and forth, and the functioning of her hips. She observed the discoloration from the burns that Jenna has on her left arm. The last thing the doctor did was measure the length of some of the burn marks on her left arm. The examination was finished so we gave Katherine the paperwork and we left the clinic and headed back toward the hotel. Note that I’m assuming that the ladies who did the examinations were doctors but I don’t know for sure – maybe they are nurses. None of them spoke English but it seemed like Jenna checked out OK.

Pictures from Jenna's Visa Examination.

The Shamian Island Playground.

We stopped at the playground on Shamian Main Street on the way back and Jenna tried out some of the playground equipment. I was still taking video and pictures. Jenna went down a slide a few times. Soon Jenna was done with the playground and she felt like walking (which is rare – mostly she likes to be carried by mommy). Her walking eventually led us to Shamian Park on South Street so we walked around this park and got some pictures of Jenna with Cheryl in the park. We checked out all of the little ponds with lily pads & the fake plastic ducks.

Cheryl and Jenna walking in the park.

The Red Rock Statue in Shamian Park.

Looking at the Pearl River from the park.

No Littering Please!

Jenna and Cheryl by the old men with the abacus.

The Pirate Ship.

We walked toward the river and saw people dancing and a group was singing. We walked by the small amusement park with the rocking pirate ship and we stopped and talked with an older Chinese man for awhile, he knew English pretty well and he asked us several questions – he was very nice. We saw a guy swimming in the Pearl River, and that doesn’t seem too wise. The Pearl River looks pretty dirty. We stopped at the little store at the park’s entrance and bought something to drink and some ice cream for Jenna. Like most children (and many adults) Jenna loves ice cream. We were standing by the brass statue of the Evolution of the Chinese Woman and Jordan (from Jordan’s Place – a local souvenir shop) comes up and talks with us for a short while and invites us to his shop. We told him we would stop by later.

The Evolution of the Chinese Woman Statue.

Jordan's Place leaflet.

At 3:30 p.m. we had to meet at room 432 (White Swan) for the Exit Meeting. Once again only one parent is allowed (no children) and I got to be our family’s representative again. Katherine first reminded us of the next 2 dinner options that we all agreed on at our first meeting, for tonight Chinese food and tomorrow night Thai food. She said to meet at the 1st floor glass doors if we wanted to go to eat Chinese food tonight. She talked about the visa paperwork we would receive Wednesday that we would be carrying with us on the flights home. She said to keep this paperwork in our carry-on luggage (not checked baggage) and under no circumstance open the envelope. It is for immigration at our point of entry into the United States (which for us is Minneapolis). She reminded us that on the flight home we can each have 2 checked bags of up to 50lbs each with the weight evenly distributed. I asked her if we could maybe take a trip to one of the local zoos for the kids to see, and she said that they could probably take us on Wednesday morning at 8:30 a.m. Katherine told us that when we depart on Thursday morning to leave our checked luggage outside our rooms at 4:30 a.m. and at 5:30 a.m. we will leave for the airport by bus, at which time we will receive a boxed breakfast courtesy of the White Swan Hotel. She mentioned at the airport we will have to fill out a departure card for our children and a customs form and we will need these along with our boarding passes and passports when we go through the security checkpoint. Katherine also reminded us of the tour to the Six Banyan (Buddhist) Temple in Guangzhou City at 9 a.m. tomorrow, meeting at the tour reception desk on the 1st floor. She also gave me a sheet that said we would be leaving on July 26th on Northwest flight 10 to Tokyo/Narita Airport at 8:20 a.m. It seemed a little bit odd to be talking about going home when we still had 2+ days left here on Shamian Island, but it was a good thing to think about knowing we would soon be reunited with Leah, Alex, and Benjamin whom we are missing a lot. Katherine kept making jokes that she was going to retire when the White Swan closes for renovations at the end of this year (I’m guessing she is somewhere in her 30’s age wise). She mentioned that she has a young son, and I asked her what her husband does for a living and she replied that he was dead. I told her that I was sorry.

After the meeting I met up with Cheryl & Jenna and we looked around the hotel and went and took some photos of Cheryl holding Jenna by the indoor waterfall. We went to area behind the waterfall where we could feel the spray of the water & Jenna kept holding out her hand to try to catch some of the spray from the waterfall. Soon enough it was 5:30 p.m. and time to walk with Katherine, Phoebe, and the group over to the Chinese restaurant for dinner. Cheryl and Jenna love Chinese food but I just tolerate it as being OK. When in China or Korea you have to at least sometimes eat Chinese & Korean food – that’s what people keep telling me. It’s not half bad but sometimes I don’t know the difference until it’s too late. As long as I have some antacids I am usually fine. Speaking of antacids I thought I had brought along plenty enough on this trip but I completely ran out on Tuesday night. You cannot find antacids (Rolaids or Tums) anywhere on Shamian Island. When I would ask a store owner or counter person about antacids they had no clue what I was talking about. Fortunately Michele and Ladell came to my rescue and gave me a handful of Tums to make it through the last couple of days until we arrived back home in antacid land. At the XinLiZhiWan Chinese Restaurant our group sat at 3 different tables because now we had 9 newcomers since the last time we had a group meal. It seems like not everyone in our group came along – I believe Kelli was feeling under-the-weather. It was another lazy-Susan type meal with the revolving table top that allows us to pick & choose better. Some of the food was good and some of it was not so good – a typical Chinese meal. Even Cheryl didn’t think it was too great and she usually loves Chinese food. Jenna ate well as usual. We finished the meal a little after 6:30 p.m. so we took Jenna for a walk, then Cheryl & Jenna went back to the White Swan and I stayed out and took some more night video and pictures. I remember I was starting to think that our time here was getting short and I wanted to take advantage of the short time we had left.

The XinLiZhiWan Restaurant.

Restaurant employees taking a break out front.

Lucy's, just down the street where we ate several meals.

The Deli Shop - outside the White Swan heading west.

Jenna with the lady who runs the "Bug Corner" shop.

Our local 7 Eleven on Shamian South Street.

Despite the fact that neither Cheryl nor I like to shop much at all, we both really enjoyed checking out most of the souvenir shops that they have on Shamian Island. The shopkeepers are true salespeople in the respect that they understand the best way to make sales to customers is by being friendly and showing interest in them. Most people (especially Americans) like to talk about themselves, their families, and where they are from. Just about every shop we went to had someone there who was friendly, spoke good English so we could communicate, and asked us several questions about Jenna, where we were from, how many children we have, etc. It often led to interesting discussions like the differences between China and the U.S.A. (with Korea often thrown in there as well because our adopted children from Korea were often brought up by us when answering questions). In the U.S.A. having 4 children is no big deal but in China they think it is amazing that someone would have 4 children, and especially 4 adopted children. It was an education in several ways just being able to communicate with Chinese people because they (not us) spoke both languages. For us we learn different languages in high school. I took a year of Spanish and a couple of semesters of French. I was never fluent in either of them but I had a decent foundation. Then I proceeded to quickly forget most of what I learned of these languages because I never really used them again. The same thing happened with the Korean language that I knew at one time. I was stationed in Seoul for 1 ½ years when I was in the service and I learned a significant amount of the Korean language. Then I went home and never used it again for 19+ years until I went back to Seoul to receive our son Alex in 2004. Once again it was a use-it-or-lose-it situation. This happens a few times and I think “what’s the point in learning a new language that I’m probably not going to continue to use in the future”. I could try to learn it for my children but they aren’t going to use the language either in any significant way unless they choose to return to their homelands when they are adults. For probably totally selfish reasons I don’t want them to return to their homelands to live or to move far away when they become adults because we will probably see less of them. However they will do with their lives as they wish and that is the way it should be. I do hope our children will want to visit their homelands because that will help them to get a better sense of who they are. If they do wish to visit their homelands we will do whatever we can to make it happen, and possibly even go with them (unless they wish to go alone or without us).

Andy's Shop.

The Lions of The White Swan.

The Jiang Yue Hotel across the river from us.

I stopped at a shop on Shamian Main Street that was called E-Gallery, which was an art gallery which also sold souvenirs. The young lady who ran this shop was very nice and asked me if I was there on vacation to which I told her we were there because we adopted a 3-year-old daughter. She asked me several questions while simultaneously trying to sell me one of the paintings that were on the walls. I told her the paintings were nice but I wasn’t there to buy paintings, I was just there to look at the souvenirs. A wooden chess set with carved stone pieces caught my attention and I asked her how much it cost. She told me it cost 180 yuan ($24) so I bought it and she gave me a bracelet for our daughter (this happened more than a few times – they would give Jenna small gifts). I asked her the prices on several other things and most of them seemed to be good deals. As I left I told her I would probably bring my wife and daughter back here later because I thought she had a nice shop and we would probably purchase more souvenirs at that time. I didn’t want to carry the chess set around too much so I just headed back to the White Swan for the night. Tomorrow morning we would be going on the tour of the Six Banyan Temple in Guangzhou.

E-Gallery leaflet.

E-Gallery Shop

July 24, 2007 - Six Banyan Temple Tour.

2009-02-05T23:27:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

We awoke at around 7 a.m. to get ready for the day. We tried to let Jenna sleep hoping she would wake up on her own but most times we would have to wake her up. We headed down to the Coffee Shop for the breakfast buffet at around 8 a.m. When we finished we returned to our room for just a little bit, picked up my backpack with which I carried our cameras, and Cheryl got the carrier for Jenna and her waist pack. At 9:30 a.m. we met the others down by the 1st floor tour reception desk to depart for the Six Banyan Temple in Guangzhou for which Joyce would be our guide today.

The White Swan Hotel's lower entrance.

On this tour we have the option of having our new children blessed by Buddhist Monks but since we are Christians, Buddhism is only a curiosity for us so we were just going to observe and see the sights.

Baby Banyan Trees.

The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees has a long history of 1,400 years and it is one of the 4 best Buddhist Temples in Guangzhou. It is located on Liurong Road (meaning the Six Banyan Trees Road). It has a rich collection of cultural relics and is renowned both home and abroad. Originally built in 537, the temple has been rebuilt several times, and its name has also changed several times from Changshou Temple (meaning Longevity Temple) to Jinghui temple and finally to its current name. It is a name given by the great litterateur Su Dongpo in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). It is said that he visited the temple while returning to the north. During the visit he found six banyan trees there that were particularly striking. The vitality of the trees put him in a good mood and cheered him up. When the abbot of the temple invited him to suggest a name, Su Dongpo wrote down its present name. A pagoda in the temple is known variously as Six Banyan Pagoda or Flowery Pagoda. After paying admission and entering the temple the Tianwang Hall is the first hall you see. The Laughing Buddha is there with a smile all over his face to welcome visitors. Behind it is the Weituo hall. According to legend, Weituo was a general who recaptured Buddhist relics which had been stolen. He keeps a straight face, looking very serious and frightful, in direct contrast with the Laughing Buddha. In the middle of the temple is the Six Banyan Pagoda – it is a nine-story pagoda where Buddhist relics are placed. To the west of the Six Banyan Pagoda is Daxiong Hall – the main hall of the temple.

Daxiong Hall.

Joyce, Our guide.

The Amitabha, Sakyamuni, and Apothecary Buddhas.

The 3 biggest copper Buddhist statues placed there are among the biggest and most ancient Buddhist statues in Guangdong. The middle one is Sakyamuni, to the left the Amitabha, and to the right the Apothecary Buddha. They stand for present, past, and future. Every year on the Chinese traditional Spring Festival and Lantern Festival, the temple becomes a busy area. Numerous people queue to burn the first joss stick in order to be blessed by the gods in the coming year. The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees or Flowery Temple was once a square based architecture but it was burnt down and rebuilt during the Northern Song Dynasty. It was rebuilt in 1097 with its octagonal structure. It was rebuilt again in 1373 after another fire in the early Ming Dynasty period, and it was restored in 1900. It is called the Flowery Temple for its colorful exterior. It is 184 feet tall so it provides an excellent outlook over the temple grounds. The Flowery Pagoda appears to have nine stories, each with doorways and encircling balconies. Inside & outside though there are 17 levels. The Six Banyan Trees mentioned earlier no longer exist here, but there are lots of Banyan Trees in China, including some back on Shamian Island.

The Liurong (Flowery) Pagoda up close.

The 1000 Year-Old Liurong Pagoda (postcard).

The entrance to the Liurong Pagoda.

Joyce paid for our admissions and we walked around the temple compound. We were surrounded by beautiful brown wooden buildings all with in intricately painted designs in green, yellow, white, and brown. They all had oriental pagoda type slate roofs. Most of these buildings seemed to be for worship because they had altars inside. Cheryl & I (& Jenna – what choice did she have) wanted to climb the pagoda tower (Flowery Temple) so we could get a better view around Guangzhou and the temple area. So we told Joyce and she paid our admissions to enter this temple (from petty cash). I decided to take video of us climbing all the way up and all the way back down the pagoda - & I must say after the fact that it is a somewhat bizarre but interesting video. I also took some photos at and near the top of the tower looking out over Guangzhou and down on the rest of the temple compound. We would enter a doorway and climb about 7 steps. Then we would come to a level area that had some Buddhist relics stored behind glass covered displays. Then we would climb 7 more steps straight forward and we would come to an outdoor balcony that goes around the structure. We would walk around the balcony until we found the next door with more stairs going upward. It continued like this for nine stories (and 17 stories inside & out) until we reached the top floor. The view of Guangzhou was a little disappointing because many buildings nearby and all around are the same size as this tower (or taller), but it was kind of cool. It was a good view looking down on the rest of the temple grounds.

Climbing the Liurong Pagoda.

View of Guangzhou from the Liurong Pagoda.

A statue inside the Liurong Pagoda.

Looking down on the 6 Banyan Temple Compound from the Pagoda (after we climbed it).

I took some pictures and then we headed back down. About one floor down we met the Collins family on their way up. We told them they only had one more story to go to the top. I think we are the only 2 families of the group who climbed the temple. When we made it back down I took some video and photos of a few of our group’s children being blessed by the Monks in front of the past, present, and future giant golden Buddha statues. I saw a few things on the way out that struck me as kind of odd. First everything about this temple looked ancient (except the tourists like us) but there was a newer looking black car sitting in the middle of the compound. It just looked way out-of-place. I also witnessed a monk playing a card game (which looked like solitaire) while talking on a cell phone. Just something I didn’t expect to see I guess. The monks were the typical shaved-head, flowing-robe-wearing ones.

Rebecca, Cheryl, and the kiddos.

So we went back out to Liurong Road and loaded up the bus for our trip back to Shamian Island. I remember looking out the bus window as we rode through Guangzhou and thinking to myself “China is such an awesome place to visit and explore.” I’m never going to forget these times as long as I live. Since we have been back home several people have asked us what China is like. We always just say it is an awesome place to visit. It seems like such an inadequate reply but what else can we really say without writing a long story.

When we arrived back at the White Swan it was about noon, and we were trying to decide where to eat lunch. Soon we decided to go to Lucy’s restaurant (my favorite place to eat on the island). We ran into Frank & Kelli with Mckenna (Yu Jiao Jiao) who were also heading to Lucy’s so we all went together. They have adopted even more children than we have. They have 2 daughters, Meghan (22) & Mallori (20) who they adopted domestically; they have one son, Jonathan (14 - biological) and now 3 young daughters, Michaela (5), Mackenzie (3), & Mckenna (2) all of whom they adopted from China. Earlier in our adoption process we received Yu Jiao Jiao’s file and it was a little too scary for us (spinal bifida with incontinence). The file didn’t seem too promising for a recovery so we decide to not accept her referral. Kelli told us that we were one of 13 or 14 families who turned her down. It is incredibly difficult to say no to any possible child referral, so it was a tremendous relief to us that Yu Jiao Jiao was matched with the family that was meant for her – she is such a beautiful and delightful little girl. As I mentioned before Lucy’s is an American style restaurant in food and atmosphere. It is like going back in time from the 50’s & 60’s rock’n’roll music that’s playing in the background to all the movie posters and such for movies from this same time period. They also have lots of different old license plates from different states hanging on the wall. You can eat indoors or on a terrace outdoors that overlooks Shamian Park, but indoors is preferable at this time because it’s always hot and Lucy’s has good air conditioning. You can order all kinds of typical American meals or you can order Chinese meals as well. The only problem with this place is sometimes they staggered the orders so not everyone receives their food at the same time. As a result someone often ends up watching everyone else eat while they are still waiting for their order – but the food is good and the cokes are cold. Lucy’s just felt like home somehow probably because it reminded me of some restaurants that our family sometimes stopped to eat at when I was a kid – like a small Midwestern town’s café.

After lunch we walked down South Street to the Bug Corner Shop to see if our marble picture, poster, and stamp pads were done and they were. Of course each time we go there the 2 girls talk us into buying something else. It was fun just talking to them and they interacted with Jenna a lot during each visit. Everything turned out really nice. The marble pictures looked very accurate. I don’t remember what it all costs but it wasn’t very much. Cheryl took me to this little souvenir shop nearby called “Helen’s Place” that she purchased some items from before. She bought some jade-like sculptures of a couple of lions and a clipper ship. She also bought a few glass encased embroidered flowers on stands and another with a raised picture of the Great Wall that is pretty cool. I think we bought some more shirts here as well. We looked at a few other shops in the area.

Inside Helen's Place.

Jenna chillin' out in Helen's Place.

Later we went back to the E-Gallery to buy some gifts for our references (friends who answered written questionnaires from Holt which helped allow us to be qualified to adopt Jenna). We bought them each purses with smaller purses inside, and mother-of-pearl jewelry boxes. We also wanted to buy a really nice quilt but I didn’t have enough cash so I paid with a credit card. We had to walk about a block or so away to do the transaction at the A Home of love shop that is right next to the White Swan Hotel. A couple of other shops that we checked out and bought some souvenirs from this afternoon are the China Wind shop and Jennifer’s Place.

Later in the afternoon our whole group met back at the White Swan on the second floor by the red couches and the gold bird cages for the red couch pictures. I was taking both video and pictures (I decided to use the Pentax 35mm – which I didn’t use as much as I should’ve on this trip). The children were mostly wearing traditional Chinese outfits and Jenna was wearing her blue outfit today. The red couch photo (which is a tradition – all families who adopt from China have red couch photos) had our nine recently adopted children on the couch, with the rest of the children standing behind the couch. Then we went down to the marble deck in front of the waterfall for our group pictures. Joyce, Phoebe, Katherine, and some guy (maybe he was a hired photographer) were taking these photos with their own professional camera and everyone else’s cameras in turn. We ended up with several pretty good pictures, and only one of the children was crying part of the time. Jenna was OK – she wasn’t crying but she wasn’t smiling either.

The Red Couch Photo.

Our Group Photo.

Brett, Cheryl, and Jenna.

The White Swan Waterfall - our backdrop.

The Jade Clipper Ship in The White Swan Hotel Lobby.

The White Swan Hotel's swimming pool.

When this was finished we walked around checking out some of the shops in the White Swan, and we stopped for awhile in the Swan Room, which is a playroom filled with lots of toys. Jenna had some fun playing with several different toys for 45 minutes or so. I took some video of Jenna playing here and basically what she did was this room had many toys of which most of them were in the shelves which surrounded this large room. Jenna would grab one toy and walk it over to a spot that she picked on the floor and set it down. Then she would go grab another toy and do the same until she had a big pile of toys to play with. She was hoarding the toys, and she used a lot of energy to do so. She was having fun, she was smiling and laughing and that was the main thing. Before we left we had a lot of picking up and putting away of toys to do.

Jenna and Cheryl in the Swan Room.

Laughing Jenna.

Soon we had to return to room 1212 to get ready for dinner. At 5:30 p.m. we met at the glass doors going out to South Street and we walked just down the street to the J*M Chef Restaurant, which apparently serves Thai food (I wouldn’t know the difference if it was or wasn’t Thai food). I remember as we entered this place to our right there was a place where you could purchase young fish, silkworms, and some other creatures that looked a lot like insects.

The J*M Chef restaurant.

Young Fish and Silkworms.

They placed us at 3 large tables as usual and we had the glass revolving table tops as usual – which is a good idea because we can see what our choices are faster. Any average meal can be salvaged by a cold coke and that was the case here. It was an OK meal but it’s not a meal that I want to revisit anytime soon (or ever). As before Katherine & Phoebe were just hanging around making sure everyone had what they needed. We asked them again to join us but they are not allowed to for whatever reason. I remember thinking that every meal from this point forward would be American if I had any say in the matter. Of course we leave for home the day after tomorrow. We had a nice little walk back to the hotel and John & Rebecca were kind enough to let us call home using their computer with talking headphones hooked up to it. I called my parent’s house which is where our children are staying. My dad answered the phone and I talked to him for a little bit, then I asked him to go wake up Leah (it was about 7 a.m. yesterday at home and 8 p.m. where I was). I talked to a sleepy Leah for about 15 minutes or so and she was telling me about everything they were doing. It sure was nice to talk to her after over 2 weeks. We have communicated by e-mail during the last weeks but that’s all. I told Leah that we love her & we would see them all in a couple of days. I also told her that Jenna will be happy to meet her new big sister. Well tomorrow is our last full day in China and we will be going to the Guangzhou Zoo at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. In the afternoon we will be going to the U.S. Consulate to receive Jenna’s visa.

July 25, 2007 - Last Day in Guangzhou - The ZOO,

2009-02-05T23:23:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 -

We woke up earlier today (around 6:30 a.m.) so we had time to eat our last breakfast buffet at the Coffee Shop. At 8:30 a.m. we made it down to the tour reception desk and the David, Karla, their children, and Joyce were there waiting for us. We left the hotel and since there were only 2 families going on this trip to the Guangzhou Zoological Gardens she hailed us 2 cabs. Joyce told both drivers where we wanted to go and she got into the front of the D & K's cab. It occurred to me that this would be our first (and only) cab ride in China. It was a bit of a drive to get to the zoo (about 20 – 25 minutes). Yet another chance for us to see more of Guangzhou which has over 6 million people so it’s busy. It’s another nice day – hot & humid as usual but it has been sunny for the five days we have been here. I was surprised that more families didn’t choose to come, especially since there are several older children in our group who might’ve enjoyed going to a zoo. We passed several buildings which had the 2 lion statues at their entrances on each side – one is calm & one is usually snarling or silently roaring. We asked Joyce about the possible symbolism involved here and she didn’t know. The White Swan also has the 2 lion statues at its 2nd floor entrance but they are both calm.

Ticket to the ZOO.

ZOO entrance - Guangzhou Zoological Gardens.

The Guangzhou Zoological Gardens (or Zoo) had a wall around its perimeter. Joyce paid our admissions out of the petty cash and we entered the zoo entrance, which was a large orange word “ZOO” with an elephant peaking over the “Z” and we entered through one of the 2 “O’s”. The zoo was pretty large and very clean with wide cement and brick walkways with lots of trees, bushes, and shrubs both sides of a lot of the walkways. The birds were first with pelicans, swans, parrots, ducks, peacocks and geese. There is a huge brontosaurus statue near the entrance, and a large castle called “Happy World” that is guarded by 5 large Dalmatian dog statues.

Inside the Zoo.

The Brontosaurus.

Happy World Castle.

Cheryl, Jenna, and myself.

We saw different types of monkeys, bears, a hippopotamus, cougars, jaguars, wolfs, foxes and other canines. We even saw a raccoon (no elephants or giraffes). We saw several animals that we had never seen before. At one place in the zoo there was a large rock formation that had waterfalls going down it into different ponds, and there was a cool stone statue of a mother ape holding her baby.

A Hippopotamus.

Mr. Bear taking a swim.

Rocky Raccoon.

In front of the Ape Falls.

Some more water falls.

A Dolphin Statue.

It was near here that Joyce pointed out for me the tallest building in Guangzhou in the distance; she said it was 84 stories and just a business (not for tourists). Of course I had to take a couple of pictures of this building. Joyce was behaving like there were other places she would rather be, and after a couple of hours we decided we had seen enough. It was a large zoo and we hadn’t seen everything (we forgot to go see the Pandas for instance) but it was another hot day and some of us were getting tired of walking – we had 3 young children with us including Jenna. We couldn’t really tell what Jenna thought of the zoo – sometimes she reacted to different animals, but mostly she was just serene. We left the zoo from another entrance/exit and Joyce hailed us a couple of cabs. David, Karla, and family left in the first cab while Joyce told the driver to take them to the White Swan Hotel. It took her a while to get us a cab and she was getting pretty flustered. Finally after 10 or so minutes she got us a cab home.

The other Zoo entrance.

Joyce looking for a taxi back to the White Swan Hotel.

I remember I asked Joyce if it was possible for an American like me to rent a car in China (or here in Guangzhou). She thought this was funny and she told me that you had to be a skilled driver to drive in China. With mock incredulousness I told her I know I could drive in China because I used to drive just about daily in Seoul, South Korea when I was stationed there and they drive just as crazy there as they do here in China. I didn’t take her little dig personally and hopefully she didn’t take mine personally either – it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not too sure that Joyce is in the right occupation for herself – she didn’t strike me as a “people person”, but maybe it was just me. I’m not really a “people person” myself, but I don’t work in an occupation where I deal with customers or tourists.

When we arrived back at Shamian Island and the White Swan Hotel we returned to room 1212 and freshened up and then headed out to the Deli Shop just down South Street for lunch. After lunch we went for a walk and later decided to shop at the A Home of love shop that is right next to the White Swan on South Street. We bought some shirts, purses, and a toy remote control futuristic car for Alex. The lady who owned this shop was very nice and talkative, and she interacted a lot with Jenna. We promised earlier that we would return and so we did.

Jenna by the White Swan elevators.

A Home of Love Shop.

Next we returned to our hotel room 1212 to get ready for our next destination and to drop off the stuff we just purchased. At 2:45 p.m. we met the rest of our group with Katherine and Phoebe at the tour reception desk for our bus trip to the U.S. Consulate. As I mentioned earlier the U.S. Consulate used to be just down South Street from the White Swan Hotel, but now it has been moved into Guangzhou City about a 40 minute drive from Shamian Island. We were not allowed to bring any cameras, which is too bad because I think I could’ve taken some good pictures on this trip. I could’ve brought our cameras with us and left them outside on the bus but I wasn’t comfortable doing so. The U.S. Consulate was a large black marble building with lots of big windows that looked like a business park building, very modern with escalators taking us to each floor. I noticed there was a McDonalds Restaurant in this building. I also noticed there was a large park just across the street that looked pretty nice. We rode the escalators up to the 5th floor and then we all went through a security check. Next we were led to a large waiting room that already had several families there who also adopted children but through different agencies. There were toys in this waiting room for the children to play with. We all found seats and after awhile a lady came out to explain to us why we were there and what was going to happen. When we are called we go up to a window and show them our passports and they check through some paperwork to verify it is correct, and we sign some paperwork. We receive our immigration paperwork back in a sealed brown envelope that we later turn in at our port-of-entry (Minneapolis) which will allow us to receive Jenna’s COC (certificate of citizenship) at some later date. We also receive Jenna’s Chinese passport back which now included her IR3 Visa which will allow her to legally depart China and enter the United States – her new country. Once everyone received this paperwork, passports, and visas back we all stood and took an oath as parents on behalf of our new children. The lady congratulated us all and we were done. Now there is nothing left for us to do here in China that is required of us, we just have to check out of the hotel and make our flights home. It was around 4:30 p.m. as we boarded the bus for our ride back to the hotel – riding through another part of Guangzhou that we hadn’t seen before. I’m thinking about how much I miss our children back home, and I’m feeling anxious to get back together again. I’m also thinking we have a few more places to check out before we leave. We need to buy another piece of luggage for sure because we have more stuff than will fit in our current luggage.

Katherine.

Phoebe and Joyce.

When we arrived back at the White Swan Phoebe gave me our itemized list of how our 1,200 yuan of petty cash was spent and informed me that it was all spent and we still owed them 60 yuan more. So I went to their office and settled up with them and turned in our survey on how they (and all of our other guides) did. I gave them all high marks, but I gave the highest marks to Shirley Wang – our guide back in Changsha. I basically told them that whatever Holt is paying Shirley she deserves more. We decided to eat our last meal on Shamian Island at Lucy’s (where else) and after we were done we went to Jordon’s Place to buy some more souvenirs and another large piece of rolling luggage. The luggage is not the highest quality but it is inexpensive and adequate to serve its purpose. Jordon is a friendly guy, but while we are there looking around there was a Spanish lady in there haggling with him over the price of something she wants to buy. She had already bought some other stuff for which he gave her an acceptable deal and she was haggling over something else and the difference between her and Jordon’s price was 9 yuan ($1.19). Neither of them would budge and I think Jordon was tired of trying to deal with her and was willing to let her walk, but she wouldn’t leave. Soon I’m thinking about giving her 10 yuan so she will just leave, but eventually she pays Jordon what he wants. As we were set to buy the piece of luggage and other souvenirs I mentioned to him that I’m not going to haggle the price down I will just pay face value. He smiled and explained that he had already come down on the price of other items that lady had bought and just couldn’t come down anymore. I told him that I understand that he has a business and the purpose of a business is to make a profit. After we talked with him awhile longer he asked us if we were Christians. We told him that yes we are and he told us that he could just tell that we were and he mentioned that means we are brothers, and Cheryl is his sister. We replied that’s correct.

Heading toward Lucy's.

Outside Jordon's.

Inside Jordon's Place.

After a short walk back to the White Swan we made our way to the checkout desk so I could settle up our bill for the extra’s during our stay, so all I will have to do in the morning is turn in our card keys. The bill total was 405 yuan ($53.64) of which 300 yuan ($39.74) was for internet service. The remaining almost $14 was for 3 items from the wet bar – a package of nuts, a can of sprite, and a bottle of mineral water. Somehow they were under the mistaken impression that we weren’t staying there one more night so our card keys wouldn’t work to let us back in our rooms. I went down to the desk to straighten the situation out and they gave us some new card keys that would let us into our room. Once we gained entrance to room 1212 one last time we started packing. We had to have our baggage that we were checking left outside our door by 4:30 a.m. the next morning at which time the bellboys would load it all up and take it down to load it onto our bus. Since we would be leaving before the Coffee House is open we were to receive a boxed breakfast on the bus on the way to the Baiyun Airport. We were packed and in bed by about 10:30 p.m.

July 26, 2007 - Homeward Bound

2009-02-05T23:04:00.000-08:00

Thursday, July 26, 2007 – Homeward Bound

We woke up at 4 a.m. to make sure everything was packed one last time, and then we set our 4 large bags outside our door. We each took our usual showers, awakened Jenna and got her ready to go. At about 5:20 a.m. we loaded up all of our carry-on bags and Cheryl carried Jenna in her carrier and we left room 1212 behind. We headed down to the check-out desk so I could turn in our card keys, and then we went down to the tour reception desk to board the bus. They were still loading our luggage that they picked up earlier on this bus and I could verify that all 4 of our bags were there. Once our group was all aboard the bus we headed for one last drive through Guangzhou to get to the airport. They handed each of us our boxed breakfast courtesy of the White Swan, which contained various fruit, rolls, water, and orange juice. Only 6 of the families were leaving now and we would all board the same Northwest NW10 flight from Guangzhou to Tokyo at 8:20 a.m. Then from there 2 families would fly to Portland Oregon, and the rest of us would fly to Minneapolis Minnesota.

At the Baiyun Airport we received our 4 bags from the piles of luggage that was unloaded from the bus, and I loaded them and the rest of our bags onto a pushcart. We went to luggage check-in and received our boarding passes and checked our 4 large bags. I had 2 carry-on bags – one which contained our laptop computer among other stuff, and my backpack which had all of our cameras and a Discman. Cheryl was carrying one carry-on bag, which contained our important immigration paperwork among other stuff, and she also carried Jenna in her carrier. We were carrying a load for this long trip home but there was no way we could’ve put any of this stuff in our checked luggage. I stopped and filled out our departure card and customs form and then we proceeded through security without any problems.

Northwest Flight 10 (NW10) from Guangzhou,China to Tokyo-Narita,Japan.

Chinese Scrolls at Guangzhou's Baiyun Airport.

A China Southern Plane.

Gate Area - Terminal A - Guangzhou Baiyun Airport.

Cheryl and Jenna before our flight.

Next we headed to our gate for our flight for which we had a little over an hour to wait. While we were waiting I took some pictures around the airport. I took pictures of our plane which was being loaded for the trip, and at some point an airport worker came up to me to tell me that taking pictures wasn’t allowed in the gate area. Oh well I had already taken enough pictures anyway. There were no signs anywhere that said “no pictures allowed” unless it was only in Chinese. Jenna had been behaving well as usual – taking everything in stride. Soon we boarded flight NW10Y and found our seats in row 20DEF. I had the window seat, Jenna had the center, and Cheryl had the aisle seat. As we would be leaving China I would be looking southeast. I got our Pentax and video cameras ready to take pictures and video out our window as we leave. Taking pictures out the window of a plane is often iffy, but I’ve never taken video out the window of a plane as it was taking off and that is what I did when we took off. Jenna was crying because she was mad that she had to be buckled in (despite the fact that she had to be buckled in on our last flight and didn’t seem to mind). Maybe she was somehow aware that she was leaving her birth country behind, or maybe her ears were popping – I don’t know. I must say that the video turned out kind of cool (despite the soundtrack of Jenna crying). It shows us taking off from China and then it shows China (Guangdong) from the air until it finally fades out under the white clouds. As soon as Jenna could be unbuckled she was OK again – we did check to make sure the belt wasn’t too tight. This leg of the flight was from 8:20 a.m. to 2 p.m. but would actually only be a 4 hour & 40 minute flight because of the hour’s difference between Guangzhou, China & Tokyo, Japan. Essentially we were going back in time on this trip home. We received a breakfast and a lunch on this flight and there was some detective movie showing on the movie screen that I didn’t really pay much attention.

Goodbye China - looking down on Guangzhou.

Floating on the bed of clouds.

Landing in Narita-Tokyo, Japan.

We arrived at the Tokyo/Narita Airport on time at around 2 p.m. and we deplaned with our carry-on luggage. We walked until we found the flight boards so we could see where our next gate would be. The next leg of our journey home would be flight Northwest flight NW20Y from Tokyo/Narita to Minneapolis Mn. It would be from 3:40 p.m. (July 26th) to 12:40 p.m. (July 26th) hence the back in time part from going back across the international dateline again. Since Tokyo is 14 hours ahead of Central Standard Time that means when we take off it will be 1:40 a.m. back home. Since we arrive in Minneapolis at 12:40 p.m. that means this flight is 11 hours with the jet stream at our back as we fly across the Pacific Ocean. We headed to our gate (which was Gate 23) and after we arrived there I went to a small shop to get us some refreshments. This small shop was staffed with about 5 girls who all wore uniforms and watched every customer like a hawk. This led me to assume that shoplifting must be a problem here, or these girls didn’t have anything better to do. One time back in the olden days I spent a 4 day weekend in Tokyo (from Seoul) and I thought it was a fascinating city then. It would be interesting to see it now over 20+ years later but I only seem to see just this airport as we pass through on our way to other places.

The plane next to us (like ours). Northwest Flight 20Y (NW20Y).

taxi on the runway at Tokyo-Narita Airport in Japan.

A view of Japan from above.

There is a video that I took of our children before we left that I had on our laptop and I watched it several times during our time away usually when I was thinking about them and missing them. It is mostly a typically crazy and funny video, but there’s this one part where our 4-year-old son Benjamin is looking up at me (at the camera), reaching out his hand and saying very seriously “Dad – I want to be a man” again and again. It usually brought tears to my eyes for some reason I can’t really explain. Really what he was asking me, and what he finally did say was he wanted to be the camera man. I did finally let him take control of the camera and he gives the viewer the “roller coaster ride” effect – shaking all over. We have such great kids and we are very blessed to be their parents. I know when they are bigger I will miss how they were when they were all little – a lot, but time moves onward.

Our Boeing Jet departed Tokyo/Narita Japan at 3:50 p.m. and we settled in for our 11 hour flight back home to Midwestern U.S.A. Cheryl and Jenna seemed to get a lot of sleep on this flight but I don’t think I slept much at all. I mostly listened to music and I got up and walked the aisles a few times. I don’t recall that they showed any movies on this flight at all, but I didn’t mind. We didn’t go hungry – they fed us 3 meals at least, and with all the negative stuff people say about Northwest Airlines that wasn’t really our experience at all. I thought their service was fine and all our flights with them were on time. I thought they overdid it with the seatbelt lights at times. Even if we hit just a small bump of turbulence - on comes the light for a significant period of time. I suppose they are doing it to cover their butts from potential lawsuits.

Jenna on the flight to the U.S.A.

Cheryl on the long flight homeward.

Sunset on the Pacific Ocean's horizon.

The sun was shining on the Twin Cities as I looked down on them from the air but there were some angry looking clouds visible in the distance. We landed at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport at around 12:20 p.m. on the very same day that we left China. After a short while we deplaned with our carry-on baggage, entered the international terminal, and made our way to the immigration line. We have arrived at our point of entry. Once we arrived at the immigration checkpoint we were the 3rd family in line. Frank and Kelli were first, Jon and Rebecca were ahead of us, and the Ladell, Michele, and Ashley were somewhere behind us. Basically the immigration checkpoint had a uniformed man in a booth who examined our immigration paperwork and our passports. He had a lot of stuff to go through so it took us about 25 minutes to get past this point. When he was through with us he gave us back our passports, Jenna’s passport-visa, and I believe he kept all the paperwork. Then we just had a short walk to the baggage carousel to pick up our 4 large checked bags. To get a cart to haul these bags we had to pay $3 dollars. This is the only airport where we had to pay to get a cart to haul our bags – welcome to the U.S.A. – the land of greedy opportunists! It turns out we only had to haul them a short distance as well, because after we turned in our customs form at the customs checkpoint the place to recheck our bags was right there. Oh well I still needed a cart because we already had our hands full with carry-on luggage and Jenna. After we rechecked our luggage for the last leg of our journey we had to go through a security checkpoint. Off with our shoes, take off my watch, remove change from my pocket, remove our laptop from bag along with 35mm photo film, put them all in plastic trays, and proceed through the metal detector. On the other side we collect everything, put it all back away, I put on my watch, we put on our shoes, Cheryl loads Jenna back up in her carrier, and off we go. Going through airports sure is good exercise.

The Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

Well we had a long layover here. We took turns sitting at a bench resting while the other one freshened up in the restroom and attended to Jenna’s needs. I noticed it was 1:30 p.m. and our flight NW2805Y leaves for Cedar Rapids, Iowa (home) at 4:50 p.m. and arrives at 5:55 p.m. Our gate was C25 which is clear across this rather large international airport. We decided to stop at some pizza place at the food court to eat lunch. When we were done we decided to head for our gate and hang out there until we can board our flight in 2+ hours from now. It was a long walk but we had the moving belt walkways to help us along. At least twice during this long walk we heard Ladell being paged on the airport intercom. We were curious as to what happened to Ladell. By the time we arrived at our gate we were early enough that a previous flight was boarding at this gate. Once everyone left the gate to board the flight the lady at the counter packed up and left – so we were alone at the gate for a while until a few other people showed up. I was too tired to read and maybe too anxious to sleep. Jenna however was tired and she crawled under the seats we were sitting on and fell asleep on the floor. At some point I got up and toured the general area but there wasn’t a lot to see from where we were located.

Jenna sleeping under the seats at our gate area.

From where we were sitting at gate C25 we had a good view of the outdoors and the weather outside was starting to look mean. Soon it started pouring down torrential rain. We started hearing announcements of flight delays and later even of some flights being cancelled. Eventually an airport counterperson showed up at our gate and actually put up signs that said KLM flight NW2805Y to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The rain stopped after about 15 - 20 minutes and soon our plane arrived from Toledo, Ohio. So the passengers from Toledo soon deplaned into our gate. Other people from other flights that got cancelled soon showed up at our gate trying to get on our flight to get them closer to home. Some of them were trying to get to Peoria, Illinois. Most of them ended up riding on our flight. Peoria is probably about 120 miles or so from Cedar Rapids. We were allowed to board our puddle jumper at about 4:30 p.m.

Our gate to home.

Jenna was still sleeping on the floor so we picked her up and showed our boarding passes to get on the plane. We did end up departing on time at about 4:50 p.m. so now in a little over an hour we would be home. I was trying to decide from above if Minnesota really was a land of 10,000 lakes – it is probably a slight exaggeration. They were probably including some ponds and mud puddles in that total, but to be fair I’m sure I couldn’t see the whole state. We each received a cold can of Pepsi (Diet Pepsi for Cheryl) with a cup of ice during our flight and the skies over Iowa were clear enough that we could see all of the farmland and small towns below.

Jenna heading toward sleepyland on this flight home.

Soon we were over Cedar Rapids – whose slogan is “The City of Five Seasons”. When we were kids we called it the city of five smells because of five different large factories within the city limits which each emitted their own distinctive odors (and pollution) on a daily basis for us inhabitants to remind us of where we are. We landed at the Eastern Iowa Airport on time just before 6 p.m. We weren’t expecting a large crowd to meet us because we didn’t really invite anyone. We deplaned for the last time with our carry-on luggage and Jenna and soon left the gate area to get our luggage at the baggage claim. On the way there we ran into Lois (Cheryl’s mom) and Kristen (Cheryl’s sister). They came with us to the baggage claim area while Cheryl introduced them to Jenna and told them about our flights and trip. I’m guessing she did it using fewer words than I used in this story.

Our Journey is complete!

I was able to locate our 4 large checked bags soon enough and I loaded all of our baggage onto a cart (it was free). Kristen & Lois took some pictures of us and then we wheeled the luggage outside in front of the terminal while I went to get our van from the long-term parking lot. Neither Cheryl nor I had much cash, but I had some traveler’s checks left. We kept every denomination of Chinese currency except for some reason that escapes me now we had to spend our 50 yuan bill. I remembered from before that long-term parking isn’t cheap so we borrowed $60 from Lois so I could bring our van around to pick up the bags and drive us to my parent’s house so we could be reunited with our children. As I was driving the van it felt weird because I haven’t driven anything in 2 weeks, and I’m used to driving every day. When I reached the pay booth I discovered that our parking fee for 16 days was $80, but fortunately they accepted traveler’s checks. So I was able to give Lois her $60 back. We loaded our bags into the van and they took up so much space I didn’t know where we were going to put the rest of our family, but we would find a way I’m sure. We said our goodbyes to Lois and Kristen and then we drove to my parent’s house in Cedar Rapids where Leah, Alexander, and Benjamin have been staying. Soon we were there and I had our video camera out to take video of our reunion and them meeting their new little sister Jenna for the first time. We rang the doorbell and Leah and Benjamin answered it and we heard loud choruses of Daddy! Mommy! And soon we saw Alex too. Our journey is complete – it’s great to be home! We got lots of hugs and kisses and everyone fussed over Jenna, who was giving us big smiles.

Jenna and Mommy.

Alex, Cheryl, and Jenna.

Jenna with her new big sister Leah.

The kids at home - two brothers and two sisters.

So this is the story of our journey – congratulations and thank you if you made it this far, it’s a long story I know. It is the story of our fourth adoption journey but our first one to China so it holds a special place in our hearts. Hopefully Jenna will read this story one day and be glad that she did. Then I will be glad that I wrote about it – I wrote about our other journeys as well. I would've never guessed in a million years that I would ever go to China, let alone adopt a daughter from China. What a trip it was, and what a trip it will continue to be! I have no clue as to whether it is interesting enough for others to read about - I suppose it could be like asking someone to read about our vacation and see our vacation pictures. It just seems to me like it was something much more - something magical!

Brett (Cheryl’s husband and proud father of four great children).

Leah Lorraine (Kim, Jang Mee) – South Korea, adopted May 31, 2001 when she was 10-months-old by us through Holt. She is now 7 and in second grade. Leah’s next birthday will be her golden birthday – she turns 8 on 8/8/08, the day the Summer Olympics start in Beijing China.

Alexander Matthew (Choi, Jung Wook) – South Korea, adopted February 7, 2004 when he was 22-months-old by us through Holt. He is now 5 and in kindergarten. Alex is our April Fools boy, born on 4/1/02.

Benjamin Jae (Huh, Min Jae) – South Korea, adopted May 26, 2005 when he was 22-months-old by us through Holt. He is now 4 and in preschool. Benjamin was born on 7/12/03. Nothing special about this date, except that it’s Ben’s birthday!

Jenna WenXin (Xiao, Wen Xin) – China (Hunan Province), adopted July 16, 2007 when she was 3-years-old by us through Holt. Jenna’s birthday (according to her finding note) is 5/12/04.

GOD Bless