Other places of interest....

We visited the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.  This is a historical memorial to commemorate Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, forerunner of Chinese Revolution. Our guide called him the "Father" of their country, much like our George Washington.

 One thing I loved about China was the sense of community in the parks.  There were hundreds and hundreds of people exercising in them!  Or dancing....

Loved all the RED in China!  It is my favorite color, so it looked like they decorated just for me!

Chen Ancestral Hall

Located outside the west gate of Guangzhou City and built 1888-1893. It used to provide temporary accommodation for the Chen family people when they came to the provincial capital for official discussion, imperial examination or litigation. It has a magnificent artistic appeal, though our littlest girls thought it was pretty boring! It now houses a museum of various folk arts and handicrafts of the local province. It has things like ceramics, antique furniture, embroidery, carvings, etc.

Our girls weren't all that impressed with the art work, but we enjoyed it!

Safari Park

Our medical appointment was supposed to be on Thursday,  April 25.  We were quite surprised to end up at the Safari Park instead!  Since there was rain in the forecast for the next few days our guide wanted to get us to the one place we had requested.  The medicals are totally required, so it kind of freaked us out to skip our appointment, but we were totally at the mercy of our guide and Safari Park it was!  It looks like we dressed Abigail for the occasion, but it was absolutely a coincidence.

Tikvah gave a bottle to a baby tiger.  I think that was the highlight of the whole trip for her!  The other two had the chance too, but they were too afraid to feed it.

Both girls were pretty happy about the day except for two specific times.  Abigail didn't like the elephant show - though it was VERY impressive -

And Jen TOTALLY FREAKED OUT when she saw the giraffes!  Though as noted by my oldest daughter, she didn't seem the least bit concerned about the tiger just a few feet away checking out the lunch menu!

If you go to Guangzhou, be sure to include a trip to the Safari Park.  Well worth the investment!

Adoption Day!

April 23 was our official adoption day.  Abigail still didn't want much to do with the whole process.  She spent most of the time as seen below with her "Baba" carrying her.

While in China... a recap

Neither time nor connection was cooperative for allowing posting to my blog while in China.  I apologize to those who had wanted to follow and couldn't do so on Facebook.  I'll post some photos and brief descriptions of our days just in case there are any of you out there still interested!

We began our journey to Guangzhou, China on the afternoon of Friday, April 19 and arrived early in the morning on Sunday, April 21.  Our adoption agency had assigned a sweet lady called Elsie to be our guide during our stay.  She met us at the airport, helped us get checked into the hotel many hours before the normal check in time, then left us to ourselves for the rest of the day. We passed the day walking and getting acquainted with the area around our hotel.  We discovered a department store that had a large grocery area on the ground floor.  This proved to be a regular stop for us - almost every day - as our girls ended up preferring to eat in our room.

The view from our room at The Garden Hotel

We woke very early in the morning on Monday, April 22 - the day to meet the Little Princesses! Although they began serving breakfast at 6AM, it was still a couple of hours away!

Ethan, Tikvah and I spent quite a bit of time walking around the elaborate gardens area at our hotel after breakfast.  The HUGE fish in the ponds appreciated the leftovers from Tikvah's breakfast!  The waterfall was amazing too!  Our guide arrived to take us to the Civil Affairs office and we made the short drive.

Tikvah wore her BIG SISTER shirt for the first time!  She has waited nearly 11 years to be a big sister!

Traffic in China is pretty much indescribable.  There are so many people, in vehicles (including entire families on motorbikes!) on bicycles, on foot - and pretty much the biggest thing has the right away it seems!  At any given time there are more lines of vehicles than there are lanes allowed for them.  Amazingly there seemed to be very few accidents with all of the honking and merging of vehicles.  Our guide instructed our driver to drop us off at the edge of the street and then she wove us in and out of the alleys on foot to somehow end up at the office!

We entered the room that I've seen pictured on so many other blogs.  Because of the Trade Fair and a labor holiday approaching in China we didn't have lots of people waiting with us that day.  One of the families were acquaintances from an online group, and this was their second time to adopt in China.  They were a great encouragement to us throughout our stay.

We had  barely taken a seat when we were told that our daughters had arrived!  Jen (ShaMei) came out first, wheeled out in her chair.  She was smiling and seemed happy to meet us.  Abigail (XinQing) was NOT happy, however.  She was howling and they were literally dragging her.  It was heartbreaking and definitely not the stuff of the romantic, put to music "Gotcha" videos.  She created such a ruckus that they put US behind the curtain so as not to ruin the moment for the other families.  The reactions were pretty much what we had predicted, only more so!

We went back to the hotel and the guide thought a trip to the playground at the hotel might help.  Not so much!  Jen loved playing on the slide, but Abigail refused to participate at all.  She perked up a bit back in the room when we did nails and hair - such a true girly girl!

It was a sweet picture when the three of them were tucked in for the night!

We're heading home!

I have done a very poor job of keeping the blog updated while in China.  If you aren't my "friend" on Facebook, you've missed most of the updates, and for that I apologize.  Photos aren't wanting to upload to the blog for some unknown reason.  I'll try to catch you up on our happenings here through photos after we are home and the Internet is functioning normally again!

We leave our hotel in just a few hours to begin the long, long journey home.  One of our girls hits, bites and screams when she is overtired, so we're hoping for an uneventful trip!  I'll post more when we are back in Ohio!

Update from the Garden Hotel

Internet service comes and goes, and I'm attempting to keep in contact on Facebook with my family at home.  I'm afraid that updating the blog happens last, if at all!  Here is just a quick update on us and what we are up to.

We met our Little Princesses on Monday.  It was not the "romantic moment" that many videos show.  Jen was happy to see us, Abigail was not.  This trend continues as we find our girls are so opposite one another in every way imaginable!  One thing that they DO have in common though is a love of girly things.  You'll see them pictured above as they brush each other's hair and get ready for bed that first night.  Painting fingernails is also very fun for them.

On Tuesday we had our official adoption proceedings at the Civil Affairs Office.  This consisted of two interviews, us promising not to abandon or abuse them, and signing papers.  Tikvah and I were able to go shopping with a local shopping guide in the afternoon.  She took us to a wholesale market where we got some fantastic bargains on souvenirs for our family at home.

Jen woke up with an upset tummy on Wednesday.  Fortunately she was feeling better by the time we needed to go file the application for their Visas.  We ventured out to the shopping area later in the day, and found that Abigail LOVES TO SHOP!  She is never as happy as when she is holding a shopping basket at the store.

We thought we were doing the medical exams on Thursday, but our guide surprised us by taking us to the Safari Park instead.  We weren't exactly prepared for this outing, but it was pretty fantastic.  I'll try to get more information and photos of it out later.

And here we are to Friday - and no the week hasn't really gone zip fast like that for us!  We had the medical exams and blood tests for TB this morning.  Afterwards our guide took us out for noodles and dumplings for lunch.  This is the local food custom.  It was really good, but WOW the amount of food they brought out.  They just kept bringing dish after dish!  Our guide was surprised at the amount of food we left, but it was just too much!  We brought a container of it back to our room, and Miss Abigail has been grazing on it for quite some time.

How are we doing?  We are tired.  The twelve hour time difference is a bear.  The girls have times of being really happy and times of really NOT happy.  I do believe we have made a lot of progress in becoming a family this week though. 

Travel Blog part 2

I feel I really MUST give a good account of our time on China Southern Airlines.  I had read bad reviews and indeed even talked to friends in real life who had nothing good to say about them.  Perhaps they have changed?  Perhaps we got lucky?  Not sure, but the fifteen plus hours on their flight was actually pretty good.

When my last post left off, I believe we were in LAX waiting for our China Southern flight.  We had just eaten exquisitely expensive ham and cheese sandwiches.  We met a very nice man from Australia who was traveling on business.  We enjoyed talking with him, and he was interested to hear about our journey too.  He travels quite a bit and had good things to say about the airbus we were about to get on.  That was reassuring.

So we boarded the flight, still with low expectations.  Much to our delight we found that the seats were wider and had quite a bit more foot room than either of our domestic flights.  The back of each seat had an entertainment center with headphones.  UNTRUE that they play the same stuff over and over every two to three hours!  There were LOTS of movies, TV shows, music, games, even E books.  The stewardesses were smiling and professional. 

Each seat also had a little cloth zippered bag that contained ear plugs, an eye mask, toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb.  There was a small pillow and blanket on each seat as well.  Did they wash them in between uses?  Dunno.  They appeared pretty much clean, and about half way in to the flight I really didn't care.

We had been in the air an hour or two when the stewardesses came around with little foil packets.  Hmmm... what is this?  If you know me in real life, you will understand that they scored BIG points because the packet contained a hand wipe!  This was followed by an offer of various drinks - soda pop, juice, water, tea and COFFEE!  My friends know that I love coffee.  My friends know that if I'm under stress I REALLY love coffee.  This was the first HOT cup I'd received yet on our flights, and it was good too!  Yep.  I'll endorse China Southern for their coffee if nothing else!

We were very surprised that meal trays came next.  While our flight back home specifies a meal, this one (because it left LA at 11PM and arrived at 5AM local time) didn't cover a meal time.  We were told no meals would be served.  We got trays with meatballs, fruit, a roll (with real butter), and a bowl with a potato salad looking dish and sushi - which I was afraid to try.  What I ate was pretty good for airline food.  This was followed with another round of drinks - coffee for me again- yay!

People went back to the galley throughout the long night and got drinks.  The one bad thing about the flight was the restroom.  I visited it twice, the last time was about half way through that fifteen hour flight - yep it was THAT bad.  I determined not to request any drinks because I was not going to go back in there again.  Any China Southern reps read my blog?  Your flights could be nearly perfect if every few hours someone could mop up the floors in the restrooms.

We had a group of three seats together, so Tikvah was able to sleep with her head on Ethan's lap and her feet on mine.  She stretched out and got a full night's sleep!  Looks like she is tucked into bed, doesn't it?  Ethan and I got two or three hours of sleep.

Around 3AM the stewardesses came around with trays that had some type of a white roll on them.  The roll ended up being a rolled up HOT washcloth - heavenly!  The drink cart came around again - of course I HAD to accept the coffee, followed by breakfast trays.  They had congee, fruit, a croissant and yogurt.  The drink cart followed again.  Yet more coffee.

Around 4:30 AM all of the entertainment on the backs of the seats became group exercises/stretches!  It was all in Chinese, so we couldn't understand a word, but the demonstration was done well.

Our flight ran on time - something that domestic flights could stand to improve on!  I was very glad to get off the airplane (and very glad to find a restroom too!)  As we were heading out we saw the nice Australian man again and got to chat a bit more.  The whole experience was a bit stressful for me, and it was amazing how this familiar face - who spoke English - was comforting to me.  A note to remember for my girls as we travel home to all things unfamiliar to them.

We had to stand in a very, very long line to be cleared through immigrations.   We had to submit an entry form and a departure form (which we kept for the check going out.)  That was a little scary, but the man was pleasant enough. Next stop was luggage pick up.  All of our bags arrived with us for which we were thankful.  They had forgotten to put a strap back on one of them after inspecting it, but thankfully it didn't come open when they unloaded it from the plane.  Our guide, Elsie, was waiting with a WACAP sign as we came out of the luggage area, so she was easy to spot.

The guides have worked out a good system of calling the van driver when they are ready to go, so in most instances we are picked up and dropped off right at the door of our destination.  The traffic is amazing!  LOTS of cars, trucks, vans, buses, and bicycles all zooming into spots too small for them to get into!  Our driver seems to be pretty careful.  I am just learning to trust that he knows his job and that God has angels surrounding the vehicle.  There are no seat belts except for the driver and front seat passenger, and for this former EMT and safety instructor, not wearing a seat belt is kind of like going out naked.

We arrived at our hotel around 7AM.  Check in time is not until 2PM, but they were very gracious and did NOT make us wait.  It took awhile to get it figured out, but they got us into a room.

We are staying in The Garden.  It is a very beautiful five star hotel.  Our room has a decent sized living room with a couch, chair, table and stools, desk, and a cabinet with a hot pot and small refrigerator unit in it.  The bedroom has two basically twin sized beds which we scooted together to make into a king sized.  All four of us girls are sleeping there, and Ethan gets the couch.  We actually did bring an air mattress in one of the suitcases, but forgot the converter so the couch is better than the flat mattress!  I hope to say more about The Garden later on, but their breakfast buffet is calling my name right now...