My Kid Circus

Our big event from yesterday was going back to the Civil Affairs office to make the adoption official. It was a much different mood in the room this time, with everyone happily with their babies, and walking up one by one to receive their certificate. At this point, Hannah is officially ours in the eyes of the Chinese government! Hooray!!

From there, we went to a notary office, where we all had to fill out some paperwork to be notarized which we will have to take with us to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou.

Our afternoon activity was going to the Chinese version of Wal-Mart. This one was called the Lotus Center. It was an interesting experience, for sure! We were able to find the essentials that we needed, but we decided to pass up the chicken legs and intestines.

Zhengzhou is very different from Beijing. In Beijing, most signs had English writing at the bottom, most people spoke with us in English, and the people who were curious about us were extremely friendly. Here in Zhengzhou, it would be very hard to navigate ourselves around the city. We have had to use more hand gestures to communicate, and when we have been out places, we have been met with more outright staring. It is really interesting. We have also witnessed some of the things that we have heard about China, such as lines really don’t mean anything. Yesterday we waited in line for a table at breakfast for quite a while as people pushed and pushed past us. Somehow we still couldn’t bring ourselves to just push ahead also. 🙂 We are having a great time though. We have loved driving down the roads and seeing a little more of the authentic China than in the big city of Beijing.

We are having a great time getting to know our girl. It is so funny how you can develop expectations on someone’s personality just from pictures. I imagined that Hannah would be really sweet and a bit shy. Ha ha ha, not so much! This girl is pretty outgoing, and wow, she is busy! She also likes to play pretty rough. We are thinking that she is going to be a great match for our D, which is not at all what we expected. 🙂

She still seems to be adjusting wonderfully. She is eating well, sleeping well, and playing happily with us.  She even said, “Dada”. We are madly in love.

This is how she likes her bottle. One hand at the end. 🙂

Hannah sleeps sucking on her blanket. She is able to stuff a LOT of her blanket in there!

One of the only times Hannah slows down is on the bus. It seems to make her nervous, and she hangs on tightly.

Silly girl 🙂

Today is definitely a day that will be remembered forever.  It has been so incredible that words just cannot do it justice.

We started out on the bus for the Civil Affairs office, with 11 other very excited families.  The drive wasn’t long and we were enjoying seeing a little bit of Zhengzhou.

When we arrived, two of the children were already there waiting for us.  I think tears sprang up in all of our eyes as we watched those sweet children join their families.  From that point on, the babies slowly trickled in as they had each traveled from their orphanages, some of them from many hours away.

There were only a handful of families left when the three of us were standing watching outside the door.  Then I  yelled, “That’s her!!!”.  Even from a distance, I knew, because she was wrapped in the blanket that I sent in her care package.

I was able to take her the minute she walked into the door.  It is a moment without words.  We held her, hugged her, kissed her, and thanked God for her.

Really from that first moment, she was in good spirits.  We soon got down on the ground to play with her and learned that one of her favorite games is to run into your arms for a big hug.  It doesn’t get much better than that!

The wonderful ladies from the orphanage who brought Hannah

Hannah looking at the obviously well used photo album that I had sent in her care package! 🙂

Wiped out on the drive back to the hotel

Since that time we have just been cherishing every minute.  We have yet to hear her cry, and have already been lucky enough to see her smile and laugh.  She is amazing.  The agonizing wait has disappeared, and was so very worth it.

Yesterday we were up bright and early for our group to head to the airport. Everyone was so excited, talking about traveling to our children’s provinces.

We arrived together at the airport to find out that we were delayed at least 2 hours due to fog. A big group of disappointed travelers, but no problem.

Almost exactly 2 hours later, we happily boarded our plane. We are happily flying when I say to my husband, “I really think we just did a complete turn around in the air. That was one huge circle”. I see the flight attendants being called to the front, and then some announcements come over the overhead speaker. Of course those announcements are in Mandarin, so I have no idea what is going on. A few minutes later we are landing, and eventually it is passed back to us that we are not in fact in Zhengzhou. I’m not even entirely sure where we were, but it was somewhere on the path between Beijing and Zhengzhou.

The plane parks on the side of the airport where we had to climb down a flight of stairs and get on a bus back to the terminal. Most fortunately for us, we have one man in our group who speaks Mandarin. He was able to tell us that we couldn’t go on to Zhengzhou because farmers are burning something in their fields which caused so much smoke that there is not enough visibility to land. He then tells us that we will be in the airport for at least 4 hours. Ahhh!!!!

The weather in Zhengzhou: SMOKE!!

So, we settle in. I am so grateful to be part of a large, fun travel group. We really had a good time all together. Z did great. All the kids played together the entire time, with NO COMPLAINING! It was amazing!

By the time the airport was empty, it was our turn to get back on our plane. We had an incredibly bumpy ride, but thank goodness, it was short. We landed in the airport and got to our hotel about 10 hours past when we were supposed to. A long day of traveling for what should have just been an hour and a half flight!

The best part is that we have moved into full baby preparation mode.  Our guide passed each of us a paper giving us an update about our children.  She then told us that we would be leaving at 9:30 AM to get our children!!!  That is just 2 hours from now!!!

When we got into our hotel room there was a crib in the room.  I had an internal reaction very much the same as when I saw the empty bassinet when I got to the hospital to have our babies.  In such a short time, our baby will be in that bed.  It is really real.  It is today! 🙂

Here I am awake at 2 am. This is moving in the wrong direction!!

We had another fantastic and incredible day yesterday. First, we loaded back on the bus and went to a government run jade factory. We learned a little bit about how important jade is in the traditional Chinese culture. George described it as in America, we have a diamond culture, but in China, it is a stone culture. Traditionally, women would wear their jade jewelry all the time so that their bodies would absorb the beneficial minerals from the jade, and the oils from their bodies would improve the quality of their jade. If a woman had a bracelet that had become shiny and translucent over time, that was a sign that she was very healthy and would make a good wife.

Next, we headed to the Great Wall. It was so exciting to get our first glimpses of the mountains, and then our first views of the wall. When we got off of the bus, we could see mountains and sections of the wall in every direction. We had a limited amount of time, so George showed us where our climbing goal was and we began climbing. When Z got a look at the number of steps that he would have to climb, he was ready to turn around and run back to the bus. Luckily, however, he has become fast friends with another little boy his age, and soon climbing up together became great fun.

Our entire adoption group about to tackle The Great Wall!

In places, the stairs are very high, and in other places, the stairs are small and short. We all had a great time ascending the stairs and looking around to see how high we were. In a little less than an hour, we made it to our goal. Unfortunately, the air quality in Beijing is very poor. Everwhere you look is just kind of in a thick haze. Even at the site of the great wall, which was a little more than an hour outside of the city, it absolutely obscured the view of the mountains. Still, it didn’t take away from our experience, and it was easy to see how gorgeous everything would look on a clear day.

From there, we headed to lunch at another Chinese restaurant. This restaurant was very large, and obviously catered to large groups of tourists. Still, the food was quite good and we had a great time.

On our drive back towards the city, we stopped at a the Olympic Park, where we could see the Bird’s Nest and the Cube. We didn’t have time to go inside, but it was fun to see.

We ended the night by attending an acrobatics show. Parts of the show were similar to things we have seen at Cirque de Soleil, but there were some parts that were entirely new. Z was wiped out and slept through the whole thing. I hated that for him, because I think he would have really enjoyed seeing women balance themselves on a pole by their mouths, ten women on a bicycle, and 5 motorcycles in a cage.

Throughout these days of touring, our babies are never far from our minds. It has been wonderful to talk to other adoptive families and hear about their experiences during the wait. Today we will fly to Henan, and we will be so close to our Hannah Min. My stomach is definitely turning in anticipation and excitement. I can’t wait to hold her in my arms!!

Well, I have been awake since about 4am.  We have heard that it takes about 4 days to fully adjust to the time change.  Hopefully we will be in good shape by the time we get Hannah. 🙂

We had an amazing and PACKED day yesterday!  We started off on the bus, not really knowing where we were headed.  One of our guides, George (who is hilarious, and SO knowledgeable), talked the entire time we were driving, and cracked us up by referring to himself in 3rd person the whole time.  Finally he told us that George decided he wanted to take us to see a Chinese family.  We all unloaded the bus and each family got on a Rickshaw.  It was amazing!  We rode the rickshaws through areas of Beijing where we got to see where families live in China.  It was like a maze of alley ways, and families lived down each little corner.

When we stopped, we went to a courtyard that was surrounded by a building on all sides.  A Chinese woman came to talk to us and explained that it was her home that had been passed to her from her grandparents.  She lived there with her daughter and son-in-law and  her grandson.  Her son-in-law is a famous artist in China, and also likes to race pigeons.  She allowed us to walk through her home and ask questions.

Next we went on a tour of a government run silk factory.  It was so interesting to see how they took the cocoons of the silk worms and turned it into silk.  Z was somewhat interested in seeing the huge basket of worms, but that ended his interest in anything silk. 🙂

Next, we went to lunch.  We ate in “traditional Chinese style”, which meant sitting at a large round table and sharing dishes of food.  Our guide ordered everything for us and it was delicious.  We agreed that it really wan’t that much different from good Chinese food that we have had at home, but I do think they made the vegetables tastier. 🙂

From there, we walked a block down to Tiananmen Square.  We took pictures, and our 2 guides talked to us about the history, and showed us the building where the body of Mao Zedong is available for viewing for a few hours every day.  It was the last day of the Chinese National Holiday, so there were flowers and beautiful decorations all around.  One interesting fact was that while Chairman Mao was alive, he wanted to know how many years he would be in power, and how many years he would live, so he consulted a “psychic”.  The man told him  that he could not reveal the answer or he himself would not be allowed to go into Heaven.  He told him that he could offer him the number 8341, but could not translate to him what those numbers meant.  Chairman Mao became obsessed with those numbers, and had them in different places around him.  Still today, the guards have 8341 on their uniforms.  He was never able to understand what the numbers meant, but after his death, it became apparent that he died at the age of 83, and was in power for 41 years.

Next, we walked into the Forbidden City, or Imperial Palace.  It was amazing to walk on bricks that had been in place for over 500 years, and to hear some of the history of the expansive buildings and courtyards.  George explained that the city supposedly was built with 9,999 1/2 rooms, because it was thought that there were 10,000 rooms in Heaven, and it would have been arrogant to have as many.  We walked courtyard after courtyard, and it became obvious why it was called a city within a city.  It was enormous!  Enormous, and breathtaking.

By the time we got back to the bus, all 3 of us fell asleep on the short drive back to the hotel.  We walked to dinner by ourselves, where Z chose to have a chicken sandwich from “Fat Burger”.  Then we had fun exploring a Chinese grocery store, and fell happily into bed.

One thing that I was told before our trip was that the Chinese people would be very interested in Z, as they don’t see Americans very often, especially children.  I was told that they might try to take his picture, or touch him.  We got our first taste of that, as several times people did reach out to touch him, and asked to take his picture.  The people were always friendly and nice, and Z took it in stride.

Today we will go to the Great Wall, tour a jade factory, and go to an acrobatics show.  I can’t wait!

Love and miss everyone at home!  We have spotty access to Facebook, so please leave comments here instead if possible!!!! 🙂