Moving day!

Well, I knew that people would be getting up soon and would want to know what is going on in China today, so I am posting without pictures for the time being.

We got up this morning in Nanchang to another day of cold, grey, nasty weather. We left the hotel at 8:00 am and went to the airport for our flight to Guangzhou, in the southern part of China. We had our first bit of trouble when Michelle left our baby wipes box on the bed in the room when we and everyone else had loaded the bus! I ran upstairs like OJ running from the law and retrieved the box and found a pair of pj's we had left of Coee's.

Our next bit of drama was when we went thru security at the airport (and no, I didn't have my knife with me) and I grabbed my backpack, but left our carry-on bag on the x-ray machine. We got to the gate as the plane was loading (traffic problem on the way delayed us a few minutes) and I had to make like OJ again and run and get the bag, luckily it was still there and hadn't been confiscated.

The flight was incredibly easy with Coee. She sat in Michelle's lap and just played for the hour flight. We fixed her a bottle to help her ears during ascent and descent and it worked great.

The last bit of drama was when we got to baggage claim and we are short one checked bag. We still don't have it and don't know if we will get it. It contained some clothes and the porcelain we bought yesterday at the porcelain market.

Oh well.

Our day changed for the better as we drove into the town of Guangzhou. It is a port city and is the 8th largest city in China with a population of something like 12 million people. It is much more modern and westernized than Nanchang and even Beijing. The people we see in the city are much more diverse culturally than in the other two cities. We have seen all nationalities here.

Our next bit of good luck came in the form of our hotel! It is unbelievable.

It is truly a 5-star hotel in every sense of the word. It has fantastic restaurants, great design, and a very sweet room that we now occupy! We have a 2-room suite and it has a separate shower and tub, bedroom with flat screen tv on the wall, living room with flat screen on the wall, a desk with high-speed port, bar area, and a great view. It is very modern in it's decor and each floor is decorated in different style wood and furniture.

The contrast of the cities that we left from today to the one we are in now is shocking. You can tell by the drive in how much more vibrant the economy is here. Although Guangzhou is only the 8th largest city in China, more than 45% of all the tax revenue comes from this one city!

We ate a late lunch at McDonalds and Pizza Hut across from our hotel. We will probably eat at the revolving restaurant on top of our hotel a meal or two.

Here is a link to our hotel:
http://www.thegardenhotel.com.cn/

I will take some pictures of our room and post them later.

Coee is doing great today, no fussing at all and is being taken care of very well by her big brothers.

We filled out our last bit of paperwork tonight (US immigration stuff) and she will be an official citizen very soon.

I will post again either tonight with pictures or tomorrow after our trip to Shiamen Island for shopping and a little adoption business.

Oh yeah, my last bit of good luck came in the form of...............................ESPN! We have it here!!!!!

And....................GO LONE OAK!!!

Talk to you soon,
Terrell

Day 7 in Nanchang continued

This is the famous Dennis. Trey and Dillon love him and always seem to know where he is. He has been a fantastic guide for us. He takes care of an immense amount of work for 11 families and has been a true help for all of us.


This is typical Coee in action.


I love my big brothers!!!


More personality!!!


This is the Teng Weng Pavillion that we visited yesterday. They light it up for the weekends and it is gorgeous. We can see it out our hotel window and from the restaurant we ate at tonight.



Day 7 in Nanchang continued

Well, I am going to write the rest of this, Michelle is already in bed trying to rest up for our day tomorrow.

Coee had another great day today. She played in the floor of our room for a long time today and required little supervision. She was just playing by herself, with us and with the boys very contentedly. She is even more playful than yesterday and is really showing her personality.

When we leave and go somewhere, she is perfect. She sits in her carrier (Ergo baby carrier plug!), and just hangs out, naps and makes faces!!

She is very good and is awfully funny. Tonight at dinner, everyone was a little surprised at how loud she can be, how well she can walk with almost no help and her social interaction skills.

Trey and Dillon also continue to impress. A different lady tonight at dinner told us how impressed she was with how they play/take care of Coee and how they behave. We told her that we were also very proud of them.

We are headed to Guangzhou tomorrow and are anxious to see how Coee does on her first plane trip in the morning!

Day 7 in Nanchanghttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6080423343833249821

This trash pile is outside the house that we visited. There is no trash pick up and nowhere to put their garbage, so they throw it outside or in the creek.

Their water supply is the creek that they throw the garbage in.


When they kill a duck or chicken, they hang it out for 40 days to dry out. Then it is ready to cook or whatever they do with them.




The above is the living room of a house in the countryside. There were two chairs, a toy car, a set of tires and a motorcycle in it. Very little else. Bare concrete floors and no heat.


This was the bedroom of the same house. The person who lived in the house was very proud of his house and his life. He smiled and asked us to come in and look around.


This is the rest of the bedroom area. There was one bed for the three people in his family. People in China can only have one child unless they pay a large tax.


This is the kitchen of the house, it only has a propane stove top with one or two burners. They have no electricity and no refrigerators.




Day 7 in Nanchang

Their water comes from the creek that runs thru the community and is carried to some of the houses while a few (this one) had running water to one spigot on the outside of the house. The toothbrushes and a bar of soap set in the window outside by the spigot.


This is our last day in Nanchang and we are very glad! It means one more stop (for a week) and then we are headed home!

We leave tomorrow for Guangzhou for the final paperwork and visa stuff for Coee, then we catch a plane out next Friday for Hong Kong and then Chicago, and then to Nashville, TN. What a day that will be for an 11 month old baby and two 8 yr old boys!

Today we went to the porcelain market in Nanchang and to the countryside, just outside of Nanchang. It is shocking to see how people live outside the US.

We bought a few things at the porcelain market. I am sure the stores love it when a tour bus pulls up, we are kind of a captive set of customers with fewer options than their normal customers. Jiangxi Province, where Nanchang is located, is the porcelain capital of China.

Just a few things about the areas we have been to and what we have done that we haven't reported on so far:
1. The pollution in China is incredible. Beijing was bad, Nanchang has been worse. It looks very hazy most days and the air stinks and makes your throat burn.

2. The food is pretty good, but not really kid friendly. Trey and Dillon have done pretty well with it, but the food is just quite a bit different from the States. Breakfast at our hotel is very good. They have bacon and eggs every day and both are excellent. The fruit bar is also very good with honeydew, watermelon, grapefruit (peeled), and fuji apples.

The scary parts of breakfast are the braised goose intestines (today), dim sum, corn in milk, beans for breakfast, various types of braised parts and many other interesting dishes that would be right at home in a Survivor episode.

3. Traffic- like nothing you can even imagine! There are very few traffic lights even though there are tons of cars/scooters/bikes and pedestrians all sharing the road. When cars approach an intersection, they just go in accordance to who gets there first and they honk their horns to let you know their intent. Traffic lights would just get in the way of the flow! Their are no parking lots or room for them, so you just park on the sidewalk and sometimes you drive there too! Imagine the mall parking lot and streets on the friday after Thanksgiving with no stop signs and people just making their own way.

4. Living conditions- again, like nothing you can imagine. We are posting pictures of some of this today and in the next few days. Most of the buildings are made of concrete and are very sparsely furnished. People hang their clothes out to dry in the polluted air and hang out their meats for food also. A duck hangs outside for 40 days before it is dried out enough for dinner!

The stores are on the first floor of the buildings and there are appartments above all of them in high rise buildings. The stores are all lined up and there seems to be 4 similar stores in a block, with no rhyme or reason to any of it. All of the buildings are also in some sort of disrepair.

When construction of a building is going on, the workers live in the building being built.

Michelle will post again about our personal stuff, I just thought that people might be interested in this stuff.

For Mrs. Sanders class:
1. Bailey: The Great Wall of China is approximately 6400 km (4000 miles long).
2. For the Daily question: There have been 11 Dynasties in China's history
3. For Natalie: Most of the food is good, especially the noodles, bacon and eggs. We are not a fan of the squid on a stick!
4. For Isaac: We only know- Shia Shia (sounds like sha-sha) is "thank you". Everything else we do is by sign language or pointing. We have a guide/interpreter with us most of the time.
5. For Emily: Coee is 11 months old. She was born on New Years Eve last year.

Day 6 continued'

This is in the lobby of our hotel. Trey and Dillon usually push the stroller and they get Coee bundled up when we go out.


Coee likes to chatter up with the boys and make faces and stuff. They just get along very well and it is awesome how Trey and Dillon have accepted her as their little sister and want her to be content. They are already her big brothers and have accepted that role with joy. I couldn't be prouder of how they act towards her and how they take care of her.


This is Coee's first go with Pizza Hut pizza and she loved it!


Here are a few more pictures from the day and an update on Coee!

She had her best day with us and is becoming more "contented" daily. She has been a pretty major "daddy's girl" up til' today, with me being the main one who could get her to stop crying, etc. It was even to the point that if I got up and left her with Michelle, she would just tune-up and cry until I got back.

Today, however, she would play with the boys in the floor, sit with Michelle, and even go to Michelle easily and not cry at all. The "daddy girl" thing is very common with adopted children here because of feeling abandoned by the nannies at the orphanage.

Anyway, Coee had a great day and is being very well cared for by her big brothers. They constantly help us with doing things for her and watching out for her on the bed and in the room.

For Trey and Dillon's class:
Question of the Day- How many dynasty's have their been in China's history?

See ya' tomorrow.

Day 6 in Nanchang

Today, we went to the Teng Weng Pavillion. It is one of the 5 major pavillions in China and is pretty amazing. It is similar in style to the buildings in the Forbidden City that we toured last Saturday in Beijing.

It is 6 stories tall and is very close to our hotel (about a 3 minute walk). I have included pictures of it below. We also saw a Chinese dance performance there today. It was neat, but very loud (need a new sound guy).

After the Pavillion, we just came back to the hotel and chilled for awhile. We did stop at a kite shop across the street from the hotel and looked at kites for Trey. He wants a "bird kite", like we saw at Tienanmen Square. They look like hawks flying overhead and are built very well. We will probably get one in Guangzhou.

We had Pizza Hut pizza for lunch and it was very similar to pizza in the US. Nice change from all the food we have had.

Tonight we ate at a restaurant a few blocks from the Hotel and it was great. Ordering is a challenge, none of the waitresses spoke any english and they broke out their phrase book. We do alot of pointing and sign language. Word of advice, the next thing they ask after you order steak is "how well you want it done", same as in the US! You just have no idea what they are asking and I know of know sign language that works for that.

For dad and anyone else interested in the weather............it sucks. It is about 50 degrees most days with no sun,................although I'm not sure you could see the sun anyway for the pollution. We all have raging coughs from breathing this foul air. We are just across a river from some really tall buildings, but you can't see them at all for the crap in the air. It is really amazing how polluted the air and water are here.

Trey and Dillon continue to attract attention. Trey went incognito at dinner tonight and wore a sock hat! They had people taking pictures with them at the Pavillion today. They have grudgingly accepted their celebrity!

Tomorrow we go to the countryside and to the porcelain areas.

See ya',
Terrell

Day 5 in Nanchang

Squat Pot- need I say more?!!



This is the outfit that we received Coee in. Under the outer layer, which is as thick as a ski-suit, she had 4 other layers on! 3 of the layers were thick sweater layers. She couldn't bend her elbows at all and was pretty miserable. Most of the children had similar outfits on.

This picture above shows Coee's fantastic noodle eating ability. Her paperwork showed that noodles were her favorite food and she showed it tonight. She slurps her noodles with commitment and experience!

Her shirt tells how we feel about her!


Well, today was a free day for us. We didn't have any group things to do, although we could go to the orphanage that our child came from if we chose to. We didn't. I had wanted to have Trey and Dillon see where Coee had been raised, but it was going to be a 3 hour bus ride each way to see the orphanage and I didn't want to put them thru that kind of trip after all the other traveling we have done.

So, we just hung out around the hotel and didn't do much of anything. Trey and Dillon continued their world championship game of "hallway hide and seek", and we went to the health club in the hotel for a little while.

Coee produced more snot today than any person of any size should be able to! We constantly were wiping her nose today and that made her very happy.............not!

The above pictures are from today and from "gotcha' day" when we got Coee. I also included a photo of a "chinese style" toilet, which is affectionately called a "squat pot". Trey and Dillon were a little shocked!

They are everywhere here. Our hotel has western style toilets in the rooms, but in the health club has both styles. The airport had both styles and most of the tourist places we have been have at least a few western style, but the majority are squat pots.

Rock Star Day!!

Well, today we had a free day and spent it shopping on the "Pedestrian Avenue" shops. Now we know how the Beatles felt coming to the US! (Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it was very different for us)

We went with several people from our group and whenever we would stop, a crowd would gather. We split up and went shopping with just our family.



The above picture is of what happens when you take two 8 yr old boys with brown and blonde hair to a store full of teenage Chinese girls!

Trey and Dillon don't really get what all the fuss is about and certainly don't like it (especially Trey), but we have tried to explain that they are just interested and we are different. They will also think it is much cooler in about 4 or 5 years.

Here are some more pictures of the day:

These pictures are of some of the local quisine! The ice cream was good, the other stuff went wanting!

Here are the daily pictures of Coee:



She has been a bit of a daddy's girl today and is generally not happy unless she is with Terrell, as evidenced by him taking this picture and leaving her for a minute.

Thanks for all the comments, we love to get them and hate it when it is the middle of the night in the states.

Day 3 in Nanchang

We arrived in Nanchang on Sunday and have spent two very full days here! We got Coee yesterday, so that was a very intense day with our emotions, being part of 11 other families getting their children, knowing that taking Coee away from all that she knows is so hard for her, and all the other things that go into an adoption of an 11 month old little girl.

Last night Coee cried until about 10:00, her normal bedtime is 8:00. But once she got to sleep, she did great. She is a "loud" sleeper. She "talked" a lot in her sleep and moved around from one end of the crib to the other all night long, but she didn't cry at all. Dillon got in bed with me around 3:00 am, wide awake. I was trying to get him to go back to sleep but he ended up watching her move around in her crib and we both were laughing at 3:00 am!! Dillon gave up on sleeping at around 4:00 so he woke Trey up (didn't know he was going to do that) and they started watching movies and didn't go back to sleep until tonight at 8:00 pm.

Today was a whole different ballgame with her. She was happy, content, and ate good. She seems to take after her big brother Dillon a bit, in that she is very funny. She likes to mimic faces we make, specializing in sticking her tongue out, nodding her head, throwing her head back and - the specialty- an excellent fish face (see picture below). She did get fussy with us when we woke her up from her nap at 3:30 and put her on the bus with us for our trip to Super Wal-Mart! Yes, they have them in China too. If you think the Friday after Thanksgiving is busy in the US, just come to Wal-Mart in China on a Monday! There were 74 check-out lanes. The Wal Mart is three stories, so they have an escalator that you can take your cart on.

We felt like Brad and Angelina, with all of the people staring at us. Most would stare, smile, giggle, wave and say "hi", just wanting us to say something to them. I mean everyone was staring at us!! Trey and Dillon had their own followers, mostly teenage girls. They would stand and stare, giggle and wave. I think it goes without saying, Trey and Dillon were not amused and did not go along with the "Come on, just wave. It will make their day." attitude.

We spent the morning finalizing the adoption of Coee. We first went back to the adoption affairs office to have an "interview" with an adoption official. They took a picture of Coee, Terrell and I for a "family" picture as well as one of just her for her passport. Then, we went to a notary and then to the police department for them to have a record of Coee's face. Three stops, about three hours, it's done. We walked out and I said "That was easy." What I have always heard is true: Once your daughter is placed in your arms, the wait will melt away. Three years, a two inch thick dossier, countless "hoops" to jump through over and over again. She is so worth it! And as of today, it is official............she is our little girl!

When I say "we" did this and that, I mean the group of eleven families traveling with us. We have a guide named Dennis. He is awesome. He does everything from having our bags picked up and taken to the airport to check for us to bringing us the formula and rice cereal our babies are used to, to taking us to Wal Mart to "supervising" Trey and Dillon's hide-and-seek game in the hall, because someone was cheating. (I have no idea how you hide in a hotel hall, but Dillon quit playing tonight because he could never find Trey's hiding place.) Dennis will stay with us the whole two weeks. Trey and Dillon love him and are always saying that they are running down to Dennis' room to see what he is doing. They can tell you exactly where he is anytime of the day.

It's 9:00 pm here and all three (THREE!) of our kids are down for the night. We made Trey and Dillon stay up later than 7:00 tonight so maybe there won't be movies at 3:00 am. Coee fought hard again tonight, but finally fell asleep about 8:45. We have a free day tomorrow, but Dennis has offered to take us to the Pedestrian Avenue where there is lots of shopping and touristy shops. Trey and Dillon are ready to shop.

Thank you for all the comments. We love to read them. Keep them coming!

Love,
Terrell, Michelle, Trey, Dillon and Coee

We have our Coee!

Well, here she is!!!!

It has been quite the eventful afternoon! The process at the adoption center here in Nanchang is a fairly chaotic event. 11 families traveled here today by plane from Beijing (in our group) and received their children. They had most of them dressed in traditional dress outfits over another layer of clothing, over another sweater, over a long sleeve shirt! I (Terrell) had on shorts, a l/s t-shirt and sandals. Coee and most of the others have cried quite a bit, but she is doing better since her bath. She loved her bath! Coee is very cute, smiles and laughs. She is also a bit like her cousin Paige in her affinity for tags!

She will probably be walking pretty quick, she walks now with just a little help from our fingers holding her up as she moves along. She enjoys us singing to her and she is very verbal in how she asks for things or comments on what we are doing.

Trey and Dillon have been awesome with her, playing, bringing cheerios for her and helping us get stuff situated for her. Dillon has been singing to her and she really likes that.

We will post more soon!