Day 12 in Guangzhou- the visa day

Well gang, this little journey of ours is quickly coming to a close. Many of our group are leaving tomorrow, three couples of us are leaving on Friday, so we get one more day here.

Today we had our "swearing in" ceremony at the US Consulate here in Guangzhou. A large room full of probably 50 families who were all adopting children met at the Consulate this afternoon to get our kids visa's so that they can enter the US and become citizens thru one of two methods: 1.) In most states, since we have adopted them, as soon as we enter US airspace or land in the US, they become US citizens. 2.) In some states or if one of the adopted parents aren't here in China, the child has to be re-adopted in the US to become a citizen.

We are in the number 1) group, so as soon as we land, Coee is a citizen.

This morning, we had another leisurely breakfast and took a walk around the grounds of our hotel outside the breakfast restaurant (see picture below). It is a very peaceful place in this urban jungle of Guangzhou.

I went back to Liwan Plaza today for a little extra shopping for things that Michelle needed. If possible, I will take our video camera there tomorrow and video the scene. It is completely unlike anything I have ever experienced shopping anywhere (even New York City). In this one shopping center and surrounding streets, there are probably 1,000 stores or more in an area of about the size of our mall and mall parking lot. There are thousands of people there too, all the stores are doing good business.

My ability to do enough sign language to purchase what we need was tested today by our need for an Albuterol inhaler for Michelle. Her persistent cough has caused her alot of problem at night, so one of the Doctors in our group adopting a child (there are 3) told me to get her an inhaler. Well, let me tell you, trying to explain an inhaler to people who don't speak your language is quite a fun task. I drew pictures, mimiced asthma and breathing problems and anything else I could think of at the drug store that I found. Finally after the picture I drew, they understood a little and showed me the area they were in behind the counter. And no, you don't need a script for them. It is made by Glaxo Smith Kline, so I felt pretty good about it and got it for $4!!! I understand they are quite a bit more than that in the US.

Tomorrow we are going back to Shiamen Island and buying a few more things for Coee. After that, we are headed back to the hotel and start packing. We get our wake up call at 4:30 am on Friday. Our guides get our checked luggage to the airport for us and get us to the airport by 6:30 for our 8:30 flight to Hong Kong. We then leave Hong Kong at 11:00 and arrive in Chicago at 11:09 am the same day, but 14 hours later! The time change is gonna be pretty odd for us. We will have some kind of night of sleep and still arrive on Friday before noon!

We then leave Chicago at 3:30 or so and arrive in Nashville at 5:30 pm if everything goes as planned.

Well enough about all that, here is what Coee is doing!
We went to eat tonight at an Italian restaurant with most of our group and Coee showed out! She is very loud and is a camera hound! She also does many of her tricks on demand, so Trey and Dillon enjoy showing her off!

She had our whole table cracking up at her noises, faces and smiles.

Well I am going for now, we will post tomorrow night and then be ready to head home! We are all looking forward to getting back to the US and see how Coee adjusts to everything and to see everyone again. We appreciate all the love and support you guys have sent our way. It has made the time hear go by quickly having a routine of getting comments and posting everyday.

This is the waterfall outside our breakfast restaurant. We even found a "star fruit" tree in the garden and almost got hit by falling fruit!


Here are my two girls!!

Day 11 in Guangzhou- full free day

Today has been a nice laid back day. We began the day without having to rush to be anywhere at any certain time, so we had a nice leisurely breakfast by the waterfall. It was beautiful...until I spilled a full glass of orange juice on me and my feshly laundered jeans and t-shirt. The remainder of the meal was a bit of a sticky mess. While we had to be in our room from 10:00 to 12:00 to wait for a call from Dennis, and hope to not get one because that would mean the U.S. Consulate was requesting more information, Trey and Dillon worked on their school work. We didn't receive a call from Dennis needing additional information, so we celebrated by taking the kids to the small playground on-site again. They all enjoyed themselves there. Trey and Dillon have been playing with their new Chinese version of the hackey sack all day today. (See pictures of them in the hall below).

After that, we got a taxi to take us to a mall, but we ended up at a textiles mall. It had all of the fabrics and wholesale home goods you could imagine, but that is not what we were in the market for. We hailed another taxi and asked him to take us back to the plaza we went to day before yesterday. We bought a few things there and Terrell enjoyed the bargaining process immensely.

We had dinner tonight at the revolving restaurant on the 30th floor of the hotel. It was a huge seafood buffet and I did not come close to eating enough to justify the price we paid for it. Oh well. It was the experience of it, right? When we first sat down, Trey, Dillon and Terrell all decided that the floor wasn't moving but instead the outside walls and the interior buffet/restaurant section was moving. I disagreed and they argued. The weird thing was that when they came back from filling their plates on the buffet the first time, the surrounding buildings had begun to move too!!! Isn't that weird? Case closed. Coee loved the boiled shrimp and was not a fan of the chocolate cake. Doesn't like chocolate? We will definitely have to work on that. It will come with time.

We are back in the room now. Coee has had a bath and Trey and Dillon are doing a bit of school work again before bed. We are free tomorrow until 3:00 pm, when all of the families will go to the U.S. Consulate to do the adoption swearing in ceremony. Most families are leaving out the day after that, Thursday morning. We will be leaving Friday morning, so we still have two days left to shop and one empty suitcase to fill. We've got our list and work cut out for us.

Again, thank you for all of the comments. They make our day. Keep them coming!! See you all in three days!

Trey and Dillon's class, here are the questions of the day:
What is the longest river in China?
Is it longer or shorter than the longest river in the US?
Bonus points if you know the longest in the US without looking it up!





This is Trey and Dillon playing Chinese hacky sack in our hallway of the hotel. The hacky sack is very much like a badmitton birdie with additional weight on the nose of it.

Trey and Dillon fed the fish after breakfast this morning. The fish are big fans of the bread at the buffet!



Trey and Dillon helped Coee go "up" the slide several times today!


This is Liwan Plaze and is a huge shopping area attached to a few malls all around it! There were thousands of people there today, which is pretty common because there are thousands of people everywhere in a city of 12 million! One mall that we went into has all jewelry on one side of the circular plaza and clothes and miscellaneous stuff on the other side. The jewelry stores are incredible with 3' tall, 18" diameter bags full of pearls! The workers are constantly working packing boxes to ship to stores all over the world.




Coee loves her some bathtime!!! This is the sink in our bathroom.

Day 10 - Guangzhou - The medical "exam"

Don't fall over...it's actually Michelle posting this time. Coee and I took a two plus hour nap this afternoon so I am spry as a spring chicken and ready to help Terrell out with the post. Today was the day that we went to Shamian Island to the medical center to have all of the babies "checked out." This consisted of them measuring her head, checked her tummy, weighing her, measuring her length, and "testing" her hearing and eyesight. The hearing test consisted of holding a toy to one side of her head, squeaking it, then doing the same thing on the other side. She turned her head towards the toy on both counts so she passed. She weighed in at 8.6 kg (almost 19 lbs.) and her length is 75 cm (approx. 25 inches).

After we finished and passed the medical exam, we were free to shop on Shamian Island. Shamian Island has largely become the adoptive families haven. There are many small shops geared towards the adoptive family and their Chinese daughters. We bought everything from squeaky shoes for Coee (see picture below, but I'm not finished shopping for those yet) to a traditional Chinese dress to two new suitcases to carry all of our purchases home in. Trey and Dillon racked up by each getting a SET of swords, plus a practice sword each. They are out in the hall now "practicing" with them. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we only had two hours to shop. Boy did we do some damage in those two hours.

Then all of the families met at the White Swan hotel for the traditional "Red Couch Photo." As all American families adopting from China have to pass through Guangzhou to receive their daughters visa, most families have stayed at the White Swan Hotel. It is a tradition to have the babies pictures made on a (the) red couch in the hotel in their traditional Chinese outfits. Imagine the chaos. Eleven babies, each with at least two accompanying adults and some with accompanying siblings. Lunch time. Let's put them all on the couch and take a photo! Who thought of this tradition? Coee was in the middle of her bottle, so she cried the whole time - big time. She was not alone. I'm guessing there were maybe two babies that were not crying. Big fun. See picture below.

Following the photo opp, we all went for a traditional Dim Sum lunch. This is where you sit at a large round table with a lazy susan in the middle of it. They bring lots of different dishes for all to share. Trey and Dillon generally hold out for the fried rice or noodles during these dinners. Fortunately, they generally end up having one or the other to eat.

After our big morning, we spent the afternoon in the hotel watching movies and resting. Trey and Dillon have had ramen noodles for dinner, and Coee is following in their footsteps in regard to their love for ramen noodles. She had to have some too.

Coee is doing great. We have had much better bedtimes the past two nights. Instead of rocking her, we just put her on the bed with us and she WOLLERS (sp?) all over the bed until she finally gives out and falls asleep. It took almost 45 minutes last night. She is happy the whole time, doesn't cry, and doesn't try to get off the bed or even near the side. She was non-stop activity, like a wiggle worm, for the full 45 minutes. But it works, and it is better than the hour of crying that we had a week ago. Can you believe we have had her over a week already? We can't, but it kind of seems that she has always been here too. It's good to have that week behind us and know her and her wants/needs. I know that she doesn't cry unless she is hungry or tired. We know that she is a funny, funny little girl, full of personality. She knows how to get attention (by being loud) and LOVES the camera. We got the camera out a bit ago to take a picture of all of her shoes. She got so excited, thinking we were going to take her picture. She loves noodles, and watermelon. I told her that it is going to be sad when we leave here because we won't have watermelon until next summer, but I bet there are several people that will happily plant extra so she'll have all she wants. Oh -one more thing we have learned - she really wants a Nintendo DS like her brothers have. She can't keep her hands off of those things. We told her it would be several years. She can do patty cake. Terrell has been trying to teach her that he is Daddy, so he says "Daddy" and pats his chest. Since she is an expert at mimicing, she will pat her chest too. So now if we ask her where is daddy?, she pats her chest. Oh well. She loves to laugh and smile and does so at every opportunity. When she cries she goes from "waaaa" to "mmmmm" to "ooooooo" and it is REALLY cute.

We have a free day tomorrow. The only thing we have to do is be in the room from 10:00 - 12:00 while Dennis takes our paperwork to the U.S. Consulate to complete the adoption according to the U.S. We have to stay in the room in case they have questions, so he can get in touch with us immediately. After that, we will be back out shopping. Looking forward to Friday and seeing you all. Thank you so much for all of the comments. Please keep them coming. Trey and Dillon wake up before dawn and want to see the comments. Terrell and I usually read them around 3:00 am. Obviously, they are very important to us.

Trey and Dillon's class, here is another question for you:

In China, a "large" city is one that has over 5 million people in it. How many large cities are in China and in the US?

Talk to you tomorrow! The beginning of a serious love affair with shoes!!! And we aren't even done yet!


Coee was pretty good at the Dr.'s office.

They checked her hearing too.

Happy kids..................not! Coee is on the front row, far right. Crying like there is no tomorrow!

This is our missing suitcase! The Chinese don't mess around with missing luggage! We couldn't believe it came crated!

Real swords................the perfect gift for 8 yr old boys....................wow, what were we thinking.

Day 9 now in Guangzhou

Thought I would start off the post with a very cute little girl!!!!!





Well it was a sad day for Lone Oak. Great season though and I haven't been around excitement like that in a long time for a sports team out of Paducah.

Today we went to Shiaman Island and had our children's picture taken for their visa's to get back into the US. After the pictures, we went to a mall and did a little shopping. We bought some pearls, turquoise, and dvd's. We only got two hours to shop, so we did fast shopping, but will probably go back in the next few days.

Tomorrow we are going back to the island and doing our child's medical exams. After that, we will stay on the island and shop over there. The boys are enjoying the shopping and we are all looking forward to just getting out and shopping ourselves.


We also had a great night last night at bedtime, we figured out the "putting Coee to sleep without her crying" dilemna. We just let her play on our bed until she fell asleep! It worked great and was much better than our other plans the previous nights.

I am including some pictures from yesterday at the airport and from the hotel. It is so much nicer than any of the other places we have stayed.



Here are some more of the pictures:
This is the quantity of luggage that 11 families generate for a trip to China!

This is Trey and Coee sitting together on the flight from Nanchang to Guangzhou.


One of the many hotel gardens and ponds. This one is outside our breakfast restaurant. You can eat outside by the water too. There are many waterfalls around also.
This is quite an impressive stairway in the lobby.This is the check-in desk at the hotel.

This is Michelle, Coee and the boys outside one of the gardens here


This the hotel playground, Coee like the slide and the boys did a good job sliding with her.


She was proud of herself after she slid!

We will post again tomorrow!

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.