A Return Adoption Trip to China
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We spent three and a half days in Beijing-if any of you plan on going back when your girls are older, be sure to include this on your itinerary. And fall is the best time to be there-we got lucky on that! Not too hot, only one day of rain, which was unusual, and not too cold yet. The hotel we stayed at was quite nice, The Gloria Plaza (there are several throughout China), and had a great breakfast buffet, plus two or three other restaurants. Through an office at the hotel, we were able to arrange two tours-one day included The Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square. We had an excellent guide that day, and although it was rather windy, our tour was very enjoyable. The next day we went to the Ming Tombs (so much land for a few dead bodies!) and The Great Wall. What an impressive structure, and there is now a new highway on which to get there, so it doesn't take all day. It just goes on and on, and to think that it was built by hand. Our guide that day was not as good, but it was still great to see the wall. At all the tourist attractions, Chinese people were quite aggressive at selling postcards, books, shirts and all sorts of other "stuff." We made quite a few purchases and got some real good deals-Dave was quite the "haggler" over prices! We flew from Beijing to Nanchang, and the airport looks pretty much the same as it did three years ago. We got in quite late in the afternoon, so our drive from there to the hotel, once we got all the bags, was in the dark. But there is a new highway there as well. All we read about infrastructure improvements is really true! We stayed in Nanchang at a hotel that must have been under construction when we were there in 1995-only about two years old, and much different from the Qing Shan Hu, which was not very far away, only about 10 minutes by cab, and yes, the traffic and drivers are still noisy and crazy. You won't believe the pictures of the hotel-we got some extra brochures to show you at the next reunion. It makes you think a little of the White Swan, big chandeliers, huge lobby-and they had a western and Chinese food buffet at each meal, so we didn't have to eat strange things all the time. Most of the staff had at least a basic understanding of English, so that made communication much easier. They had small cribs in each room, all ready for us when we arrived. There was another whole group of 10 to 12 families, mostly from Houston, already there with their babies. We had about one hour to start getting settled, then the babies arrived. Not as tense as in 1995-maybe our different perspective in getting No. 2, plus there were only four babies. We got them in our interpreter's hotel room, and there were several orphanage workers there bringing the babies. Each was in American style clothing and had diapers on-again, very different from 1995. Ours wasn't sleeping this time (Abby was), but one of the others was. Ages of the girls ranged from 8.5 months (our Nicole, and Allison, whose parents are from Columbus, Ohio), 10 months (Maggie-her family, including two teenage sisters who were there as well, are from Bluffton, Ohio), and 14 months (Anna-her parents and 8-year-old brother, who was not there, are from near Bluffton). The city where the girls are from, Jingdezhen, is about 90 miles from Nanchang, but there are no good roads between them, and it would have been a six-hour bus ride to get there, so we didn't get to see their city. The next day we went to two different offices for the typical interviews, baby footprints, signing papers, etc. That was Thursday, October 29. Then we had until Tuesday to just relax and play. We went to the Teng Wang Gu Pavilion, where we visited in 1995. And other than that, we did lots of walking around the hotel, did some shopping, and Dave and I, along with another couple, went to our old hotel, and also walked in the park across the street. On our last day there, the bus from the hotel took us to a local village-that was neat, as we got to see lots of "locals," plus a couple of them invited us into their homes. It was very dirty-lots of trash sitting around, but the people were incredibly friendly, and we got some great pictures and video-we borrowed a camera for this trip! Then we went to Guangzhou. We stayed there at the Victory Hotel, only about a 10-minute walk from the White Swan and not nearly as pricy. Same stuff there-the shops, Lucy's (we ate there quite a few times!), the medical facility was a bit cleaner and less crowded. It was really warm, both there and in Nanchang-we rarely wore a jacket the whole time, and it was only about three weeks earlier than in 1995. Everything went well with the processing there, and we were all anxious to get home at that point. We flew into Seattle, a much easier port to go through Immigration than in Los Angeles, plus it was 6:30 in the morning, so it wasn't very busy! I guess the experience was a little easier than in 1995 because we knew a lot of what to expect. But each was enjoyable, and we missed all of you-I think the first time has some special quality to it that just can't be repeated! Now that we're back, everything is going well. Nicki is sleeping through the night (PRAISE GOD!!) and eats everything in sight-I'm sure she's already gained a pound since we got back! She does have traces of salmonella, so she's on antibiotics for that, and we have to be extra careful of hygiene and cleanliness, but she feels fine, and is progressing very quickly-she is now sitting up by herself, and is picking up things and reaching for them. The doctor is quite sure she'll catch up developmentally in no time. That's good-it's hard to believe she'll be 9 months old on Monday, when she acts more like 5 or 6 months. |
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