Day 4 - Monday

We woke up bright and early this morning.  The kids were actually awake at about 4 or 5 am.  They'd all fallen asleep about 7 the night before.  We had an early appointment back at the same building we were at the day before so it worked out well, in that it wasn't hard to get everyone up.  Everyone except me who didn't sleep well at all.  Between Josh snoring and two babies between us, both with colds, I was up off and on all night long.  My inner clock is way messed up right now!

We all got showered and dressed and headed back down to the breakfast buffet with G in tow.  We had been getting a lot of stares and pointing fingers but it was tripled now that I was carrying around a chubby little Chinese baby.  Most Chinese people do not know international adoption even exists, so to see this very large (to them) American family with a Chinese baby is very confusing and curious.  They're not rude at all.  Just curious.  When we're out with our guide she ends up answering a lot of questions about why we have this Chinese baby.  It's pretty funny to watch.  One person will ask Celine (our guide) a question about us and several others, not even in the same group, will gather around and start asking questions too.  It's not long before we've drawn a crowd.  You can tell Celine doesn't really want to answer the questions and she looks like she's trying to ignore them most of the time.  She's been a guide for adoptive families for 10 years now so she knows how this works.  She probably doesn't want to answer the questions because it just invites more and she has other things to do.  It's also funny to be out with all the family and see people physically count all the children.  Then they'll look to someone else in shock and hold up five fingers like it's the craziest thing in the world!  We are going to blow some serious minds once we get E!  Hahaha.  

G's breakfast of congee and scrambled eggs.  I gave her a little bit of orange juice and she was NOT a fan.  She makes the best faces when she doesn't like something.  Very similar to giving a baby a lemon in America.  She has probably never had orange juice before.  

S doesn't actually eat all this food, just butters it all up.  He's never been good eater and with the limited number of normal-to-him looking things to eat he's definitely not eating much here.  We still have lots of American snacks and have found a few things he likes here.  

 

Sorry, I digress. . . So after breakfast, which the kids have totally gotten the hang of now and head straight for plates full of pancakes and bacon, we loaded up the van and headed back to the government building.  G fell asleep while we were waiting for the van.  

I was hoping that since it was Monday and a working day they'd have the air conditioner on but no such luck.  Celine explained that this is summer vacation for all the children and many people were out on vacation so they had the air conditioner off again.  Ugh.  I think it was hotter today at 9 am than it was at 4 pm yesterday!  

G's nanny and the adoption coordinator from her orphanage arrived and G was SO happy to see them.  Her little face just lit up when Lily walked in.  I immediately gave G to Lily and let her stay with Lily the entire appointment.  

We were there for a good hour or so.  I knew that this would be the last time Lily and G would have to spend together and even though G won't remember it, Lily will.  I hope she knows how grateful we are for all the love and care she gave to G.  When you chose to adopt you really have no idea of the conditions your child was raised in and lived in up until the came to your family.  G is so healthy and happy and we could not be more thankful for that.  There are many, many, many children in orphanages here that you could not say that about.  What a blessing!  So Lily and G played together and hugged and had some special time.  Lily had also brought a few gifts for G - a little water cup with a straw (she was concerned about G not getting enough water to drink in this heat and wanted us to be careful of heatstroke) and some little hair clips for her.  So sweet.  

The kids hung out while we did all the official stuff.  

Josh and I had an interview with a civil affairs agent (I think that's what he was called - a government worker, anyway) and then signed a bunch of papers.  Then we had to place our thumbprints over our signatures so we had Smurf thumbs after that.  

They also stamped G's footprint on some of the forms.  The lady holding the stamp pad is our guide, Celine.  The other lady holding G is the adoption coordinator from her orphanage.  

Her little foot fills up that box!  Her feet are actually very small.  All the shoes I brought for the girls don't even come close to fitting her!  She's not walking yet so it's not really a problem.  I may have to brave a Chinese shoe store for E if they don't fit her either though!   

Then we got to wait for a little while until the notary showed up and then we did the same thing with her except without the fingerprints or footprint.  We showed Lily and the other orphanage lady (I never got a name!) our paper that told all about our family.  We had a friend translate it into Chinese so we could whip it out and show all the curious people.  Our guide and the nanny started laughing and being kind of shy about the paper.  When we asked them what was wrong they said the girls' names had been translated incorrectly and actually meant something really bad in Chinese!  Our friend did all the translation EXCEPT their names - Josh used google translate for that.  Guess that was a bad idea!  We ended up cutting off that part of the paper as to not offend anyone else!

Then we got to wait some more for the head honcho government guy (yeah, that's his official name!) to show up.  We had to pay him (for what, I'm not sure because he wasn't there for any of this!) and get his signature before we could leave.  I busted out the lollipops since the kids were beyond bored by this point.  

The big kids went to sit by the one little fan they had in the office because it was stinkin' hot.  

 He finally showed up a little after 10 a.m. and we got his signature on the forms that said she is officially ours!  

Once we received that paper Lily gave G back to us willingly.  I was all for letting her keep G with her until we walked down to the van and had to take her with us but that piece of paper meant something, I guess.  She insisted I take G, who came to me OK but definitely wanted to stay with Lily.  We all walked out of the building together and said our goodbyes in the parking lot.  We gave Lily one last hug and told her thank you many times.  

Then we were off to the police station to apply for G's passport.  We sat in the waiting area while our guide did all the work.  :)  Josh walked around with S and I'm sure he was quite the entertainment to those around.  

Easy peasy.  Then we headed back to the hotel for a lazy day.  

We all rested for a little bit and Josh took the boys swimming while Maddie and I hung out and G napped.  

The boys had a lot of fun swimming and C came back saying that he could swim underwater!  

We ended up not having any lunch this day and just snacked but by 5 pm we were all pretty hungry.  Josh had the great idea that we should all walk down to the restaurant Celine had shown him the night before and eat dinner there.  So we packed everyone and everything up and headed down the street.  We walked and walked and walked and then had to turn around because we had walked and walked and walked right past the restaurant.  Argh!  It was at least 98 degrees outside and I was dying carrying around the chunk in the baby carrier.  We finally found the restaurant and it only went downhill from there.  The poor waitress could speak a little English but not much and we obviously don't speak any Chinese.  Josh kept pointing towards the back of the restaurant where there was more seating and she finally gave in.  I don't know if this was a special part of the restaurant they don't like to use much or what but she was very reluctant to sit us there.  There was no room for our huge group in the front where everyone else was though.  She brought us a menu and Josh found a picture of what we wanted to order.  He pointed and told her "5" while holding up five fingers.  She was shocked and started laughing and looking over at the other workers who had come to sit in same room and watch the show.  Josh nodded and told her "5" again and then pointed at each of us while counting to show her that there were five us who needed a meal.  She was baffled and kept shaking her head and holding up one finger.  Josh kept disagreeing with her though and she finally gave in.  She was so funny though.  I guess no one had ever ordered that much before or something.  Then she walked off into the kitchen, which was only a short distance away from us, and we could hear her laughing and telling everyone about this crazy family ordering 5!  We realized that this was not going to end well and decided we'd better just take this to go as we were already drawing a crowd and it would probably only get worse.  So when she came back by Josh showed her the written Chinese our guide had given him for "take out" and she really flipped out.  She ran back to the kitchen and she started yelling and laughing and making a big deal out of it.  I don't know what she was saying but I can imagine.  By this time the kids are all exhausted and super hot (very little air conditioning in the restaurant) and I was about to melt along with the baby.  R had actually fallen asleep sitting at the table while all of this was going on!   Josh and I decided that I would take G and M would take S in the stroller back to the hotel and he and the other boys would wait for the food and bring it back to us.  In the end, we didn't really need to order five of the dish.  Two or three would probably have been good but one would definitely not have been enough.  Oh well, it was still super cheap!  When we opened up the containers we were surprised to find cupcake sprinkles all over the food.  So weird!  It was good though.  

We had a lazy evening and everyone crashed pretty early again.  I kicked Josh out of our room and made him sleep with the older kids while I kept the little ones with me.  I slept so much better without having to worry about getting him to roll over all night long.  I love him dearly but that man can snore!!!  Holy cow. G slept well again and so did S.  I slept better as well.  Not sure I can say the same for the big kids who had to sleep with the chainsaw their room.  ;)

Day 2ish - 3

After breakfast we went back to our hotel room and hung out for a while.  Some of us napped a little but I was too nervous/excited to sleep, even though I was dead tired. We decided to get some lunch in the restaurant here in the hotel before we had to leave to meet our guide at 3:30 so we quickly exchanged some good ol' American dollars for some "Monopoly money" as Josh calls it.  We were the only people in the dining room since it was 2:00 pm.  We ordered 3 pizzas for the kids to share (think personal size pizzas), a bowl of minestrone soup for me and some crazy salmon and fruit dish for Josh (gag!)  It ended up being about $100 dollars (American!) for the meal.  What a rip-off.  We learned our lesson and will not be dining there again except at the free breakfast buffet.  (I have also been taking Ziplocs down to breakfast to pack away a few things for lunch or snacks. Gonna get our $100 worth for sure!)  

We ran back up to our room to gather all the things we needed to take with us to meet G.  Our guide met us in the lobby of our hotel and we were off.  Driving into Xi'an the night before didn't really seem any different than driving somewhere in Texas.  But that was merely because we were in the dark.  Driving (or being driven) around China is an experience I didn't really need to have.  It is so scary!  

The similarities to the US:  They drive on the same side of the road as us.  The driver is on the left side of the car like us.  

The differences:  There are no carseats here so babies are just held or sat down in the seat next to you.  There are lanes painted on the roadways but apparently they are just guidelines and no one really follows them.  There are also people just walking down one of the lanes of the road if that's what they feel like doing.  There are motorcycles and bicycles everywhere - with at least three people on each, and a load of watermelons and a chicken. I have seen so many bikes loaded up with the craziest things.  There are stoplights and crosswalks, just like at home, but these, too, seem to be just guidelines.  No one uses blinkers - they only use the front of their vehicle to squeeze into wherever they want to go.  They like their car horns too, but only if there is no policeman around - it's illegal to use the horns in the cities because of the noise.  They drive much slower, even on the tollways/expressways, which is good when there are only guidelines to follow.  I haven't seen any accidents yet, which is amazing considering all of the times I've gasped in horror, sure of our certain death over the past few days.  Everyone seems very patient.  I'm surprised our guide isn't cussing out all the drivers around him all of the time.  (To be fair, I have no idea what cussing someone out in Chinese would sound like so maybe he actually is!)  Even the people on the street that we almost run over seem patient.  They don't even make faces at you or look surprised when you almost run them over.  In America that kind of thing would get you the bird at the very least!  It's just so different.  Our driver is a very nice man and seems to be a very good driver - I've heard a lot of horror stories from other adoptive parents in the China.  Thank heavens we got a good one!

OK, on to what you really want to read about.  I just wanted to get some of this stuff down for my own journaling purposes.  :)

We arrived at the provincial government office building a little early on Sunday afternoon.  This province (Shaanxi) actually does things differently than most of the other provinces of China.  They plan their 'Gotcha Days' for Sundays when most of the people are not in the building.  (Most provinces do them on Mondays.  E's will be on a Monday.)  

This is the building we were at and that's our van.  

The view looking up at the huge building:

Since there aren't many people in the building they don't turn on the air conditioners.  Can you say, FREAKING HOT?!  'Cause that's what it was up there on the 20th floor in the international adoption office.  There was one little couch, a rolling desk chair and a couple of folding chairs, so our family pretty much took all the seating.  ;)  

We actually walked into the building with a nanny and another child waiting to be adopted.  It was a little boy, almost 3, with bilateral microtia.  Definitely made me think of E!  We were all waiting in the office when his new parents walked in.  They were very surprised that he was already there, and he wanted nothing to do with them.  The dad finally got his interest a little by playing ball with him in the room.  S saw that and immediately wanted to join in but the little boy was having none of that.  It totally hurt S's feelings.  He can be so sensitive!  The couple adopting this little boy ended up being from El Paso.  Small world!  

So anyway, we were just sitting there and suddenly they walked in!  No great announcement, no fanfare.  She was suddenly just there.  

Josh happened to be sitting close to the door and saw her first.  He stood up and immediately took her from the nanny (who was handing her to him).  

She is still not so sure about that goatee.  This may be the first man that has ever held her.  Love how she looks at his goatee out of the corners of her eyes! 

I snapped a few pictures and then handed the camera over to Madison and went to meet my girl.  

Daddy handed her over to me and she came willingly.  She was smiling and happy.  

The nanny was visibly worried about this transition and obviously already missing her sweet girl.

G never cried and went back and forth between Josh and I and the nanny.  At some point we put her on the ground to stand at the little table there and all the kids gathered around her.  It was very sweet.  

We took a few pictures in front of the big red sign in the office.  Us, the nanny and the adoption coordinator from the orphanage.  

 

We asked some questions of the nanny and other orphanage worker through our guide, filled out some paperwork and then went to another little room to take our first family picture, well actually just us parents and G's picture.  It actually turned out to be a pretty good picture.  We got it back the next day on the official adoption certificate.  After picture taking it was time to go start our 'trial-period.'  China gives the prospective adoptive parents 24 hours with the child to make sure they really want her/him.  We would go back the next day to sign the papers and make it official.  

After all the papers and everything we were very ready to leave that crazy hot building.  So we loaded up our crew and headed back downstairs.  We said thank you to the nanny several times and gave her lots of hugs and then we left.  

On the way back to the hotel we needed to make a stop at the local Walmart.  ACTUAL WALMART, people.  It's pretty much exactly the same as in the states except for all the Chinese signs and the fresh noodle making stand in the middle of the store.  

We ended up getting a stroller (which they assembled for us right there in the store and which we paid for right there in the store), lots of bottled water (that ended up being the most expensive kind you can buy - leave it to us!), and some baby formula (which we had to pay for at the liquor counter.  Still not sure why. . . )  

We did all of this while walking through Walmart with our 5 children and getting LOTS of stares and questions.  Lots of people taking our picture and asking our guide questions.  I think it's pretty funny that they're so blatantly staring and pointing at us but the kids, especially S, don't think so.  It's not rude to stare here, like it is in the US.  Some of these people have probably never seen an American before in their lives, let alone 2 adults with 4 children and a Chinese baby on a hip!  We are quite the spectacle.  

We made it through Walmart and back to the hotel in one piece.  We got everything up to the room and Josh took the older boys with him and Celine so she could show him where the good restaurants are within walking distance.  She also wrote down a few things in Chinese for us like:  'take out', 'no spicy' and 'broccoli'.  The first two I understand, but I have no idea why he asked her to write down broccoli!  LOL  M, S and I played with G while Daddy and the boys were gone.  

He brought us back some food - sweet and sour pork over rice and some pumpkin congee for G.  Congee is a rice porridge similar in texture to watery oatmeal or a thick soup with rice.  It comes plain (just rice and water) or with things mixed in like pumpkin or beans, etc. 

We ate, played a little and then crashed after bath time.  

G never cried, ate her congee like a champ, took a bottle and loved her bath.  She went to sleep without any problems and slept all night long.  (If all Chinese babies are this amazing. . . )

Day 1 and halfish

We were up super early on Friday morning.  The kids were actually up before us.  Josh and I set our alarms for 3:30 am and I planned on waking the kids around 4:00 but when I went up there the big kids were all dressed and Maddie was in the shower.  Sawyer was still asleep, thank goodness.  We managed to make it out the door by 5:00 am.  We got our Suburban parked and all our bags onto the shuttle and then all our bags off the shuttle and into the airport.  We checked in fairly quickly, made it through security without incident and then sat around for 1 1/2 hours wondering why the heck they said to be there 3 hours early.  We all could have used another hour or two of sleep.  

Our first flight of the day was to Vancouver - about a 4 hour flight.  Thankfully, Sawyer slept for a good portion of it.  The other kids all did really well too.  I was worried they'd get airsick but no one said anything if they did.  We made it into Vancouver without a problem and had about an hour or so to wait for our next flight after getting to the gate.  I had packed lunches for the kids so they ate theirs and Josh and I got some A&W hamburgers and root beer - without ice!  Weird.  

Then we got on the BIG flight.  

We were able to get two whole rows (4 seats each) all to ourselves so there was an extra seat in each row.  That was nice to lay Sawyer down in, who fell asleep pretty quickly and slept most of the way.  The other boys also took some naps - especially towards the end of the flight.  I don't think Maddie ever fell asleep or if she did, it wasn't for long.  I was able to catch a very uncomfortable nap of about 2 hours and Josh was able to sleep quite a bit, but not very comfortably.  Airlines did not consider the big/tall people when they designed the seats.  They fed us two 'meals' but no one ate much.  We should have gotten some water for everyone in Vancouver as we were all really thirsty by the end of the flight.  The flight attendants came around several times with their big water bottle but if you weren't up and asking for a drink they'd just walk by you.  They were unfriendly but I wouldn't say they were friendly either.  Very matter-of-fact.  The airplane we were on also had a camera near the nose of the plane and they showed video of us taking off and landing.  That was a little scary but in a comforting kind of way.  The kids thought it was awesome.  I think the camera was on the whole time, as the TV channel never switched to something else, but we were cruising at 36,000 ft (is that right?) and there's not much to see up there besides clouds.  It was daylight all the way over, which was weird because they turned all the lights down on the plane and everyone had their window shades drawn shut so it seemed like nighttime, and that's what our bodies thought it should be too.  We flew from Vancouver up to Alaska and then flew across the tip of Russia and down into China so we were flying over land almost the whole way.  There was another TV channel that showed the progress of the flight.  It was fun to watch at first but then it would change to a new screen that showed how much longer we had left in the flight and that was just depressing!  It was a LONG flight!  And an even longer day.  

We made it into Beijing and through Customs/Immigration.  That was the easy part.  Then we had to figure what gate our next flight was on (it wasn't printed on our boarding passes).  We had to go through security first before we could find out the gate.  Security was total mess.  Their were no clear lines like there are in America.  There was ONE person checking passports and stamping them and boy, did he stamp them.  He took his job seriously.  It was pretty funny to watch him. From there you move to the conveyor belt area behind a big wall.  It's much like the American ones except that there are like 3 bins and everybody is waiting for their turn with them.  The language barrier isn't fun either.  I don't expect everyone here to know English - I am fully aware that we are the visitors here.  But it's still hard.  We made it through security though and made it to our final departure gate of the never-ending day.  This time we waited for a bus to come get us.  The bus drove us out on the tarmac and then we climbed a big walkway up to the plane.  The kids thought this was awesome!  We waited for about an hour on the runway before we took off.  Almost all of us were asleep before we ever took off.  I slept a little here and there but I didn't want both Josh and I to be asleep if one of the kids needed something.  

Once we made it to Xi'an at about 11 pm on Saturday evening, we were the last people off of the airplane and ended up being so far behind everyone else we took a wrong turn in the airport.  We'd just followed the crowd on our last flight and they led us to where we needed to go.  We walked for a quite a while before we finally found someone who looked like they might work there and tried to ask her where to go.  She just shook her head and waved at us to go back the way we came.  So we trudged back the very long corridor we had just walked down and finally found a sign that told us where to go.  By the time we got to the baggage carousel there were no people around and no bags.  I seriously had a minor heart attack.  Josh (thank heavens for this man) calmed me down and we found the tiny little place where they keep the unclaimed bags.  Our guide was waiting for us so we quickly gathered everything and went to meet her.  She is so nice and very helpful.  Her English is EXCELLENTE.  She led us to a big huge van and we loaded up our crew and baggage and headed off to the hotel - about 45 minutes away.  She gave us our itinerary and told us quite a few things about Xi'an.  This is where she lives with her husband and little boy so she knows quite a bit about it.  

We got to the hotel and got all checked in.  We got everyone in their jammies and we all crashed.  We woke up around 8:00 the next morning (Sunday in China), got showered and dressed and made it downstairs to the breakfast buffet right before it closed.  They had quite a few Western breakfast items but mostly Chinese.  Up until this point in my life I could have said I've never had fried rice for breakfast but not anymore.  It was pretty good too.  They have little mini pancakes that the kids have been eating by the ton.  They have bacon but it doesn't look like bacon.  It looks like beef jerky that's been soaked in oil.  Josh and the boys say it tastes like bacon but I don't think I'll be braving that anytime soon. 

The hotel is pretty nice.  We're staying at the Jian Guo Hotel in Xi'an.  You can tell it's an older building but it's been well maintained.  The hotel is built around this courtyard/pond.  

Here's a view of the outside of it from inside our van as we were heading back one day (the big yellow building): 

Our rooms don't smell at all, which is wonderful because smoking is allowed pretty much everywhere here.  We have two connecting rooms with two full beds in each and a crib.  The beds are pushed together though so it seems like there is just one hugmongous bed in each.  The beds are super comfy.  The rooms aren't huge but they're nice and they have air conditioning so that's about all we care about here because it is HOT.  Like Houston or Dallas hot.  It does seem to cool down a little more at night though.  The landscape here is similar to Dallas or Houston - very flat.  The difference is the amount of huge, high rise apartment buildings here.  In America you see high rise buildings in the downtown area but there are usually businesses or offices.  Here, there are an insane amount of high rises and they are all apartments.  There is also a CRAZY amount of new ones being built.  It's mind boggling to think about how many people have to live in a city for them to build this many apartment buildings.  Our guide calls them "Big Beauties".  They are only allowed on the outside of the city wall.  There is a height restriction for the part of the city inside the city wall.  More on the city wall in another post.  

That's about it for these few days.  I'll finish posting about Sunday (our Gotcha Day for G) in the next post.  :)

Finally!

(REPOST FROM FACEBOOK)

FINALLY made it to Xi'an and the hotel! 

The BIG flight went pretty well considering we were all going on about 4 hours of sleep. All the kids slept a good portion of the flight and Josh and I got a few hours as well (Josh a few more than me - but he did sit next to Sawyer through the whole flight!) I will not say anything about the food that was served on the plane (if you can't say anything nice. . .)

We arrived a little late in Beijing and headed off to immigration and customs. That wasn't bad at all. The security checkpoint to get to our flight to Xi'an was a different story though. Chaos + no air conditioning + no real lines or guidelines + a very tired family of 6 + the language barrier = lots of sweaty, frustrated people. I will say that everyone we have met has been VERY friendly and kind even when they have no idea what we're saying. 

We made it onto our flight to Xi'an after finding some water and food for everyone. Our flight was delayed about thirty minutes and then we sat on the runway for about an hour before we finally took off. Everyone but me slept the entire flight. 

We took a wrong turn in the Xi'an airport and ended up backtracking for quite a while to find the baggage claim. We were so late there was no luggage left and all the people from our flight were gone. (I may have had a mild heart attack at this point.) But we found all our luggage and our sweet guide, Celine, (no relation to Dion), was waiting patiently for us there. We loaded all our crew and stuff into a huge van and our driver (we're so sophisticated - ha!) took us to our hotel about 45 minutes away.

It's now 1:30 am on Sunday here in Xi'an although it feels like it should be about 12:40 pm to us. Everyone else has crashed here except me (anyone else notice a theme here?) and I am mighty tired after our 30+ hour adventure. I just wanted to let everyone know we're safe and sound. 

Our guide let us know that our girl is taking a train overnight to Xi'an and we'll meet her tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon around 4. So excited!!

We made it to Vancouver

(REPOST FROM FACEBOOK)

Made it to Vancouver and it only took me 2 hours to figure out how to use the VPN. (Well, hubs figured it out and then hooked me up.) But we know it works so we should be able to post from China too. Yay!

Getting on the big flight in a few minutes. Kids did fabulous on the last one - mostly because S slept for most of it. (Thank you 4am wake up call!) We'll see how he does on the next flight though. We've been running him and the other boys around the airport so hopefully that'll last him for next 11 hours. 

We'll post again from China!