The storm is about to break. How about a diversion?
How’s the Internet in China? How’s the connection? Do we have a cell phone? Laptop? Wi-fi? Up for a semi-technical discussion before there is no time for such a thing? Read on.. Continue reading
It’s finally here.
After more than a year’s worth of paperwork, several bottles of antacids, and a lot of sleepless nights, we’ve made it to the end– which will also be our new beginning. Most likely, Alexander is on a train from Yuncheng City with his caregivers this morning. We were assigned an afternoon placement, so that means that he’s probably en route today.
Believe it or not, there’s another family here from the US adopting from Taiyuan with the same placement day as us, but they have an earlier appointment. We ran into them on the street yesterday in front of the hotel– I’m sure it was comical to see a group of Western foreigners all gathered around and greeting each other by name. Surely, we must all know each other or be related because we are all from the US!
Back to Alexander! This morning after breakfast, Bill is taking us to the bank to exchange our welfare institution donation into RMB. If there’s time, we’ll hit Carrefour or another large department store for last-minute supplies and to load up our baby bag. This afternoon, we head to the Office of Civil Affairs where Alexander will be waiting. We’ll go through a brief interview with officials, and then we’ll take Alexander with us for what is called the “Harmonious Period”– a 24-hour “trial” period that ensures this is the right decision for us. Theoretically it makes sense, but in practice, it will most likely be the least harmonious time in our new family’s life.
For the first time since we’ve arrived in China, I will admit to feeling out of place. In Beijing, there are so many people that it seems as though everyone blends in. In Taiyuan, it’s a different world. We’ve seen maybe 10 Westerners, and pretty much no one speaks English. I’m very grateful to have Bill with us almost constantly, as he’s able to explain to very curious locals who we and what we’re doing– and this is BEFORE we’re carrying around a Chinese child! We were “warned” by our agency that we’ll be seen as unusual and objects of curiosity, but again, theory is different than practice. Staring is socially acceptable here, and it definitely makes you feel a little weird to walk around and have people stare and point at you.
My take-home lesson from this is that it’s important to be a good and gracious visitor. We might very well be the only foreigners that some of these Taiyuanese folks might ever encounter, and our behavior and actions should reflect that. I also wonder about Alexander’s birth parents. Even though we’ll very likely never know who or where they are or the loss they might continue to experience, we will always have a tie to this city as the place where our family began.
Today, we ask for your prayers of support and strength as we welcome the newest Kelly into our family.
Greetings from Tiayuan, Shanxi, China! Our flight from Beijing was only about an hour, but it departed about two hours late. No worries. I just played more Plants vs Zombies.
We’re settling into our room, and preparing baby stuff. Extra change of clothes, a few diapers, etc. It seems all the lights and plugs are controlled by a Byzantine combination of various switches, but we at least got some water boiling.
Tomorrow, we meet our son, but today we met Bill, our guide from here on out. Bill works for our agency and comes with quite a reputation. He is a seasoned veteran of Chinese adoption. We really enjoyed our time with our Beijing guide, Chen, who left us with a gift for Alexander: a set of chop sticks emblazoned with a dragon, since Alexander was born in the year of the dragon. Now we’re looking forward to getting to know Bill.
We have a large room, but it seems much smaller, since there is also a crib in here. Seeing that as we walked in was striking. Oh yes, this is happening.
Here are a few random photos we took today.
The lobby of our hotel in Beijing
Ready for our ride back to the airport
Our flight was delayed, but our spirits stayed high.
We woke up yesterday morning to overcast skies and a much cooler temperature. We were quite grateful that our guide rearranged our schedule after looking at the weekend forecast to push most of the outdoor touring yesterday. I don’t even want to imagine walking the Great Wall in the rain…
at Tian’anmen Square
Armed with hotel umbrellas, we continued on our 2-day Beijing or bust tour. We started our touring at Tian’anmen Square, where guards were plentiful and the tourists even more so. We walked through the square past Chairman Mao’s mausoleum (which was open, a fairly rare thing) through the underground passageway to the Forbidden City.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Forbidden City, at one time it was the emperor’s private residence. To get to his residence, you’d pass through 9 very large gates. (Side note- the number 9 is very important in Chinese culture, especially to royalty.) One of the distinctive features of the Forbidden City is that the doorway to most gates in royal architecture is raised so that you have to lift your foot up and over each threshold. This was a way that those entering the gates were forced to show deference to the emperor by bowing slightly in order to not trip when stepping over the rise. They’re also a great way to trip tourists who are being herded through gates– hypothetically of course!
Outside the Forbidden City
One of the gates with raised threshold
Passing through gates to the Forbidden City
Today’s lunch was at one of Chen’s favorite childhood restaurants– a very small restaurant tucked away on an upper floor in a Beijing neighborhood. We had fantastic fresh pickled cucumbers, various bao (steamed buns), and dumpling soup. It’s been really educational to eat lunch with our guide and driver, as we’ve been able to share stories and learn a lot about each other’s culture. For example– in Beijing, the government pays students to attend college– and larger amounts if they leave their home province. It was comical to explain to them that most American students have college debts for years after graduating! I also reached a milestone today in experiencing my first non-Western restroom of the trip. I won’t get into details here, but I am glad that I got a little practice in before we are in-province tomorrow.
We visited a silk factory, complete with silk worms, which was very educational but also a little too touristy for our taste. We’ve both noticed that Chinese vendors are persistent– very, very persistent. It can be very difficult to firmly say that you don’t want to buy anything; we stayed strong and didn’t leave with any large, silk duvets.
Our final touring for the day was the Temple of Heaven, formerly the emperor’s temple and now a huge park mostly populated by retired locals and home to the iconic Temple of Good Harvest. Brian took some great footage of this– it’s very common to find strangers gathering together to sing folk songs spontaneously or others dancing with ribbons out in the open in this park. I’ll admit that it seemed a little unusual, but our guide said this is often where professional entertainers and dancers go after retiring so they can still show off their skills. As we moved closer to the Temple of Good Harvest, it was difficult at times because people would just start clumping and breaking out into song and blocking walkways.
At the Temple of Good Harvest
We capped our day by attending an acrobatics show. We were a bit skeptical at first, but it was incredible! Tonight, we actually stayed awake for dinner and found a great ramen restaurant. We had to resort to pointing and nodding quite a bit, but it was a good cap to Beijing. Today we fly out early in the morning from Beijing to Taiyuan in order to meet Alexander TOMORROW! It’s so hard to believe that we’ll be parents to a 15-month old in less than 48 hours. I’m a little nervous about our first Chinese domestic flight, but it’ll just be one more first to add to the record books for this adventure.
for Rachel and Jon- 8 girls, 3 bikes! Later, there were all 8 girls on 1 bike. Madness!
Waiting for the show to begin
Yesterday was the longest day of the year. No, really. I’ll begin with the end of the day– we were returned to our hotel, where we stumbled out of the car to our room. We didn’t even make it to dinner– apparently I passed out on the bed in my bathrobe with the television remote in my hand. So yes, it was a long day. A good day, but a long one! Continue reading
After a long and mostly uneventful 13 hour flight, we arrived in Beijing around mid-afternoon China time. Our fellow seatmate was a kind gentleman from Montreal also headed to China for the first time. We got to catch up on many, many movies with private in-seat screens– finally, we go to see Argo! The only hiccup on the flight was a gentleman who got sick right when we were flying over the Bering Strait. It seemed as though a quarter of the flight were doctors, as a bunch of folks were hunched over him for the rest of the flight.
Immigration was uneventful, and customs was a breeze. Seriously, the bag check is more thorough at Six Flags! We rolled our suitcases out of customs to be greeted by absolute chaos. I can’t really put it into words, but Brian and I agreed that the crowds of people waiting with signs was a little overwhelming. We found a young man holding a sign with our name, and suddenly we were whisked off in a sedan to our hotel. Chen, our guide, is a history student who will be our guide and interpreter while we’re in Beijing. He’s about our age, and within a few minutes, we struck up a conversation about about international travel and beer! We were briefed on our touring plan for the next two days– which sounds like a whole lot in just a few days.
After he checked us into our hotel for the evening (near China World Place, a high end mall), we were on our own for the evening. We exchanged money into RMB and ventured out to find dinner. Currency is an adventure here, as it’s pretty common to find counterfeit money in circulation. Chen taught us a few ways to identify legit bills, but it’s still a little daunting to think you might be getting back “play” money as change from a purchase!
Dinner was our first real “Wow, we’re not from here!” moment. We chose a Malaysian restaurant in China World Center, and began our first of what I’m sure will be many meals through hand-gestures. We both were excited to find “draft” beer– which just turned out to mean that it came in a large bottle (but stupid cheap and still very refreshing after a long day). Our waitress wasn’t happy with what Brian tried to order, and finally helped him settle on a dish after a lot of pointing and nodding. We were definitely the only non-Asian folks there, which was intimidating but also vindicating that we chose a good spot.
We decided to call it a night after dinner, and after a fair bit of playing around with cables and our computers, passed out for the night. We both woke up in the darkness feeling pretty refreshed– only to find out it was only 10 pm! Arghhh jet lag!
We woke up this morning around 4 am, which considering the 13 hour difference, isn’t too bad for our first night of adjusting our internal clocks. We’re looking forward to a day of hiking a segment of the Great Wall and seeing more of the city with Chen. My first impression of Beijing is that it’s like any other large, cosmopolitan city. The distinct haze of smog/air-pollution is fairly depressing, but we look forward to seeing more of this bustling and beautiful city.
Just a few more minutes until we’re stuck in a plane for half a day. We had a great surprise visitor at the airport this morning- Ken, one of the adopting dads from our agency stopped by to say hello and wish us well at our gate. In a just a few hours, the world is going to be a smaller place!
This is just a quick post about the status of our blog. As we’re traveling in China, we have no idea if we’ll have access to update this blog. A lot of blogs are blocked in China, and we’ll have no way of knowing about ours until we’re there.
Worse comes to worst, we’ll see you on the other side.
48 hours from now, we’ll be in the homestretch of our flight to Beijing. Wow, we’re almost there! Suitcases are out, lists have been made, and clothing is being packed.
Today, I embarked on a cleaning tornado to whip the house into some sense of order before we leave. I won’t tell you how many vacuum canisters of cat hair I dumped, but I think that I might have enough for something here. Just kidding! Although I still have a bit to wrap up tomorrow, I promised myself a little quiet time before the craziness begins.
In packing-land, I’ve managed to organize our suitcases using really large ziplock bags. Since our entire time in Beijing will be pre-Alexander, I wanted a way to differentiate between our stuff and his gear without totally wrecking each suitcase. We’ve accepted the fact that we’ll have laundry done at some point (which I’ve never done before when traveling), but I also packed some travel packets of handwash detergent for small things. We made our umpteenth trip to Target in the last 5 days. I think the cashiers are starting to recognize us…
I met with our neighbors today who will assume “Cat Command” while we’re gone, and Brian dropped off car keys with our good friends for our eventual pickup on July 4th.
The long, long list of things to accomplish is getting shorter. The end is in sight!
I would like to draw your attention to an older post on this blog, about attachment.
Let’s recap, before we all meet Alexander.