Home Sweet Home

Well, we're home! We saved up all our glitches for the end of the trip. We had to wake up at 5am to leave for Guangzhou airport at 6:10am. Our guide, Jack, cut us 10 minutes of slack since breakfast opened at 6am. We arrived to the airport and Jack was in a hurry which I didn't understand because I thought we were in good shape but I did what he said, he's the expert. As we were checking in, they could not find the ticket purchased for Katelin ... even with the purchase receipt that I had my hand. Our flight was Guangzhou - Hong Kong - Newark, the only issue was Guangzhou to Hong Kong. So after much conversation between Jack and the girl checking us in (all in Chinese). Jack told her to checkin the 4 of us, and I ran with him to buy another ticket. As we were running, he asked if I had any Chinese money and I said yes because I had just converted some for diner the night before. Well once we were ready to buy the ticket, I was about $50 (yuan) short - thats about $7 USD. So Jack just pulled out a $100 (about $15 USD) and told me to take it.... did I mention that I liked Jack :) So then we hoof it back across the airport with our ticket to the baggage checkin where the girl had not done anything because she was waiting for the ticket. We were one of the last people to board the plane but we all made it and were off to Hong Kong.

When we landed in Hong Kong, we had about a 1 hour layover where we had to switch to a different plane. on a diiferent airline, in the international terminal (Hong Kong and China are considered seperate countries). Our travel agent poo-pooed this when I raised concern about the short turn around but Jack was concerned. He said that it was doable but that we had no extra time, When we deplaned, there was a Continental rep waiting for us and 4 other people trying to do the same thing. I found this funny, he held a sign that said "New Yark", I guess that;s a cross of New York and Newark? Without this guy, there is no way we would have made it. We went through a special line for customs and ticketing (you can not get boarding passes ahead of time). Then he had us cut to the front of the security check. Once we got to the gate, there was a huge line, we were spotted for 2 reasons (1. we had a baby and 2. I was carrying a special brown envelope which you only have if you have an adopted child and she is immigrating to the US) which got us right to the front of the check in line. The plane ended up leaving 15 minutes late but we got 3 seats in the bulkhead row (yippee) for our 16 hour flight. Katelin did OK on the flight, she was a little fussy but so was I ! The most difficult part was Katelin pooped more on this flight than she did the entire time we were in China. As you experienced parents know, this can be a messy situation (especially in turbulance). We made it though with 1 diaper left and completely out of wipes. I can now say that I'm a member of the 30,000 mile club (no not what your thinking, I changed a diaper at 30,000 feet in the air).

Once we landed, we found out that 1 of our 4 bags did not make it out of Guangzhou... but at least it has been located. We also needed car seat because since they don't use them in China, its hard to find them. So we drove illegally to Toys R Us which is a mile from airport and got one. Next came a long drive home, there was traffic everywhere and took us forever (but we did make it). Then for the last glitch, we were all exhausted from being up for more than 24 hours and Katelin decided she didn't agree with the time change. She up most of the night and we did our shifts, hopefully tonight will be better. Bottom line is ... we made it and we all had a great trip. I think that we all had a super time, had very few problems and most importantly, Katelin adapted to us right away and is a great little girl. I'm glad to be home!

Day 15 - The Last Day (almost)

Today is the last full day; we travel home tomorrow. Today we went sightseeing. We visited the Six Banyan Tree Temple. Below is a pagoda in the middle of the temple area, we climbed up to the top of it. Its pretty high up there.








Then we went to the place below (also at the same temple). This is called the Daxiong Baodian Hall. Here we took the children to the up to the the Budha's seen below. There are actually three budhas (only two in the picture) representing the past, present, and future. Our guide arranged for the children to be blessed. We kneeled down and a monk performed a short cermoney to give the children good luck in their life.





From there we walked through some more traditional markets that were selling pets and herbs. Then we were free for lunch (the last lunch in China!). We met again with the guide at 3pm to get the final paperwork to bring home. We are set for an early departure tomorrow. Maybe we'll do a littlr shopping tonight, Kevin wants to get a few charms and I was thinking about getting another traditional outfit for Katelin. .... Hope to see you all soon

Day 14 - Surprise Day

First, a few photos.... This photo is the boys walking around in a park next to the hotel. We were coming home from lunch.... yes, it raining.

Next, it a picture is the White Swan Hotel. ....No, we still are not roughing it!

Next is a picture of the street shopping outside the Hotel. Its kind of a Southern climate (i.e. Palm trees).

So, whats the surprise. Our Consulate appointment is moved up to today, wow! So this morning, we had breakfast as usual and its was better than we were getting in Changsha. We did a little shopping, bought Katelin a Chinese outfit, a charm, and some other souvieners. For lunch we had a Cheeseburgers and Grilled Cheese (I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!). I the afternoon, we piled on a bus and rode for about 40 minutes to the US Consulate. There were about 40 families in total and the adopted children were sworn in as US citizens. It was a pretty cool moment. A room filled with people from all over the US all hoping to give these kids a better life. The guy doing the speaking came around the room and talked to us ( and several others) for a little bit before his speach. He let us know the next steps, gave us some advise wrt birth certificates,... and then we all stood up and took the oath. Then we took the 40 minute bus ride home. Oh ya, one more thing.... Katelin fell asleep as we pulled away from the hotel and never woke up until we returned. She slept through the entire thing. Guess she wasn't as interested as we were :) Tonight we went to an Italian restaurant, it was good. Tommorow is our last day here before we get on the plane for the US. We have nothing to do except shop and sightsee.

I think that we have been very fortunate to have seen there very different cities on our trip. Hong Kong was like a mini-NYC. I'm not sure how to describe Changsha. It seemed to be poorer. The driving and congestion is crazy. There are people everywhere. Guangzhou seems very nice. Nice shops, people seem very nice, food has been great. This may be because we are in an area where there are so many American adopting familes that things stores/restaurants are catering to this. But right now after 1 and half days, I feel like I'm at home. English is spoken everywhere. This has been a wonderful trip and one day we want to return and visit Bejing (for all the great sights), Hunan province (to see the actual orphanage and city that Katelin came from) and if possible, Guangzhou would be high on my list to return to.

Day 13 - Bye Bye Changsha, Hello Guangzhou

We today went pretty smooth, one last breakfast in Changsha. We checked out. We were worried that there might be some extra charges on our bill like internet or pool but those were all free to the guests. We rode to the airport and the flight went pretty well. The kids (babies that is, not Kevin and Aaron) did well on the flight. It was only about a 1 hour flight.

Before moving on the Guangzhou, I have to mention this. Before we left the US, I searched for other blogs where people had traveled to Changsha to see what there trip was like and look for ideas in preparing. There was one blog that I really enjoyed (http://www.countdowntoaubriana.blogspot.com/). The entry called "Good Grief and Gotcha Day" mentions a person called Mr. Happy. The blogs refers to him as "some Hotel Good Will Host we all call Mr. Happy who is on some sort of mood altering drug, cuz there just ain't nobody that freaking happy all the time". After being at the Dolton, there is no confusion who this person is. We even got our guide calling him Mr. Happy. Everytime he sees you, he wants to shake your hand and give the boys hugs. My one regret is that I never got a picture of him.

On the plane to Guangzhou, the babies got lots of attention. Pretty much everywhere we've gone, people often stare at the babies, they come talk to the babies, and ask you questions. In the Changsha airport, two young girls (about Kevins age), talked to babies for a little bit then left. They returned about 2 minutes later and gave both Kevin and Aaron a Chinese candy. That reminds me of another unusual situation at the bowling lane a few days earlier. A boy, a little older than Kevin, sat next to him and started talking to him. He asked him who his family was and Kevin pointed us out. The boy told Kevin he was lucky to have such a big family. You can sense that people think that the babies are very lucky to be joining our families by their comments and the way they act.

Well, back to the flight. We landed in Guangzhou. Its in the southern part of China and since the Tropical Storm/Typhoon is here, were in for a lot of rain. We met the famous guide, Jack. We have heard about him for years. He is a regular guide for our agency and very popular. He lives in Guangzhou. Another family has now joined us, so now we are three families. We arrived at the famous White Swan Hotel. We are on a tight schedule today. Unpack, eat lunch, get some pitcures taken of the babies for paperwork and go to medical office to get a quick checkup for the babies. There is a deli just outside the hotel and it was awesome. I feel like I'm back home. After going through this afternoon, I know why people like Jack. He seems to know everyone and gets us in and out of each place quickly and its almost fun. We came back and finished of some paperwork that we'll need for the Consulate appointment in a couple of days. To top off the day we ordered Papa John's pizza delivered to the hotel and ran across the street to 7-11 for sodas.

Day 12 - Hanging Around ...

Today we have no sightseeing, just around and wait for our guide, Susan, to arrive with our Chinese Passports for the kids. We went to breakfast in the morning and observed two unusual things. The other family in our group could not turn on their TV and we had a note on our desk that wished us well in our travels. So as we talked at breakfast, wondering if the motel didn't know we were staying an extra day. When we got back to our rooms, we made some phone calls to the agency to make sure that all our plans were straight (air tickets were on the correct day and both our hotel reservations were on the correct days). It ends up that everything was correct and that we just needed to extend our stay at the Dolton for one more night. So we got that squared away in the morning. We decided that later in the morning, we would take another adventure. We got directions to the Whacko store (a local convenient store) where we could load up on cookies, sodas, and snack for the afternoon. We took the short walk and were successful, another small step for the Americans! In the afternoon, Halli and Katelin napped, while me and the boys had a mini-olympics in the game room. First we played two games of bowling then we played ping-pong for an hour. We had fun with the ping pong but the Chinese take the game a little more seriously than we were playing it. Finally, Susan arrived with the paperwork that we needed for Guangzhou and let us know that we needed to be Packed, Checked out, breakfasted, and ready to go at 7:30am the next morning. Looks like we'll be using the alarm!

Day 11 - More Sightseeing

Today was another typical day. Breakfast, followed by a visit to the Hunan Embroidary Factory. We got a couple of souvieners. Some of the artwork was very impressive (and expensive). In the afternoon, we did a little swimming (Kevin, Aaron, and me). We were the only ones in the pool so we set up an obstacle course race. The pool is huge. After that we watched a couple of movies during a Katelin nap. In the evening, we headed over the JoNos for dinner. The ranks are not happy with JoNos and we may not be going there again. We were supposed to be traveling to Guangzhou tomorrow but due to some minor delays in paperwork, we won't be traveling until the day after tomorrow. We'll be arriving at the same time as Tropical Storm Fengshen arrives in Guangzhou, ...great! The weather looks like rain and thunderstorms everyday while were in Guangzhou and lets not forget the 95 degrees F temperatures (with Humidity it feels like 103 degrees F according to the internet). Sounds like a paradise.

Katelin continues to do well. She spent some time in the playroom yesterday and met some new kids. Some new families came in yesterday and there were 2 familes that had older children that were returning to visit the orphanages that they had come from. Yesterday, Katelin tried the kiddie pool, she wasn't too interested but went along with it anyway. We keep experimenting with different foods; she's liking bananas, watermellon and congee the most. She is very friendly to everyone but she's going to have to get into the baby gym; she doesn't have much strength. She needs help to sit up. But I think that I see her getting stronger each day.

Day 10 - More Sightseeing plus an adventure....

The usual ... breakfast, sightseeing, free afternoon. Breakfast was the usual, I tried Congee today. No biggee. All the other babies are gone (those familes traveled to Guangzhou), there are just a few left now. Today we went to the Kaifu Temple. We saw tons of budha's. Aaron got fortune told by a monk at the 500 Budha exhibit. He should have good luck and be successful if he worked hard. Also he would have temper tantrums sometimes. After the temple visit, we were determined to get to a McDonalds (Kevin's request)..... this is the adventure part. So our guide wrote the address of the McDonalds on a piece of paper and the Hotel address on another piece of paper. The only way to get to the Micky D's was by taxi and since we don't know Chinese, we needed to show the paper to the taxi driver and hope for the best. One more problem, we needed 2 taxis since they only seat 3 per taxi and we were going with our neighbor (Dad and son). So we made it there. Luckily, the girl at the counter spoke some English and it was a piece of cake at Micky Ds. The Quarter pounder came with Cucumbers instead of Pickles and some kind of spicy sauce which was pretty good. Now the tough part! When we were at the hotel, the hotel staff got us setup in the cab but we were "out in the wild" so we had to get a cab. It took awhile since we were competing with locals but we managed eventually. All in all, another small step in conquering Changsha. Another 5 years and we'll be there. To bad we only have a couple more days. This afternoon we bowled 3 games in the hotel. The score isn't important because it wasn't to hot, just good enough to beat Kevin. Tonight, its back to JoNos for dinner! Were regulars now.

Day 9 - More Sightseeing

I'm not sure what is happening but there must be some paperwork that is being done. In the meanwhile, we're like the movie Groundhog Day. We wake up, eat breakfast in the hotel, go sightseeing, come back to the hotel around lunch time, and then are free for the day. Today, we visited the Hunan University which had some nice gardens. We visited some historical spots where Confucius once taught (the acadamy?). There was some nice artwork made of sand - we bought one. It was sort of a relaxing stroll. People do come up and stare at Katelin and the other adopted boy in our group. Its a different culture than in the USA.

We returned from the touring, blew off lunch and decided to go swiming. This is the 3rd time we've been swimming but this time we got stopped. At the pool, they require a swim cap. Each time we go there, we just say that we don't have one, they hand us one and we go in. This time, we had to pay. I guess we had to buy swim caps, no more borrowing. It cost us $72, ouch! ...but its only $10 US for 4 swim caps. OK, thats better I guess :).

To top off the day, we headed over to our new favorite dining spot, JoNo's. Things went a little smoother the second time there; we knew what to expect and what was on the menu. I thought that we got the steal of the century the night before because I was confused between the weight of the steak and the price. I saw 180 and I thought that was the price (about $25 US sounded reasonable). Well, the second night I noticed that the 180 had grams of some measurement of weight after it and the price was like 28 Yuan (thats like $5 US). We are there for the rest of the trip, at those prices I can tolerate the kids looking at there meal and saying no thanks.

I more story from the night before at JoNos. When we sat down, a lady came up to us and in Chinese gestured that Katelin looked cute. She gestured as if to ask if she could hold her. The agency told us that this would happen so we went with the flow and said OK. So she picks her up and walks away behind a wall. We looked at each other for a minute and then Halli chased her down, this didn't seem right. We told our guide the next day and she said that was too much, don't let anybody walk away like that. So now we know the line.

Some Photos

This is the first day that I have been able to access the blog (directly) and the first time that I have been able to upload photos. So I uploaded a couple that we had so far.....



Here is the lobby of our hotel. OK, were not roughing it too bad. We were shooed aside because German government people were coming so we hung around to see who they were.... still don't know.




This was from the big day at the Civil Affairs Center. In the picture is us (who you should know if you reading this :) with Katelin and the director of the orphanage she came.




This was us leaving up the nightlife in Hong Kong. At 8pm each night, the building across the harbor in Hong Kong City put on a laser show. This was just prior to the show.

Day 8 - More sightseeing

Today we went to an Martyr's (Amusement) Park, sort of. It had some rides, a zoo, and some gardens. Our normal guide, Susan, was working on some paperwork so we had a "substitute" guide, Anna. After walking around the park, we stopped at Walmart and restocked on soda, snacks, and other supplies. The boys tried to go bowling but it was temporarily out of service so they had to settle for ping pong and billards. For dinner, we left the safety of the hotel grounds and ventured next door to a restaurant called Jo No's. It was a little challenging since there was 7 of us (our group = our family plus another dad and his adopted son). Counting the other dad and his son, no one spoke any chinese. But we made it and it was a ton cheaper than the hotel. Were planning on being regulars till we leave. It was pretty crowded but I think that we were such a nuisance (they couldn't tell us where to stand or how to get on the waiting list because of language communication issues), they seated us right away. Ordering was interesting, we're used to ordering drinks and then when they bring the drinks, we order our meal. Well they came for the drink order which by itself, took a while. We ordered a couple of beers and Halli tried to order a glass of wine. Well fortunately we kept going over the order with the waiter and determined that we could only get a bottle of wine, not a glass. So Halli switched to a beer also. Then we started to chat but the waiter wouldn't leave, apparently he was waiting for the food part of the order. So we scrambled and got our act together. I'm guessing the ordering took about 10-15 minutes. When the food came, each beer came in a 32 oz bottle.... I was not disappointed ;) The food was pretty good and we left with a $196 bill ($25-30 US - not bad). ....All in all a success, we survived a trip into the wild without our guide :)

Tomorrow we visit the Hunan University.

Day 7 - The First Day

Today is the first full day that Katelin spent with us. We did our usual, eat breakfast in the hotel and mingle with the other adopting families. Many are leaving in the next day or so. Everyone goes to Guangzhou to the US Consulate after leaving their adoption province. Thats where will be headed in a few days. Today we went sightseeing to a park (Tianxin Pavilion) that was an old fort. There were a couple of pagodas that we saw but unfortuanely it was rainy. It was good to get out and then we returned to our hotel for food and games (pool, play room, NAP,...). I think that we are going to have to try eating somewhere else because I hate paying beaucoup bucks to watch the kids eat ice cream and potatos for dinner. In fact, the choices for a non-experimental dinner are kind of limited. I've eating something that looks like chicken nuggets (except that its shrimp), some kind of noodles, fried rice, and potatos. I have to pass on the snake, eel, turtle, birds nest, and some other interesting options. The buffet is supposed to be "Western" but I'd say its 60% Chinese and 40% Western. Anyways the first night went well, Katelin slept all the way through and the first day went pretty well. Its a little warmer than Connecticut, I'd say that it about 80-85 and very muggy. No problem getting a good sweat going.

Finally I'm able to upload images...




...Hello family



Taking my new family sightseeing....

Kevin with new sister in Civil Affairs Office after meeting for the first time. Everything went very well :)

Day 6 - The Big Day

Today was the big day. We met at 9:40am to go to the Civil Affairs office. I had heard that usually there is a room where the families wait and another room where the babies are waiting. But thats not the way ours worked. First, there were only 2 families and when we got there, Katelin was already sitting there in the room waiting. We took some pictures and did some staring while we waited for the corect time for us to get her. The whole event went really well. We had mailed a camera over to get some pictures of Katelin at the orphanage but the director said that they had gotten the camera but had not taken any pictures. But, she said that they had created an album of her as she had grown up and would send that to our Hotel (maybe today?). The director also gave us lots of information about Katelin's background (feeding, where she was living,...). We returned to the hotel to do some paperwork for our afternoon meeting at the Civil Afairs Office. Then we got some homework (make copies, get money exchanged from US for Chinese Yuan). We just had a little bit of time to cram in lunch and then back to the office. After meeting with a few government(?) people, it was official, we had adopted a daughter.

Katelin did not cry at all today and considering all the things that she did (2 hour ride into the city, meeting new people and being in a strange place), she did great. She is very outgoing, watches and smiles at everyone. She doesn't say much or make much noise, mostly just curious and happy. I keep telling Halli this is too easy. Then to top it off, she sleep from 9:30pm to 7:00am. We woke up before she did. ...Needless to say, so far, so good!

Day 5 - Traveling to China

We spent the morning at the Hong Kong Cultural Center checking out the Art Museum. Basically we were killing the morning since our flight didn't leave until 5pm. We decided to leave for the train station at 1pm and were surprised at the train station. They have something called "in-town" checkin. Instead of lugging your bags on the train and checking in at the airport, most airlines (at least ours) will check your bags are the train station just like at the airport. So we checked in and got boarding passes. When we got to airport it was no sweat. This afternoon/evening we flew to Changsha. It was dark when we arrived so I couldn't see that much. But I can hear car horns repeatedly and were on the 30th floor. It funny, we were on the 3rd floor in Hong Kong and never heard a horn (and Hong Kong was busier). The word from our guide is that tomorrow is THE BIG DAY at about 10:00am. We are to met her at 9:40am so I'm guessing were driving to someplace nearby. So far there is more English here in China than I expected. The airport was pretty easy and some signs are bi-lingual. We joked that if Hong Kong was about the size of JFK, then Changshas airport was about the size of Westchester Airport - that might have been because we were at the International part of the airport which is completely seperate from the domestic.

Day 4 - More Hong Kong Touring

Well it feels like were experienced visitors now. Today, we went to a place called the Ocean Park. Its kind of a combo of an Aquirium and Amusement park. It was OK. It is very humid here. Our guide said we picked a tough time of the year because its the rainy season. So far we have been lucky with minimal rain. One thing that is hard to get over is the money. There money is called Hong Kong dollars but the exchange rate is approx $8HK = $1US. So a Hagen Daz ice cream costs $33HK. I can't seem to get into my head that its OK to drop $100 for 4 ice creams. The smallest amount of paper currency is a $20 bill, and that doesn't buy anything. They have some coins, but everytime I get change, Kevin grabs it. He's got about $10.... that might get him a pack of gum! Another example is the breakfast buffet cost $660, its just not right!

Well tomorrow afternoon, we travel to China (they day after we should get Katelin). I feel like we've been here for about a week but its only been 2 days (this is meant in a good way). We really enjoyed Hong Kong. There is always someone who speaks English around but sometimes it still really hard to communicate. Hong Kong is about 1/2 English and 1/2 Chinese speaking. Most seem to speak both. Hong Kong is small, but the area were our hotel is (the Golden Mile) is kinda like NYC. Its very active most of the night. I highly recommend putting Hong Kong on your list of places to visit, if you get a chance.

Day 3 - Touring Hong Kong

What happened to Day 2? Well if was so brief that I just keep it a part of Day 1. Day 3, we woke up not know what we should do so we went to eat breakfast in the motel and then went to the front desk, we ended up buying a couple of tours. The first was for later in the afternoon and the next was for the following morning. Since we had the morning free, we thought that we would roam around Hong Kong for a little. I didn't get 5 steps out the hotel door when some guy asked me if I wanted to buy a watch, once I was able to break free, another guy pounced on me about coming to his shop to buy a suit. I thought I was in New York City. As I now know, there are a few spots where you get "jumped" to but suits, watchs, and handbags. But if you ignore them, they go away. On the way back to motel, Halli asked how far are we away and I said, "four suits from the hotel". I was wrong, it was only 3. Anyways, the morning we spent wandering around Nathan Street, a popular shopping area then in the afternoon we took a tour.

The tour was called the Hong Kong City tour where a bus picks you up near your hotel and drives you to several sights. We saw a lot. We visited Man Mo Temple, took a tram up to Victoria Peak was overlooks the city, took a boat ride in the Aberdeen Fishing Village and visited Stanely Market. Very few people have cars in Hong Kong so most people walk or take public transportation (bus, taxi, train). But this drivers are nuts, they have double decker buses and they drive like maniacs. Heaven forbit the kids step of the curb at the wrong time, they'd be road pizza!

Anyways, we finished our tour at 7pm but decided we would hoof it down to the harbor and watch the nightly laser light show where several companies light up the sky across the harbor. It was less then I had imagined but still pretty good. We grabbed some dinner, ran into about 5-10 more opportunies to buy a suit and then went to bed early.

Day 1 - The Trip to Hong Kong

It was a long trip, but we made it. We flew out of Newark and to our surprise, the flight path was not Westward but rather Northward. We flew over somewhere near the North pole and can down throught China to Hong Kong. It was a long trip without much leg room, but after about 5 movies and a few naps, we made it to Hong Kong for the end of Day 2. We arrived at around 7:00pm (15 hours in the air and we lost 12 hours in time change). It kind of funny, when we landed I didn't have to reset my watch because they are exactly 12 hours off of EST. Once we landed, we had to figure out how to get to our hotel. That went pretty well, we took a train from the airport to Kowloon and then they have a free bus service to local hotels from there. Once we got to the hotel, we crashed.

Final Preparations

Today we leave the US to atart our trip. We were up late last night and still probably forgot a bunch of things.... We said all along that we wouldn't finish getting ready, we'd just run out of time. Hopefully I'll do a better job updating the blog while we're traveling then I've been doing but I may have a problem because I believe that China is blocking blogs. We'll see what happens. ...Next stop, Hong Kong.

Pre-Trip Meeting

Last night we had our Pre-trip meeting. Even though we won't be traveling for another month or more, it was pretty exciting starting to talk about some travel details. It was just us and another family. The other family had already been to China to adopt a girl several years ago and were preparing to go back for a boy. It was very informative. I'm now more anxious to go but we still have time. We filled out some initial paperwork and got a little organized. Theres still a lot that needs to get done here before we leave.

We are so excited to announce the latest addition to our family, Lin Yan Juan. She is from the Hunan Province, which is in the southern portion of China. She was born August 11, 2007 and is from the Linxiang SWI. She is active and fond of music. We will name her Katelin Yanjuan.