We Speak English Restaurant

November 12, 2004

We wandered around town and came across this restaurant. The sign out front said "We speak English," and so that is what we call the place. We stood outside and debated whether we should eat there or not. I could hear the clattering of dishes and the loud din of Madarin. It must be a great place since it seems packed. We decided to eat lunch here.

We walked in with Katrina and every head in the place whipped around to take a look at us. The room quieted down and you could hear a pin drop. It was unsettling, but the manager came to take us to a table. Suddenly there were choruses of "Hello" as we passed every table to get to ours. I think we actually were greeted by every person in the joint!

We ordered dumplings, noodles and soup. When the food arrived it filled the table. The serving dishes were enormous. Back home when we order dumplings, we get six of them. In China, we were brought a bowl with 30 dumplings! We were hungry, but not that hungry! Katrina happily ate her noodles. She knew just how to slurp them up.

At 3 pm we met the group to do more paperwork. This time the paperwork was for the U.S. Consulate. We were preparing it in advance so it will be ready before we need it in Guangzhou. We finished at 5:30.

We went out to dinner with our friends from NH and took them to the same We Speak English restaurant. It was super crowded for dinner, but they gave us a private room. We ordered steamed egg for the kids and they ate it like they had never eaten before in their lives. I ordered veggie fried rice and the fired rice was white rice, not like the kind that we get back home. It was very tasty, but so odd that the rice was white.

When we got back to the hotel, Katrina stil drank her botle and then went to bed. She is one hungry baby.

Sick and Bonding

November 10, 2004

Katrina has a cold. Her nose is running. I am sure it is because of the air conditioning in the hotel. We are trying to keep the temperature warm, but it is also 80+ degrees out so we are attempting to strike a nice balance for all of us, but apparently we have failed. We bought more cold meds in Walmart for her to see if they will help. I should have bought more cold meds for everyone from home. AR is sick too. He has a sinus infection and is feeling pretty miserable. So far, I am not sick, but I am sure I will get something before we get home.

We have been staying in at night and not going out with the others. We are also insulating ourselves to bond with her and she is responding. Since the phone book and her hairbrush are by far her favorite "toys" I put them at the opposite end of the room and tell her she has to crawl if she wants them. The first few times she dragged herself to the phonebook, I actually felt terrible about making her do it, but then I saw that she was getting faster and stronger. She was learning to crawl.

She seems like a happy baby most of the time and is sleeping through the night. She is also eating everything in sight. We are breaking every baby food rule in the book. We have given her a little bit of everything so far and one of her favorite things to eat is steamed egg. Here is a recipe: http://www.china.org.cn/english/food/72992.htm The pediatrician back home would have a stroke!

A Stranger in the Park 11/10/2004

November 10, 2004

Today was another easy breezy day. We had breakfast and Katrina ate her own buffet of steamed egg, congee and watermelon. We dressed her in a long sleeved outfit and added a blue hooded sweater for our trip to the park. It was grey, damp and overcast and since she already had a cold, we did not want it to get any worse.

We walked a few blocks to Teng We Temple. There was a beautiful park that you had to walk through to get to the temple. We sat down to have a drink of tea. People walked by and admired Katrina. An older women was quite taken with Katrina and us. She seemed to really want to know what we were doing there.

I had purchased vocabulary cards http://www.chinaconnectiononline.com/vocabcd.htm that had phrases on it written in Mandarin & pinyin. One said:

"We come to China to adopt a little Chinese girl. We will always love her and will teach her about beautiful China."

I took this card and handed it to the old woman. She read it carefully and when she finished she looked up, grinned from ear to ear and gave us a huge thumbs up! It was the one of the fondest moments that I have from China. This woman was so happy for us and our baby. You could tell that she thought adoption was a great idea.

It seemed as if we walked up a billion stairs today carrying Katrina in the stroller. We went to the 6th floor of the temple to watch a traditional song and dance performance by Chinese people in ancient costumes. Then we had to walk all the way down those billions of stairs.

We stopped at a little Chinese bodega and purchased diet coke, soup noodles and potato chips which is going to be our dinner tonight. We decided to eat dinner in our room since we are now all have colds.

As for lunch, our guide ordered all of us Pizza Hut pizza. We ordered a veggie pizza and it had pineapple on it. Yuck! Even so, the pizza was still good because it reminded us of home, which seemed so far away.

Adoption Paperwork Finalized

November 8, 2004

Today we have to go back to the Ministry of Civil Affairs to have our adoption paperwork finalized and notarized by the Registrar.

Katrina LuRuo Dan slept all night until 6 am. I checked her diaper in the moring and there was a little round poop. Looked kind of like a stone, so I think she needs some fruit added to her diet! We gave her a spongebath, which she did not like so much and cried most of the way through it. She had 3 layers of clothes when she was given to us yesterday and I removed them and put them in a ziplock bag so that they would keep their original smell. That might be important to her at some point.

I put her in fresh clothes and tried feeding her formula again. I figured out that the nipple hole was just too small and so I cut it with a pair of scissors to enlarge it slightly. Once I did that, Katrina happily drank from the bottle. She was holding the bottle by herself. What a strong little girl!

The hotel provided us with a stroller and a baby bathtub. We will try the bathtub out tonight. I put her in the stroller and wheeled her downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast. Even though Katrina had her formula, she seemed very interested in everything that we were eating. I gave her a bowl of congee, which is a rice cereal that has meat added to it. This is a traditional dish in China. She liked it and ate it very quickly. She wanted to eat everything I ate, so she had noodles, bread and watermelon. Loved the watermelon!

We headed to the Registrar's office which is where we had to take an oath to never abandon Katrina. They took a family photo of the three of us which goes on the Abandonment Certificate. It was presented to us in a red cardboard folder, like a college diploma holder case. Katrina was very well behaved, but AR was holding her the whole time. She was much more comfortable with him than me, but I was now able to look at her and she didn't cry, so we are making progress.

We then went to the notary and signed a few more documents and then the adoption paperwork was complete. We still had to get her Chinese passport and some U.S. paperwork still needs to be done in Guangzhou, but she is offically our daughter!

The rest of the day we spent playing and bonding with Katrina. She ate like a fiend. She seemed so hungry...She liked to play with the stacking cups. I showed her how they fit one inside the other, but she was happy to bang two of them together. Her hairbrush was a great toy for her. She seemed to like the feel of the soft bristles on her head and she was intrigued by the ridges on the handle.

Forbidden City & Great Wall 11/6/2004

November 6, 2004

It was pretty amazing to see all of the CHI families gathering in the hotel lobby. There were 42 families multiplied by two people, which equals 84 people. Many brought additional familiy members, so you get the idea that we are a big group.

We ran across a couple from NYC. AR had met the husband yesterday in the hotel gym. They exchanged pleasantries then, but neither was aware that they were each here for adoption. Small world, right? Even funnier, when he and his wife met me, they remembered me from the travel adoption meeting in NYC in September. "You were running around showing everyone your referral photo." Yep, that is me. Guilty as charged, hee hee.

We divided into two groups~ the Jiangxi Province (Us) and Guahdong Province and went on separate busses. We had already met our coordinator, Sabrina, who picked us up at the airport. She was going to travel with us for our whole adoption trip (except back to the U.S.). We were pleased because she was so nice.

We drove to Tiannamen Square first. Honestly, it wasn't much to look at. I guess I was expecting to see tanks or something, but it was really just an open area flanked by government buildings that we could not go into. Chairman Mao's body lay in state and thousands of Chinese people waited in line to see him to pay their respects. It would have been cool to do that, but it wasn't on our agenda.

There were a LOT of people in this area. Each guide held up a colored flag so that we would be able to find them by spotting the flag. It was tough to keep the whole group together.

The Forbidden City has a huge picture of Chairman Mao's face on it. Inside the city were the Emperor's palaces, so we walked from the South gate to the North gate. There was a strabucks in the middle of Forbidden City. It is true, capitalism has infiltrated China. I call the photo above, Forbidden Starbucks!

We stomped around the palaces and they all had doors that you had to step up and into. Not easy to traverse. We did quite a bit of walking and I wanted to conserve some energy for walking up the Great Wall, which was to be visited after lunch.

Lunch was dinner of roasted Peking duck for 80+ people. Apparently the place we went to was the place for duck. I let our guide Sabrina know that I was a vegetarian and she informed the waiters. I was provided with plenty of veggies. The broccoli was the best I ever ate in my life. It was crunchy and tender and bright green. We had several glasses of beer, which was probably a mistake because we were off to climb Great Wall.

Most of us were quiet or fell asleep during the hour drive to the Great Wall. It may have been the beer, the heavy lunch, the walking that was done all morning or jet lag, but we were all pretty pooped. Despite this we made our ascent.

The walk was difficult because the steps were uneven. One step would be a normal step and the next would be the equivalent to two steps, so you had to use your hands to grasp onto the steps or hang onto the wall as you climbed.

I made it to the third level and gave up. AR made it to the second level. Only three from our group went to the top. We did get some great photos. Coming down the stairs was harder than going up, if you can believe that!

We arrived at the hotel at 6 pm and had an orientation meeting from 7-8:30 pm. We had to pack our bags that we were checking tomorrow when we got back to the hotel. No rest for the weary because they were collecting it at 10 pm.

At the orientation meeting we received an update on our daughter. She has 8 teeth! Still we were told that she was not on solid foods and only formula. We were told that she was a deep sleeper. I sure hope that part is true!

We ate pizza at the hotel for dinner and waited for our luggage to be collected. We were in bed by 10 pm. This was our last night as a childless couple. Tomorrow we meet the babies!

Dinner in Beijing

November 5, 2004

One of our traveling companions was given the name of a restaurant that was supposed to have great food at low prices, so we all met at 6pm in the lobby to go. She had the address written in Chinese. We called two cabs to take the lot of us.

After our cab driver took off, we noticed that he smelled of alcohol. He may not have been drunk, but he surely must have been on a bender within the past 24 hours. Ar had the joy of sitting next to him in the front seat of the cab. The driver slapped his leg and it was all rather weird.

We had no idea how far away the restaurant was. We were driving and driving and then we were on the outskirts of town in a less than desirable place. We finally arrived at our destination and it was smack dab in the middle of a residential area. It had a bright neon sign that said, "Restaurant." The other cab had not arrived. It was cold so we went inside to wait.

The others showed up and we were seated at a large round table. The menu was adventurous~Rabbit, ell, shark fin, pungent sauces...I selected the tomato and egg soup and veggie dumplings. Everyone shared all of the food and it was delicious and plentiful.. We were all drinking Tsingtao beer. The bill for 7 of us was #321 yuan, which was about $40. That us what I call a real bargian.

We asked the restaurant to call us two taxis and they did. As soon as we exited the restuarant, they locked the doors. It was only 8 pm, but I gues sthey wanted to go home. No cabs showed up. We banged on the doors and finally someone came to see what the ruckus was about. We asked them to call for two cabs again and this time they arrived. The ride back to the hotel was uneventful, and we were pretty happy with that. Tomorrow we have the group tour so we will be heading to bed pretty early~9 pm.