Returning to Work

Last Monday, August 20, I went back to work. For those of you that don't know, I work 32 hours a week as an engineer: Monday and Friday mornings from home, the rest of the week in the office. I've been on this schedule since I went back to work after DD2 was born 10 years ago. It's worked for me and my family, and my bosses have been great about allowing me the flexibility to do so.

Unfortunately, at my company, there is no paid leave for an adoptive parent. That doesn't seem fair to me, but I can't really complain about the flexibility of my company. They have been very good to me. I am able to take 12 weeks of unpaid family leave (FMLA).  Of course one of the problems with that is that, it's upaid. We really need my income in our household.

So, to go to China, I used my vacation. The first week back I took a week of FMLA. On Monday, I had to go get back to work. DH was also working, so I tried to work my morning from home with Grace there. Well, as you can imagine, that was,..um, shall we say "challenging!" I got in 4 hours of work, but it was not all during the morning. That was just not possible. I finished my work at about 10 o'clock that night!

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, DH was home with Grace, so I headed into the office. It was good to be back, and I enjoyed being around my coworkers, but at the same time I missed being home. Every working mom out there probably understands this feeling. It just one of those mom things, I guess.

The week at work was really getting acclimated again and figuring out what had transpired while I was gone. Not too stressful.

This week, though, the pressure is on to produce. I've got a full plate. In addition, I found out that the adoption and orphan care ministry that I've been working to get started at our church for the past 2 years was approved as a bonfied ministry. Exciting? Yes. Bad timing? Yes.

How do I work 32 hours a week, take care of a baby, head up a ministry at church? Right now, I don't know. I'll let you know when I figure it out!

 

Photos

As I promised, here are some photos of Grace. Nothing really new to post, other than I went back to work last week. I've got more to post on that, but will save that for another post.

 

More on the Bees!

Okay, so now DH is trying to plug the whole from both the inside and the outside where the bees are coming from. He thinks he's got it sealed up, and then has to get all the live bees out of the house. He spent about 30 minutes chasing bees with DDs butterfly net. He took them outside to either kill them or set them free, I'm not sure, and don't care.

He gets it down to about 4 bees in the house, so then the clean up needs to begin. Did you know that bees poop?! I didn't, but apparently they do, because we had bee poop all over the one room where they were hanging out. I had to clean all the leather furniture, and all the table tops. We ended up throwing out all paper items that were in the room, and vacuum up the dead bees. That took about 30 minutes or so, while DH chased the rest of the bees out of the house. I decided to go out to the other room to vacuum up the dead bees there, where apparently they were attracted to the picture window where the sun came in. I started vacuuming, and all of a sudden on the live bees started swarming me! I guess, he/she didn't like me messing with their bee graveyard. So I stopped until DH got the rest of the bees out of the house.

Remember that this was all happening after we'd spent the last 3 days trying to get out of China and home. We were both EXHAUSTED! This was not the homecoming that I wanted, or expected! At any rate, DH needed to get some rest, so he went upstairs to lay down while DD1, Grace and I sat down to enjoy being together. DD1 and Grace didn't even have a chance to really get to know each other yet.

Well, that wasn't to be right yet. It became painfully obvious that the bees were finding a new way to come in. I didn't want to disturb DH as he needed to get some sleep badly, so I used the butterfly net to catch them and take them outside. Well, this sounds like it's no big deal, but I am not good with bugs! Everytime I see a bee, and decide I was going to swipe at it with the butterfly net, my adrenelin would start pumping, and I'd get totally hyped. See I was worried that I'd miss it and it would decide to take revenge on me by coming after me. I have this same fear about spiders and other bugs. I'll kill them if I have to, but it's not a calm affair. So after going through this about 12 times, I couldn't take it anymore. I was burnt out. Having the ups and downs of my adrenelin levels for every bee, I was totally exhausted. I went to go wake up DH. He had at least had sufficient rest, to be able to think clearly and find and seal completely the opening from the outside. So the saga of the bees ended.

Like I said before, this wasn't the homecoming I'd envisioned or wanted!

Oh, and I promise next post, there'll be some photos of Grace and our family since we've been home!

Bees!

Here's what we've had to deal with when we got home on Saturday, August 11.

We arrived home to a house full of bees! Right before we left, bees had wormed a hole into our playroom. We'd see about 2 or 3 a day, and DH thought something along the lines of "I'll have to fix that sometime." It really wasn't bad, the bees were easily either caught and taken outside or killed. No big deal, right? Wrong!

By the end of the first week we were gone, it became apparent that we had a problem. DD1 stayed at a neighbor's down the street while we were gone, and had the responsibility of bringing in the mail each day, watering the flowers, mowing the lawn, and generally looking after the house. For a 13 year old that turned out to be too much responsibility. She did the best she could, but she really was not ready to handle it even under the best of circumstances. Add to that this bee issue, and she was overwhelmed.

We talked to her about checking on the house, and she said there were bees everywhere. She was afraid to water the plants, afraid to bring in the mail, and well, afraid to be in the house. Now here's where DH and I had a difference of opinion. I wanted to call an exterminator to have this taken care of while we were away. We could've asked one of our neighbors to help out and talk with the exterminator to get things taken care of. DH wanted to wait until we got back.

In my opinion this was a mistake. I don't know that he'd agree though. What we came home to was a BIG mess. The bees had essentially taken over the playroom and the livingroom. There were dead bees everywhere and swarming bees in both rooms. DD1 did a lousy job of watering the plants because she was afraid the bees would get her, and she wasn't able to vacuum up the dead bees because she said the live ones swarmed her when she tried.

There were hundreds of bees everywhere in our house. So DH tried to figure out where they were coming from, plug the hole, and get rid of the remaining live bees in the house. He ended up chasing and catching them with DD2's butterfly net. I know this sounds funny, but at the time it was anything but. I was afraid to take Gracie out to the playroom for fear she'd get stung, nevermind fear that the rest of us would too! So we essentially stayed upstairs until DH got things somewhat under control.

This post is getting too long, so I'll continue later....More to come!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

After we got to LA on Friday, here's what happened. We spent the night at an overpriced Mariott by the LA airport because we couldn't find any other hotels that had rooms available. It was getting very late, so we finally sucked it up and paid $249 for a hotel room that was no better than a Days Inn (my opinon only, of course)! Gracie was wide awake at 3 a.m., so DH went ahead and went to bed, and I let Gracie play quietly on the floor in front of the bathroom, so as not disturb DH. Gracie finally settled down to sleep at about 4:30 a.m., and all 3 of us slept until about 6. DH got up and went to the airport to see what we could take to get us home. Gracie and I slept until about 7 a.m.

DH came back from the airport feeling not very optomistic about us getting out of LA to anywhere that would take us to Indianapolis. But we decided to give it a try, so we all headed over to the airport at about 8:30 a.m. to try to get on any flight we could. We tried to get to Chicago on 3 different flights, and then to Kansas City with no success. DH was exhausted, and said that we would try one more flight that was scheduled to leave for Chicago at 6:55. By the grace of God, we made it on that flight, although we weren't able to sit together. DH sat in a middle seat with Gracie and I sitting in the middle seat in the row behind him. We arrived into Chicago at 11:30 p.m., and of course had to see about getting another hotel for the night before flying home on Saturday.

DH's usual stayover hotel in Chicago, La Quinta, where we could've gotten a room for $89, was full. So we opted to stay right at the airport in the Hilton for a "cheap" $169. We also decided that we wouldn't rush to catch the 6 a.m. flight the next morning to Indianapolis, and instead get as much sleep as we could. You could imagine how tired we were! So we got up and walked over to the United terminal and easily got on the 12:55 p.m. flight home. We landed in Indianapolis at about 2 p.m., took a van to our car, and put Gracie in her brand new carseat to head home!

So to sum up, here's how we ended up getting from China to Indianapolis:

Train from Guangzhou, China to Hong Kong train station; a bus from Hong Kong train station to the Novatel Hotel; a van from the Novatel to the Hong Kong Airport; a plane from Hong Kong to LA, a plane from LA to Chicago, a plan from Chicago to the Indianapolis airport, and a car ride home from there.

That's our version of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles!"

A miracle right here in the 21st Century!

First off, I want to thank all of you that have been praying for us to be able to get back home from China. Your prayers and mine have been answered in a big way! This post is about how DH and I got back into the USA with Gracie to proclaim her a US citizen.

It starts back on Thursday, August 9 at about 3:30. All the families in our group took an oath at the US Consulate in Guangzhou that everything that we'd provided the US government with regards to adopting a Chinese baby was indeed truthful. The oath took about 2 minutes. We were given a sealed brown envelope and told not to open it, but rather to give it to immigration at our port of entry into the USA. Shortly after our oath we all said our quick goodbyes to the families that were leaving Guangzhou for Tokyo on Friday morning and to Alison, our guide. There were tears and excitement as our time with all the families came to a close. DH and I also said goodbye to my dad. We'll see him again in the states after he arrives.

Alison had hired a guide in Guangzhou, Elvin (he called himself "Almost Elvis". Isn't that cute?!), to take us to the Guangzhou train station, get our Hong Kong tickets changed to an earlier train, if possible, and get on our the train. Elvin successfully got our earlier train tickets, and we were on the 5:05 train without incident. The train ride was about 2 hours. We travelled with 3 other families, and 2 grandmas that had come with one of the families to China. Once we got to Hong Kong, there was a woman that met us to get us on a bus that was to take us to the Novatel Hotel in Hong Kong where the other 3 families were spending the night before flying out on Friday morning back to their homes in the USA.

DH and I got off of the hotel bus,said our goodbyes to t rest of our travel group, and jumped on the hotel airport shuttle bus without problem. It was about this tiime that we started to feel God's hand in all of our travel. So we got to the Hong Kong airport (which is HUGE, by the way), and DH went to Cathay Pacific to see if we'd be able to get on a flight to LA that was scheduled to leave at 11:35 p.m. It did not look good, as Economy was oversold by 50 seats. And we didn't know how many other SAs (Space Available fliers) were trying to get on the flight too. On top of that United had told DH back in Chicago that when he bought his ID90 tickets on Cathay Pacific that we didn't need a ticket for Grace. Cathay Pacific told him we did, so we had to buy her a full-fair lap baby ticket (only $237, but still United messed up!). The lap baby ticket had a $33 refund fee if we didn't us it because we couldn't get on the flight. After deliberating for about 5 minutes, DH decided to go ahead and buy that ticket, as we really didn't have that much to lose. But it did NOT look good for us to go.

The way Cathay Pacific (CP) doles out their SA tickets is to have everyone waiting for seats on their flights come to a special desk and wait to see if their called for tickets. They told DH to return to the ticket counter at 10:45 p.m. to see if we got on the 11:35 p.m. flight out to LA. We returned with no real hope of getting on, but alot of prayer.

Here's the miracle, so play close attention! At about 11 p.m. the guy at the CP desk told everyone there was a 10 minute delay in the flight and that there would be a 10 minute delay in giving out SA tickets. So we waited. Other SA passengers were being called for other CP flights, Johannasburg, London, and then they started calling for LA tickets. We were the 3rd persons called! We couldn't believe it! We were on the flight that was oversold by 51 seats, and had at least a dozen more SAs waiting to be called for tickets. We found out that the reason we got on the flight at all, was because there was a last minute equipment change to a much bigger plane! What a miracle God performed yesterday! Praise and Thank Him!!!

From there on we were treated very well because we were traveling with a baby. Everyone was very helpful, and we arrived in LA at about 10:15 p.m on Thursday, August 9. We're still not home yet, as we have to figure out how to get from LA to Indianapolis, but we're in a hotel where we can drink the water, and most people speak English! Ahhh, it's good to be home! Thank you God for your miracle of getting us back into the US!

Oh, and by the way, Gracie became a US citizen the minute we touched down in LA. So she's an all American Girl now!!!

The Legendary White Swan Red Couch

There is a tradition among adoptive families that stay at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island, Guangzhou, to have a photo taken of all the adopted children on this big red couch in one of the lobbies of the White Swan Hotel. Our turn came today. All of the girls were decked out in their traditional Chinese clothes for the photo. Some of them wore dresses, some of them wore shirts and pants, but all of them looked very beautiful! I don't know where this tradition came from, but it is a lovely one! Oh, and check out the photo of Gracie trying out walking in her squeaky shoes! When we first got her last week, so wasn't able to put much weight on her legs for any length of time. Now she's trying to walk! What a difference a week makes.

Ahhh, Starbucks!

One of the things that I've missed since being in China is Starbucks. I don't have Starbucks everyday back in the states, but if you ask anyone that knows me well, they'll tell you I do like Starbucks! In the heat of a summer day, I usually stick with Frappacinos, instead of the standard mocha cafe I get in the cooler months.

So imagine my delight when we went out walking yesterday after Gracie's medical appointment, and saw this Starbucks. It's a beautiful one too. The architecture of the outside of the building is very french in nature. They say that Shamian Island was heavily influenced by french and english architecture. That's evident from walking down the streets. Most of the buildings were built in the 1800's. DH says that this place reminds him of New Orleans, and I'd have to agree. It really is lovely, and the people here are so friendly. Many of them speak English, or at least some English, and are anxious to talk with you. Back at Starbucks: I had a Mocha Frappacino, and DH had a mango juice slushy thing. Both were VERY good!

Gracie's Medical Exam on Shamian Island, Guangzhou

In preparation for the US Consulate swearing in ceremony on Thursday, Gracie had to undergo a Chinese medical exam at the local clinic. The clinic was a very clean place and very busy. Grace was a trooper and didn't cry once (oops! I just looked at the photos and saw that she cried most of the time! I guess I blocked that part out.). She really was more curious than scared. First the doctor examined her by measuring her head size, and pressing on her tummy. Then the nurse took her weight and height. She told us that Grace weighed 19 lbs. I don't know how accurate the scale was, but I was guessing she was about 18 lbs. So she's pretty close to what we expected. Following the weigh-in the nurse checked her hearing, looked in her ears and her throat. Everything looked good. Alison told us that the doctor had written down that Grace had heat rash. Of course, we knew that already. Anyway, we left there and were on our own for shopping.

Why we are in Chongqing so long

Several people have posted comments asking why we're in Chongqing so long after getting Grace. So I thought I'd post a quick entry explaining. Just before we left the USA, we received an email from our adoption agency explaining that there was a new rule in Chongqing that the local police department had to do something with processing the adoptive child's passport. So we had to stay an extra 4 days in Chongqing, and now we are waiting for that to take place, although we haven't heard anything from them.

I suppose that our guides would hear something and let us know if there were questions. It appears though that we're still on tap to leave here tomorrow afternoon for Guangzhou.

Today we had a worship service in the hotel business center that was led by one of the adoptive fathers. I don't know if he is a pastor of what his "qualifications" are for leading the service, but I have heard him talk about staying in contact with his pastor back home. So I think he may have volunteered to lead the service. Later we are headed out to Walmart on own in a taxi to see about getting a suitcase to pack all of our purchases from China in. Before we left, we expected to have to buy a suitcase, so this was part of the plan all along.

Not everyone just stares

I thought I'd better balance some of what I've said about the Chinese locals just staring at us without saying anything by also telling you the good side of the people here. Not everyone stares without saying anything. About 1/4 of the people that we see actually come up and say something about Gracie and smile. They usually either touch her arm, wave at her, or touch her under the chin. Since I don't understand Chinese, I can only guess that they are saying how cute she is. And of course they are right in saying so!

There are some younger people that come up and speak to us in English. The other night when we were out with Grace in the stroller, DH was inside a small shop looking for some bargain Nike shorts. So I was standing outside the shop kind of rolling the stroller back and forth while Gracie slept. A young man, oh about 17 or 18, walked by, looked at me, and then looked in the stroller at a sleeping Gracie. He stopped and did a double take. I was fully expecting him to walk on without a word, but instead he got a quizzical look on his face and asked if she was an adopted Chinese baby. I told him yes, and he smiled and asked how old she was. I told him 10 months, and he said "Wow, she's big. Are you sure she's only 10 months?" I reassured him that she was only 10 months, and he just said again that she was big for her age. I told him that in America, she would be considered small at that age. He kind of laughed, and said what a lucky baby she was. Then he walked on. So like I said, not all Chinese people are rude and just stare.

We also have been stopped by younger school aged children who say "hi!", and then just giggle. It's very cute. I'm sure they are practicing their English. Our guide, Michael, told us that all the school children learn English, but more for reading and recognizing the alphabet. They don't really get to speak it much. So I'm sure these kids are totally excited when they get to try out what they've learned in school.

One last story about a very nice Chinese man. We had gone to lunch at the Best Western Hotel one day this past week, and DH had taken a restless Gracie out to the lobby to walk around. He was standing by the doorway, when a very nice young Chinese man, who was in his 30's, stopped and asked if he could practice his English with DH. DH said sure, and they had a very nice conversation. I guess the man had learned English at university, and didn't get much chance to practice with people that actually spoke English as their first language. He told DH a little bit about himself, and said that he was very happy that we were in China. DH thanked him and told him his English was very good.

So, just so you don't get the wrong impression. Not everyone is so rude. There are some people that have been very friendly and nice.

Da-Dot-Dot-Dot-Da - I'm Lovin' It!

We were a bit tired of Chinese food, even though we do like it, and decided to venture out with Gracie on Thursday evening and try one of the Chongqing McDonald's restaurants by our hotel. We packed Gracie up in the stroller that the hotel provides for adoptive families and headed out.

The first thing we noticed about this McDonald's is that you have to go downstairs to get to it. Apparently China has no "handicap accessible" laws, so we schlepped the stroller with Grace in it down the stairs to order. The best way to order food here is to point to what you want on a card that has both Chinese and English along with pictures of the food. The sandwiches and meal deals are called the same thing as in the US, but you have to be careful about thinking that what you order here is the exact same thing as what you'd get if you ordered it in the US.

A couple of days before our MacciD's adventure, DH had ordered us burgers and fries from our hotel roomservice, and I did NOT like the cheeseburger he brought back to our room at all. First off, because I don't like cheeseburgers (I've been married to DH almost 20 years, and he claims he didn't know I dislike cheeseburgers!), and secondly because the meat was very fatty and undercooked (again, DH ordered mine cooked medium, when he knows that at home I don't eat any meat that's even remotely pink inside! What was he thinking?!) So I decided to stick with something I thought would be relatively safe, a hamburger Happy Meal. Wow! I was very pleasantly surprised when it tasted just like home!!

DH had a quarter pounder with cheese, and Dad also had a quarter pounder (am not sure whether he had cheese on it or not.) Apparently, there's some kind of spicy sauce that this  MacciD's puts on their quarter pounders in China that they don't in the US, but both DH and Dad said they tasted good. So it's 2 big thumbs up for the Chongqing McDonalds!

While we enjoyed our food at one of the tiny tables in the restaurant, there was a Chinese woman with what I assume was her husband and son eating at the table next to us. This woman stared at me holding Gracie on my lap while I was enjoying my burger and fries, the entire time we were sitting there. Like before, there was no smile and nothing said to us, just a dead stare. It was a bit uncomfortable for me, but I guess it didn't bother her because she just kept on staring whether I was looking back at her or not!

After we finished our meals, we headed back up the stairs. I noticed that at the top of the stairs was a fast food window where the locals were ordering ice cream. Later we thought we should've tried it, but we didn't. That will have to be next trip!

Here are some photos. Oh, and by the way, the title of this entry is supposed to be the words to the McDonald's theme song. Just in case you didn't catch it!

Gracie becomes a member of our family forever!

I know I'm working somewhat backwards, but I wanted to make sure that I posted a little bit about the day that the adoption was final. That was on Tuesday, July 31. We went back to the Civil Affairs office, that is the office where we picked Gracie up the day before, at around 1:30 in the afternoon. On this day, things were alot quieter. We were the only group in the office waiting to finalize our adoptions. When we were on the bus traveling there, Alison asked all of us if we all wanted to keep our babies, and we all answered a resounding yes. What a blessing for all of the families in our group. Please thank God as you think of how 8 families were either created or extended on that day!

Once we were at the office, it was a matter of adding our fingerprints to the paperwork we had filled out the day before back at the hotel. DH went first, then me, then Gracie. As you can see from the pictures Dad took, getting Gracie to give her fingerprint was a bit challenging. The first time she actually got the ink on her dad rather than on the paperwork. But in the end, she did great.

I can't tell you the feeling of finalizing the adoption of our precious Grace. It's pretty amazing. Reflecting on the long journey we've taken to get to the point of adding this God selected child to our family, I know now that the wait was well worth it! Gracie is an amazing little girl, and to think of how much she's gone through already at just 10 months old, is overwhelming. She's a fighter for sure, and I feel truly blessed to be able to call her my daughter!  I'm so anxious to have her meet her sisters back home.

Here are photos from finalizing the adoption. The little girl in the purple shirt is Kaylee. She is the daughter of one of the other adopting families in our group. Boy, is she a cutie!

Walmart, Chinese style!

It seems like every Chinese adoption blog has at least one post about Walmart. Here's mine. We went to one of 3 Walmarts in Chongqing Wednesday morning. It was an experience. As you would expect, there are many similarities between our US Walmarts and the Chinese Walmarts. There are also many differences.

The biggest difference is in the meat section of the Super Walmart we went to. As you can see from the photos, you can buy squid, duck, and many other delicacies we didn't partake in. They also had something called a flying pancake. It's a dough-like thing that a person behind the counter stretches into a square sort of like pizza dough, but very very thin pizza dough. Once it's stretched to about a 12 to 16 inch square, filling is put on top. There are different types of fillings that are used, we saw a vegetable filling in one and a pineapple filling in another. Then the flying pancake is closed and fried. I didn't see if it was deep fried or pan fried, but it is definitely fried. One of our families bought a pineapple one and gave all of us a taste. I didn't try it, as I don't like pineapple, but DH and Dad did. They both thought it was tasty. I think if we have an opportunity to try it again with some other filling, I definitely will! Here are a few photos of Walmart. I should mention that we were told later by our guide, Alison, that Walmart doesn't like photos taken in their store. Apparently they are afraid of competition seeing them. Dad was never told he couldn't take them, although he was given a dirty look by one guy. It didn't stop Dad though. You should also know they didn't take our Mastercard, so we paid with yuan.

Hot Pot in Chongqing

These photos are from the restaurant where we had hot pot. Hot pot is a local dish in Chongqing. There are two rings to the hot pot. Both are heated to boil the food before you eat it family style at a table of about 8 people. The inner ring is the hot spicy broth. I don't know what makes it spicy, but the liquid is red. The outer ring is chicken broth and is clear. It is not spicy at all. The wait staff came around and dumped a bunch of the food around the hot pot into the hot liquids and then wait for it to cook. The way this works is that when the broth boils again, the food is cooked. We were all a little leary of having the meat cook so short a time, so we gave it extra time after it started boiling. There were many different kinds of food to cook in the hot pot: beef, chicken, fish, sweet potato jelly (no one tried this at our table!), vegetables, and lots of different kinds of noodles. I stuck with eating the things that were cooked in the outer ring. They were very good, especially when you dipped the cooked food into the sauce that was provided. We also put garlic in the sauce, and they was quite tasty. DH said that the noodles didn't really absorb the spiciness from the inner ring very much, but that the meat and vegetables did. He said it was quite spicy, but delicious. He LOVED this place, and spent lots of time eating all kinds of things cooked in the spicy inner ring. Dad and I didn't eat as much. Me because Gracie was cranky, and I don't think Dad liked it very much. He said later that he doesn't like soup, but I didn't understand that statement, since it was really not "soup." Anyway, out of the 3 of us, DH liked it the most. When we got back to our room, I noticed that everything we had with us, our clothes, the diaper bag, ... all smelled like garlic. So that's what a hot pot is all about.

Spicy!

You may have heard, like we have, that Chongqing has spicy food. Well, we got to try some of that today at lunch in the form of a hot pot. I'd never heard of a hot pot, but DH asked Alison about it yesterday, and she and Michael took us to a local restaurant for lunch to experience it. And it is an experience. Before I tell you about the hot pot, let me fill you in on the rest of what's been happening.

Grace had a rough afternoon yesterday. She was a little bit constipated, and was spitting up quite a bit. We think that feeding her the steamed egg that the Chinese locals keep pushing on us to feed her caused the constipation. So we decided no more steamed egg, at least for now. As far as the spitting up, I'm not sure what caused that. I fed her a tiny bit of mashed banana for breakfast. That could've been it, but I don't really know. So again, no more banana for a little while.

Last night was a quiet one in our room. After Gracie woke up from her nap around 5, she was so fussy that I thought maybe a walk in the stroller around town might help her feel better. She loved the walk, but we were stared at alot. I wasn't really expecting what happened when we went walking, DH and me with Gracie in the stroller. It's not that I didn't expect stares. I did, but what I didn't expect was the lack of smiles or anything else. We got alot of dead stares. Noone talked to us, and noone said anything to Gracie. They would see us walking, and then look down into the stroller to see if there was a Chinese baby in it or not. Of course there was. I don't know if this is typical or not, but it made me feel uncomfortable. Anyway, after about a 20 minute walk we went back into the hotel. We had Pizza Hut pizza for dinner. I had the veggie lovers which was quite good. It had lots of different kinds of veggies you'd expect to be on a veggie lovers pizza, but no black olives (which was fine with me because I do not like olives!). It did have corn and pineapple on it. Sounds strange, but it tasted good! Anyway, after that it was an early night for all of us. We turned in around 9:30 or so.

Today started out well. Gracie woke up at about 3 and went back to sleep until 7:30. We went to the Flying Tiger Museum and had traditional Chinese scrolls for each of the girls done by an artist that was right there in the museum. They are quite beautiful! After the museum we headed to the restaurant for the hot pot.

I know I said that I'd tell you all aboutthe hot pot experience, but I'm going to stop here for this post, as it's getting quite long. I'll fill you all in on the hot pot and hopefully have more pictures next time.

More about Gotcha Day

I wanted to write more about what happened on the day that we received Grace. On Monday, July 30 we went downstairs in the hotel dining room to fill out the paperwork before we were to go to the civil affairs office that afternoon. We each had to sign papers in that were written in both Chinese and English. All of  them required our passport numbers too. After we finished some of husbands and a couple of the wives went with Michael, our Chongqing guide, to the bank to exchange the US dollars into RMB, and then wire the money to the orphanage. Later DH told me that he felt funny about how things were handled at the bank. When I asked him why, he said that there was a woman from civil affairs that walked in to the bank by herself with a big bag of Chinese yuan. She proceeded to take bricks of RMB out of her bag and count it. Once the proper amount of money was counted out, the money was turned over to the bank and wired to the orphanage. Only after that did Michael collect the US dollars from each of the families. He said we would get our receipt and change later. DH said that the women took the money, over $30,000 USD, put it in her purse and walked out again. That was it, no guards, no Brinks truck, just a woman with her purse! I can't imagine feeling safe with all that cash in my purse!

So once the money was paid we met in the lobby of the hotel and rode over to the civil affairs office, which was about a 20 minute ride. We took the elevator up to the proper floor, walked about 30 feet before entering the civil affairs office area. It was white with some red decorating the walls, and was very friendly looking. We were told that the babies weren't there yet, and it would be about 10 more minutes before they got to the office.

After about that amount of time, 4 women and a man came walking in through the same entrance we walked in from, each woman holding 2 babies in their arms. We were not allowed to touch the babies, but everyone was totally excited. We were all taking pictures and trying to determine which baby was which. Grace was in the arms of her nanny and another baby. I can't remember which baby was with her, but DH and I figured out pretty quickly who Grace was. She looked so tiny! She was dressed in a black and white polkadot two piece baby outfit, and pink sandals. She looked so cute! Shortly after the nannies were done reporting in, they called all of us adoptive parents and family members into a big conference room to receive the babies. Alison, our guide, had told us the order that the babies would be handed over. We were number 2. So the first baby was being handed over, when I decided to ask one of the other adoptive moms to take still photos, while my dad took video. I was trying to show her how to use my dad's digital camera when they called our name. DH walked up and took Grace in her arms without me! I was and still am disappointed that we didn't go up together, and that I wasn't the one to take her from her nanny's arms! At any rate, she didn't cry or fuss at all. She just looked at us trying to figure out what was going on. She was so cute and sweet!

After everyone received their babies, we were brought a bag a formula and rice cereal along with one bottle already mixed and ready to give her. Grace started fussing, and we determined later that this is what she does when she needs to poop. She finished her duty, and we got her bottom cleaned up before we signed the trial adoption papers. We also were given the chance to ask Grace's nanny any questions and have them translated by Alison. Here's what we asked and her nanny's response:

Did our baby have any cribmates?
All the babies slept alone in their own crib.

Did her nanny have a nickname for our baby?
ShanShan

Was there anything that the nanny would like to tell us about our baby?
She asked us to be good parents to her, and to love her (At this point the nanny got teary eyed, so we know that Grace was well loved!)

I was also able to have both Grace's nanny and the orphanage director sign the "When You Were Born in China" book! (I asked DH to get Alison and Michael, our guides, to sign it too, but we ran out of time right then and didn't have them do it yet. I will take care  of that later this week.)

Each family had a photo taken with their baby's nanny and the orphanage director, and handed over the gifts each had brought from the US. We had brought 6 Tshirts: 3 of the Indianapolis 500, and 3 of the Colts Superbowl Champions, as our gifts.

We then all piled back in the bus and drove back to the hotel. We were to get to know our baby and decide if she was the baby that was meant to be ours before we headed back to the civil affairs office on Tuesday afternoon to sign the paperwork.

Here are some photos of our Gotcha Day.