Sunday, September 25 2011

Today we got up and went to Yuntai park. It is a pretty local park. Only four families went to the park and walked around. It has a lot of colorful statues and figurines in the park as well as a lot of pretty flowers and waterfalls. Zhao Lei, Sofia and Kyle ran around and had fun. It started raining pretty hard while we were there and we all had to cram together under shelter. We took a quick trip to Carefoux (sure I am misspelling that)
to buy some groceries. Zhao Lei chose some noodle soups and a few drinks. I had read in a blog that a woman had ordered dried squid from Amazon for her daughter that they had recently adopted from China. I found some and brought it to Zhao Lei and she said yes right away. She also chose some other dried stuff afterwards. Ray ran out of clean clothes a couple of days ago and so he was on a mission to buy a couple of shirts. It was interesting to see what types of food is offered at their stores. I had heard that this store was a lot like our Walm^rts, but I didn't think it was. I had been hoping to find coloring books and a jacket for Zhao Lei. It was more like a big grocery store with a couple of other stores connected to it. We returned to the hotel and Ray and two other dads headed out to pick up their laundry from Shaiman Island. Zhao Lei and I stayed in the room and relaxed. We did have to go to Michael's room for a few minutes to get him some paperwork, but otherwise it was nice to relax. When Ray got back it was my turn to escape. I wanted to go to Shaiman Island to shop again. I would have liked to bring Lei, but she really doesn't like shopping. She constantly pulls at me and says, "Let's go." She was a little upset, because she had wanted me to bring her to the hot tub. I asked her again if she wanted to go and she said she didn't. I asked Ray to bring her out somewhere so she wouldn't be bored and he said he would. I headed out to the island and loved it. Loved the cab ride over looking at all of the apartment buildings, loved walking around the White Swan Hotel, loved walking around the island, and loved looking around in the stores. My plan was to get an idea of what I wanted and then look at several stores to make sure I was getting exactly what I liked. I did find two stores I liked and got an idea of what I wanted to buy. My plan is to bring Ray back to do the haggling for the bigger items. It was so peaceful walking around the island. A lot of people were out exercising, walking, playing card games, fishing, or doing martial arts. There were several couples getting their wedding pictures taken or photographers shooting pictures of models for advertisements. So far, the island is my favorite part of China. Luckily it is close by and only costs 20 Yuan by taxi (about $3 dollars).
That evening we went back to the island with two other couples for dinner. We walked through the White Swan Hotel because they hadn't seen it yet. It is so pretty with the waterfall, koi pond, and beautiful pieces of art. We took pictures of our kids on a red couch. Not in their outfits and not on THE couch. Maybe tomorrow. Then we all ate dinner and headed back. Zhao Lei got a little too wound up a couple of times today. She gets really excited to be with the other two kids when we spend time with them. It is a little hard trying to figure out the balance here, so we are letting a lot of things go. Not that she is hard by any means. But it has been tricky when she chooses not to listen right away. We know that all of this has been really hard for her, so we are letting little things go. The truth is that she is being really easygoing and incredibly brave for all that she has gone through in the last week. She asked me to buy her this beaded hair piece this evening and then wore it home. She has a great sense of style and it will be fun to see what she chooses to wear after we get home. Right now she is stuck wearing clothes I brought for her. She has told me a couple of times that she wants to grow out her hair.

Medical Appointments

We had a wonderful breakfast and then went to Shamien Island for their medicals. I had heard about it and pictures of it in all of the blogs. It really is like a cattle call. I dreaded the tb test, but Zhao Lei was great about all of it. It helped that there were older kids in our group for her to be with, Kyle and Sophia. We also had the visa pictures taken and then were free to do whatever we wanted. Several of us went exploring on the island. We went to Jordan's, of course, and to several other shops. Zhao Lei had been asking to go swimming since the night before and asked all morning. She had even asked the doctor at the medical office teach her to say "Swimming in the afternoon?" After we had lunch at Lucy's and then let the kids play in a park right behind it, we were ready to go. We went to the pool for a little while, but the water was a little cold. Zhao Lei and I went to the women's area and sat in the hot tub for a while, which was great. We went and hung out in the room for a little while then went back to the island to get Ray's laundry that he had dropped off earlier. By the time we got to the island, the laundry place was closed. We did manage to buy Zhao Lei a pair of shoes she liked and then we had dinner at Lucy's. We wanted to go to two other places, but the lines were a little long and we were hungry. Zhao Lei was not in a very good mood since she had wanted to stay in the hotel room. She perked up after we ate and was in a good mood again. It is really hard when she is quiet. We don't know what to do to make her feel better, so I feel awful and helpless. We went back to the hotel and she played with a couple of toys we had bought today and then it was bedtime.

Leaving for Guangzhou

We ate a quick dinner at the airport and then got on the plane. It was a great flight. Zhao Lei watched a movie and I read on my ip*d. We were excited to arrive in Guangzhou because we all know it is the next step to going home. When we pulled up at our hotel we were shocked. THIS HOTEL IS AMAZING! It is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at and we are thrilled. What a great place to spend our last week in China!

Friday, Sept 23 2011

Wow! The days have been racing by. I have wanted to keep this blog updated, but the internet is painfully slow at our hotel and I am having a lot of trouble uploading pictures. Also, when we are in the room, Ray always wants to be on the computer for work. Since we only have one outlet, that means I am not able to get on it. I stayed up until 4 am the other night trying to catch up. We are leaving this afternoon to catch our flight to Guangzhou. We are all so excited to stay at a nicer hotel, have access to a pool, see the other families, be a step closer to going home...many reasons. This is a great experience, but it is a lot of hanging out at the hotel. And we try to get out A LOT. Zhao Lei gets tired of walking around after awhile, so we have been spending some time in the room the last couple to days relazing. Here is an update of what we did each of the days. If I don't write it down I will forget it.
Monday afternoon-after we saw Lei's orphanage and school we drove to another child's orphanage. He and his famliy went to Guangzhou already because he has a heart condition and needs to get to the US for medical care. We convinced our guide to let us come in the orphanage with him and take pictures and video for his family. They only let us into the lobby of the orphanage, but did call his caregiver who let us take pictures and a short video of her. It is a really nice orphanage and the people there seemed very nice. After we got back to the hotel we saw Tatum's family. We all walked aound and eventually finally found a big book store. Yeah! Lei refused to chose books for us to buy, so I had to guess what she would like to read. I had heard to stock up on books because the selection is much more limited and expensive back in the US. She did let us buy (after a long time of prompting) a little English learning system. It consists of a little pen and books. You run the pen across the books and it will say a word or phrase in Mandarin and then in English. We also bought a few other books to go with it. She finally said yes to a few books we chose for her and about five DVD videos. The videos were about $7 US dollars each. All Disn*y movies that do not look pirated since they come with Disn*y advertisements in the box and the voices sound right. Only one in six of them will not work, so we are exchanging it. She pulled me away from the videos and books and wanted to leave, or I would have bought more. I know that she will want to watch them over and over again when we get home. We wound up gong back the next day and buying a few more movies and Ray is there now seeing if we missed any we should get. It costs $2 in a taxi to get there, but he is walking. I wanted to update this blog and Zhao Lei is watching one of the movies right now. Money well spent. I took a picture of the address and will put it up if anyone else goes to Hangzhou and wants to know where the store is. We came home from the store and watched a movie Wednesday night (Tangl*d) and then went to bed.
Thursday-We were supposed to go to see West Lake with Michael and the Elliott family. We got up, ate at the hotel resteraunt and skyp*d our family. It was nice. The kids were happy to see us and us to see them. Brookelyn gave us air hugs, which was cute. I am sure my mom and Colton would like us to come home now and releive them of the child care responsiblities. When we went down to meet the others to go on the tour, we found out the Thursday was no car day so we were postponing it to Friday. No cars except for taxis, buses and other public transportation were allowed to be on the road. We walked around the area by our hotel and had lunch at a Subw*y before it was time for Tatum's nap so they went back to the hotel. We walked to the bookstore again (our second trip) and bought the movies. Lei told us she was tired and wanted to go back to the hotel, so we took a taxi back. Best $2 ever spent. Lei put on her pajamas right away and watched three movies in a row. It was really nice. She watched the movies on my computer (our DVD played will not play in Mandarin, only European languages). I read a book on my ip*d. Our beds are kind of hard, but still comfortable. We met up with the Elliotts for dinner. We walked up to a Japanese resteraunt Todd had seen. I didn't love the food, but we had fun and it was a nice change from the food court upstairs at the mall. When I say foodcourt, it isn't like the ones back in the US. There aren't fast food places, but there are many choices of small resteraunts or stands with good tasting, healthy food. We walked home afterwards and got ready for bed. I asked Lei if she wanted to take a bath. I don't think she had taken one before and asked me (gestures) if I took a bath or a shower. I told her both. She seemed nervous about the bath, but got in the tub (with her cr*cs on). I put in some liquid bath soap that made bubbles. She seemed really surprised about the bubbles so I put in more, which she really liked. She wanted to wach her hair in the sink again, but then said we could wash it in the tub. I know she was nervous about that but did great. I made sure not to get any in her eyes. She asked me to wash her back. Sweet. Zhao Lei watched part of a movie before bed.
Today we got up and went up for breakfast. I always eat a friend egg, toast and tea. Zhao Lei gets different things every day, congee, rice, eggs, toast and Ray usually gets eggs. We headed over to West Lake with the Elliotts and Michael. It was very pretty and peaceful there. It has been overcast and cool since we arrived in Hangzhou, which is great since we heard it was very hot until the day before we arrived. After we walked around for a couple of hours we headed back to the hotel. Zhao Lie watched a movie, I got on the computer, Dianne and Tatum took a nap and Ray and Todd went to buy a sweatshirt we wanted and to try to buy more movies at the bookstore (one of the pictures has the address if you are in Hangzhou). As soon as the movie was over, Zhao Lei said,"Mother, let's go!" She started packing up her things and was clearly excited about going. I don't know if it was to try something new, to ride on a plane, because the new hotel had a pool...but we could not go quickly enough for her. She paced up and down the hall until it was time to go.

Visit to Orphanage and School

Ray and I woke up really early again, but tried to be quiet so Lei could sleep. We knew it would be an emotional day for her since we were visiting her orphanage. We finally had to wake her up so we could get a quick breakfast and be down in the lobby to meet our guide at 9:00am. I had my usual fried egg, toast and tea. Lei got congee, the orange drink, a fried egg and toast. She went back and got herself a knife and fork and watched me use mine. It was very cute watching her teach herself to use them. I tried to help, but she didn't want any. We went back to the room, I helped Lei do her hair with her curly hair extensions, grabbed the gifts and went to the lobby. On our way to the orphanage we asked our guide if Lei knew we were going to the orphanage. He said she did and was fine with it. She didn't act at all upset or nervous. Ray and I were nervous that Lei would be very upset knowing it was probably the last time she would see many of them again. I had written down questions I wanted to ask her caregivers. We tried to ask our guide as many questions as we could think of since we had him to ourselves. I had seen several pictures of the orphanage from a family who had adopted a little seven year old boy from there last summer so I kind of knew what to expect. I knew it was going to be sparse and hospital like since it is actually part of a hospital. But it was actually a lot smaller, more sparse and older looking than I thought. It was just not at all a place anyone should consider their home. When we first pulled up we heard several people saying Lei's name. A few children and a few adults came out to meet us. We all went in the building and then into a large playroom that was mostly filled with play equipment for children younger than Lei. We stayed in there for while a few of the adults talked to Lei and we took pictures. We didn't ask Michael to translate what was being said since it was meant for Lei to hear. She looked very sad. We had bought a bunch of candy for the children and saw that Lei had added almost everything we had bought for her into the bag. We weren't really surprised to see that she was giving her things away since we already had seen that seh was very generous. She told one of the caregivers which toy should go to which child. We knew she had two girls that she was close to. I showed the caregivers their pictures from her photo album and asked where they were. I had been hoping we would meet them, but they said they were at school. Someone gave Lei a cell phone and we were told she was talking to her jie jie. After a while we went upstairs and saw the bedroom that she slept in. There are only about 15 children at the orphanage. Her room had about ten metal beds. She showed us her bed. She had a very sad face. We all stood there for a long time and we asked all of the questions we could think of. Ray took a lot of video and I took a lot of photos. We wanted to record it all for Lei. I asked about her school, file and finding spot. I was told that her file was in a different orphanage, her finding spot was in one direction and her school was in another. It sounded like we had to choose one or the other. We had already decided that we thought Lei would find the school more important since she spent so much time there. I suddenly found myself crying. I had asked if the man that was standing there was the man that we had been told she was close to. He said that he had known her since he was little and that this was a big day, like when your child gets married. He was clearly upset about Lei's leaving and trying not to cry. I walked away for a minute to collect myself. After taking a few more pictures of her caregivers, we left and drove to her school. It was very emotional to be there and to leave. All of the adults were happy when we said she would go to college. One of the women said she had taught Lei how to dance. The director gave me her email address and asked me for mine.
Visiting the school was an entirely differnt experience. We were surprised by how big and nice the school was. We were told that her class was outside having P.E. When they saw her coming they all started calling "Zhao Lei!," and then running to her. It was like she was a rock star. Really. It was a little overwhelming. The kids surrounded her and we could hardly see her in the middle of them sometimes. She was enjoying it. When the director of her orphanage saw the children running up to Zhao Lei, she got emotional. We took some pictures and then her teacher said we could see her classroom so we all went up. I think there were about 30-35 children in her class. It lookes like a great school, we were very surprised. We took more pictures and then went downstairs and left. It was a nice way to leave because it was such a positive and happy experience. We dropped the director off at the orphanage and left. Ray was smart enough to have gotten the teacher's email address. Yeah, Ray

We have Lei!!

We have Lei, who is very sweet. We started the day by eating breakfast at the hotel. This is not a great hotel and the breakfast was really very okay. We did get to meet the third family at breakfast. A man and his thirteen year old son were there to get their seven year old boy. We all met downstairs in the lobby at 8:30 am. Ray and I were excited, but mainly we were worried for Zhao Lei. I kept going over what she must be going through all morning. The drive from the orphanage is an hour, so we knew she would be getting up early to travel to meet us. We drove to the building we would be meeting the children. We arrived there at 9:15. There was another couple there from Spain who were adopting a two year old girl. I am not sure how long we waited, not really knowing whether the children were there already or not. We all sat down around a huge table and waited. Suddenly a man and woman walked in with a little girl. Now, I knew that the other couples were waiting for two year old girls or a seven year old boy. And I had seen several pictures of Zhao Lei, but for some reason it didn't look like her. I just sat there looking at her before I realized it was her and went to her. Looking back, I think she just looked really young and little in person. And actually seeing the person you have been thinking about for months and looking at in pictures is very different than seeing them in person. So I walked over and gave her a hug. She had two bags and a small purse with her, the messenger bag we had sent her in a care package as well as a large plastic bag. She and I sat down and she showed me each thing that she had inside of them. Inside the messenger bag was the journal we sent her that she had made several entries into, a book her classmates had given her with their addresses and email addresses, the photo album we had sent in the care package with photos of us, a photo album with pictures of her (in a few of them she was about three or four), a few books in Mandarin, a framed picture of her, and one of the two disposable cameras we had sent. The big plastic bag held a big, soft pink bear that her classmates had given her. There were also some clothes wrapped in plastic wrap. I asked who had given her the purse and was told that a twenty three year old girl who worked at the orphanage (or used to live there) gave it to her. She didn't seem upset while she showed them to me and it was a good way to start talking with eachother. It was pretty much just her showing thngs to me since our guide was busy with other things. I asked him to translate every now and then. The director from her orphanage and the woman who came with him did not speak English. I gave her the jewelry making kit and drawing kit I had brought for her. After what seemed like a long time, I saw them bringing in another child. At this point, only Zhao Lei had been brought in. And then they brought in a cute little boy. And then later another cute little girl. Suddenly the room was full of people. It was a big room, so we all had plenty of space. It was great to see each family getting their child. Our guide had each of us fill out paperwork and sign a lot of forms. They asked us what we wanted to name Zhao Lei. We had thought that they were going to ask us that at the end of next week at the consulate appointment (I don't know why I thought that), so we hadn't made our final decision. We had kind of thought of having her have some say in it. We were told that if we did it in the US it would be a major ordeal. So we made the decision. We named her Jordyn Brianne Zhao Lei and our last name. Jordyn after my cousin Joey (we want Joey to be her nickname), Brianne after my brother, who's middle name was Brian, and Zhao Lei because we didn't want to take any part of her name from her.
About an hour and a half after we got there, the two people from her orphanage started to get ready to leave. She looked up and waved at them and they waved at her. I gestured to her to go up to them because it kind of looked like that would be their goodbyes and I wanted her to have more than that. So she went up to them and the woman hugged her goodbye. She started crying a little so I went up and put my arm around her. She wasn't thrilled with that, but she didn't move away. She was okay after a couple of minutes and started playing with the ipad again. We left the building a little while after that and she seemed fine.