Day 8 - Carter Arrives!!

Monday, March 20^th – Lanzhou, Gansu   (Carter’s Family Day)

We planned to meet Carter in our room around 2 pm.  First Jeff and the kids went on a little adventure to exchange money.  Banks in China operate a little differently than in America.  Actually, they operate more like the DMV.  When you enter, you are greeted and you are given a number in line.  Depending on how busy the bank is you may have a 10-30 minute wait. Then you are shown to a teller window where you sit down to discuss your business.  Foreign transactions in province tend to be a novelty and a simple money exchange can take 20 minutes or more.  Counterfeit money is a problem in China and all bills are screened and re-screened and then checked by another person. 

After our banking business was complete, we went back to the hotel room. This is where we will meet our new son.  Just like with Wen, we will meet in a hotel room as it is the most private place to meet.  We have planned for the worse, but hoped for the best. 

Five minutes before he arrives all three of our kids (Zach, Madeline, and Wen) were goofing around and managed to lock themselves in the bathroom.  In their defense, it was a hard lock to manage, but here we are trying to break them out of the bathroom wondering how we will explain to everyone what is going on when they show up with Carter.  Luckily, we broke them a few minutes before Carter arrived.   

A knock on the door and he is with us.  He is very shy and hesitates to leave his nanny.  We fight the urge to hold and hug him, knowing that this type of affection will take time.  After all, we are complete strangers to him; and he has already been through so much trauma in his little life.  He is smaller than Jeff thought, but about as big as Jodi thought he would be. He warms to Jodi first; not wanting Jeff to come too close. That is ok; we have time.  We did WeChat with Wen three times before we traveled, so we had already heard her voice, interacted with her, and felt like we knew a little about her before we even got to China.  We did not do any of this with Carter.  We only received photos and a few videos of him.  This is our first time truly interacting with him and it is hard to believe that we can touch him and see him.  After looking at his picture for the last 5 months, we can hardly believe he is right in front of us.  He is even cuter in person.  We feel so blessed to have been chosen to be his adoptive parents.  We prepared a list of questions for his nanny and Jeff starts to work through them with our guide translating.  Jodi continues to bond with our new son.  We are told that in his orphanage there are 11 children with 5 nannies – an amazing ratio for an orphanage.  If that has been the case his whole life, then that would be incredible for the care that he would have received.  The director of the orphanage had some paperwork for us to sign.  This is notable because we often joke about the fact that with each previous adoption, we were given a child and told to bring them back in 24 hours to sign papers. This is the first time in 4 adoptions that we have ever even been asked for ID before we accepted our child. Every province, much like a US state, is different and we are told procedures vary.  After the paperwork was completed with our guide and the director, we knew it was time for the nanny and director to try and slip away quietly so that the child doesn’t fuss. This nanny did not want to let him go.  She stayed with us as we packed things up to go for his photographs, walked with us and rode the elevator downstairs, and then walked outside – all while holding Carter.  We were worried because now he would have to say goodbye to her and the director in the lobby and we expected to have a crying/emotional scene in front of the busy hotel vs. in the room.  This was one of the specific nannies that took care of him during the 2 + years he lived at his orphanage and you could tell he loved her and she loved him – very much. Well, to our pleasant surprise, things went very smoothly.  Jodi took him from the nanny and we instantly started to walk in a different direction so that he could not see her.  He looked toward the nanny’s direction, reached for her a bit, and fussed just a little.  Once she was out of sight, we placed him on the ground so he could walk and all was well.  He walked or was held by Jodi all the way to the photo shop which was about a 15-minute walk away.  During that walk, we came across a stray dog just lying on a set of steps in front of a business.  Carter was very interested in the dog and we let him look at the dog from a distance for a few minutes and then proceeded to the photo shop.  Photos were taken of Carter individually and then Carter with Jeff and Jodi for his adoption paperwork.  Despite some technical difficulties with the camera, all went well with photos – no screaming child in the photos!  Carter did great. Now it was time to walk back to our hotel.  We stopped at two stores looking for some items we were hoping to buy – bubbles, snacks, and more toothpaste.  Got everything we needed except for bubbles.  The clerk told our guide that they do not sell bubbles this time of year.  It was almost 70 degrees outside, but this is warmer than usual for this province.  It is normally in the 50s.  So bubble blowing will have to wait until we get to Guangzhou (which is at about the same latitude as Havana, Cuba – so much warmer and humid all year round).  On our walk back to the hotel, we couldn’t believe it – as we approached the area where the dog was lying earlier, Carter reached up to Jodi as if he wanted to her to pick him up so he could see higher.  She did and he began to look for the dog.  He was perplexed when he didn’t see the dog where he was earlier.  We couldn’t believe he remembered exactly where that dog was lying.  He is so tiny that it is easy to forget that he is 2 ½ years old.

While reviewing the next day's details with our guide in the hotel lobby, Jodi and Carter walk around the lobby.  One staff member asks Jodi how long we have had him.  She explained that we just met him a few hours ago.  The staff member is totally surprised and tells us that he looks so comfortable with us and that he seems like we have always had him.  Carter still feels very new to us, but if he looks like he has been with us longer than 2 hours, that is fantastic! While in the lobby, we also offered Carter a lollipop - which he really seemed to enjoy.  Then, at some point, Wen looked and Carter and said "Oh no!".  We looked and the entire lollipop was gone; he was just holding a stick.  All of us, including the guide, are concerned and Jodi yells, "Jeff, he is choking!" [As an aside - Jodi is constantly conscious of people looking at us and complains that we stick out too much.  So now we are yelling in the lobby of the hotel that our son of only a few hours is choking.  First, Jodi put her finger in his mouth, then Jeff put his finger in his mouth and did a full finger sweep searching for this pop as we were contemplating the next step. We soon realize he is not choking.  Another check and it turns out that the lollipop was turned around in his hand (he had the round lollipop part in his hand the whole time and we could not see it - all we saw a stick with no lollipop on top)!  We were so relieved that it was in his hand and not lodged in his throat.  Somehow, Carter remained ridiculously calm during the entire ordeal.   We kept thinking, well if he wasn't sure about Jeff before this incident, how will he feel now?  First scare (luckily a false one) only hours after having him! 

We said goodbye to our guide and we were finally alone with our new son to bond and play in the hotel room.  We played with the toys we brought and with water bottles we had in our room.  He and Zach had fun stacking the bottles or setting them up and then knocking them down.  Madeline bonded with him by offering and giving him food.  Wen kind of sat back and watched and then later came over to him while he was on our lap to get to know him better.   Jeff and Jodi did lots of playing, hugging, and holding of Carter.  Dinner time came quickly and we headed up to the executive lounge.  The first meal with a child you have never met can often be very interesting.  You have very little information about what they like to eat.  The food that they ate in the orphanage often consists of congee and steamed buns.  So, we put a variety of foods on the plate and waited to see what he went for.  He tried a few foods on his own and for other foods, he needed to see us eat them first and then he would try them.  He ate a good meal with us and then it was time to head back to the room and get ready for bed. We got him into his pajamas and Jodi rocked him to sleep.  He slept well the entire night in his crib for us.  Yeah! 

Nanny is on the left and director of the orphanage is on the right.

The boys

Carter likes to jump on Baba--beating up daddy is universal.

We were blessed with not just one, but two more beautiful children on this trip.  God is so good! 

He came to us with a Teletubbies jacket complete with the pointy thing on top.  He loves this coat and doesn't like us to take it off of him. 

Very expressive little boy.

Day 7 - Travel from Beijing to Lanzhou

Sunday, March 19^th – Travel day from Beijing to Lanzhou

We had to leave our hotel a 6:30 AM which is not an easy feat with three teenagers that like to sleep.  We managed to get them moving and we made it to the lobby in time to grab our bagged breakfasts and meet our driver.  It was now time to head to our 3^rd province in China – Gansu.  There were several other adoptive families on the flight – all anxious to arrive in their child’s province as well.  Our flight arrived midday.  We met our guide, Lili, and then we had an hour-long ride to downtown Lanzhou from the airport.  This is an extremely mountainous area and during the drive we even saw a gentleman and some of his sheep on a very steep side of the mountain.  It was like something out of a movie.  We also saw a building that looked like Greek architecture and then a replica of the Sphinx.  We were totally perplexed as to why these would be in China.  We found out that there is an amusement and water park being built outside of Lanzhou and these structures will be part of the park. There is tons of regular building construction going on as well.  Our guide told us that the downtown area of Lanzhou is in a valley and there is no more room to grow.  Therefore, they are building outside of the city and will call it “New Lanzhou”.  Unfortunately, Jeff was sick during the entire ride to the hotel and could not enjoy the scenery or chat much with the guide. 

Once we arrived in Lanzhou, we checked into the Crowne Plaza. We were happy to know that we once again had adjoining rooms.   They even told us that we could enjoy the executive lounge access on the 29^th floor each day for tea in the afternoon and dinner & desserts in the evening.   This will be a huge blessing because breakfast is already included and being able to eat dinner in the hotel each night means that we do not need to try to order at a local restaurant.  Lanzhou is a big city, but there are not western type restaurants here like there were in Jinan and Beijing.  Our rooms are extremely nice again and to see a crib in the room is a big reminder that tomorrow our lives are going to change a lot.  Adding Wen to our family was like when we added Andrew.   We already had children the same age as Andrew, so nothing really changed with our daily lives. It was a smooth and fairly easy transition when Andrew joined our family.  Wen is an amazingly resilient young lady and she is at the same level as Madeline in terms of maturity (this is often not the case when people adopt an older child), so we are grateful for that.  We are already in the preteen / new teen phase with our three older children, so adding another daughter the same age was very comfortable for us.  However, a little one in diapers – we haven’t done that in a while!  Tomorrow we will see if it all comes back to us!

Can’t believe we will have our second family day tomorrow!  Being so busy with our newest daughter and our other two children has made the time go quickly between both family days. 

View from our hotel room - Yellow River and local park

Statue in center of local park

A crib - we have seen or used one of these for a long time!

The hotel even had a baby bath tub in the large tub for Carter.

They also gave us the cutest little robe and slippers for Carter. Too bad they will be way to big for him to actually use. 

Carter's backpack / diaper bag - ready to go for tomorrow!

Beautiful lobby of our hotel with glass piano and one of the most amazing chandeliers!

View of our hotel from outside - the one side (left in this pic) of the building had moving advertisements

that were displayed using lights that ran up the side of the building.

Day 6 - Beijing Sight Seeing Day 2

When we asked our guide,, Jessie what her favorite place to take people to in Beijing - the Great Wall was her easy answer.  This is the Mutianyu portion of the wall.  This was Zachary's favorite thing to see so far as well.  A ski lift to the top makes the climb easy; and then a mountain coaster down was so much fun. On a side note, Jeff dropped the camera on top of the wall and somehow it didn't break-- yeah Cannon!!

One of our favorite things from a previous trip was a tour of the Hutong District of Beijing. This is an area of Beijing that has been protected and set aside for the 'common people' so that the city doesn't loose it roots.  It functions a lot like a campground in the United States. There are areas for public rest rooms as most homes do not have one.  We were invited into someone's home for a tour and a traditional Chinese meal that they prepared for us. It was excellent. This home was passed onto the man who hosted us through his family and originally his grandfather owned it.  His Grandfather was a painter for the last emperor of China so he was wealthy.

Another family was touring with us today.  They brought their two biological children and would be adopting their son after they toured Beijing and went to his province.

The food was excellent--almost as good as Henry and May's in Jonestown.

This man's relative has a studio on site where she paints the inside of bottles.

From the outside they do not look like much; but each door leads to a courtyard and a unique and quaint way of life inside.

There is  park behind the Forbidden City which sits atop a man made mountain and has five watchtowers which represent the 5 directions.  North, South, East, West, Center (I know, that one stumped me too).  The mountain was made from the material that was dug up when the moat around the Forbidden City was made. This is a great way to look down into the City.  The part closest to us would have been for only the emperor and his concubines and is the most heavily guarded part.  As you move farther away from us other members of the court would stay and work. Notice smog is still an issue in the rapidly industrializing country.

At entrance to Jingshan Park - This park is on a mountain that was made from dirt that was removed from around The Forbidden City when they dug the moat.  When we climbed to the top, we got an amazing view of the entire Forbidden City. Jeff and Jodi had been inside the Forbidden City during Andrew's adoption, but seeing it from above was just as fantastic.  Just wish there wasn't so much smog in China - would make it easier to view. 

Some down time in the hotel.

Wen wearing Madeline's glasses.

Wen likes to swim - yeah!!  She just needs some time to learn how to swim on her own.  She hasn't had much opportunity to swim in her life, so this summer should be fun at our pool as we teach her to swim. 

Zachary has been a great help this trip. It is so awesome to witness
such growth in your child - these moments make us very proud.

To end our last night in Beijing, Jodi, Madeline, and Zachary stayed at the hotel to do some laundry and get packed up.  Jeff and Wen ventured outside the hotel to find some dinner.  There was a street just outside our hotel nicknamed "Snack Street."  It is closed off to cars and is only for pedestrians.  It reminded Jeff of Times Square.  There were tons of restaurants and people in the streets.