Off Island

If you are in the China adoption world, the post title definitely means something to you. As I have said before, everyone who adopts here must pass through Guangzhou at some point on their trip. In the past most families chose to stay at the White Swan or the Victory Hotel both located on Shamian Island. From what I hear Shamian Island is like a little oasis in Guangzhou where the US Consulate used to be located. People have compared it with Savannah, GA with all its Spanish Moss and beautiful Pearl River views. The White Swan isn't getting such a good rap these days on review boards like Trip Advisor for its outdated, dingy rooms with unsleepably hard beds and moldy smelling lobby. So not having been here before I was less than enthused about staying at the White Swan and had pushed to stay at the supposedly more comfortable Victory Hotel. Next month the White Swan is closing due to renovations and at the 11th hour our agency decided to pull the group from the Swan and put us at the China Hotel which is a Marriott located off island in the heart of Guangzhou.

For me, the explorer, I was thrilled. A more authentic experience. I was beginning to write Shamian Island off as the artificially disneyesque land of adoption.

After only 3 nights here off island, I am craving the security and stability of that disneyesque place called Shamian Island. Our first night here we took a walk around the entire block that surrounds the hotel. Not only was there not a single place I'd eat but there were times I was definitely not comfortable. Inside the hotel is like a palace. The whole thing is beautiful, with great shops and tons of places to eat. However, I have yet to have a good meal aside from the gigantic buffet breakfast we flock to each morning. We've ordered room service the past two nights and last night when I got off the phone, SJ asked what I ordered for dinner. My reply was, "I have no idea." When the food comes most of it looks largely inedible so I pick at the sides. For the most part I have survived on fried potatoes since we've been here. Hash browns get me through breakfast and french fries are often what is for lunch or dinner for me. SJ just mentioned that he has never had such a hard time finding decent food in China and is shocked that the Marriott is not serving up better fare.

And here is the crux of it, most of what we are getting has chicken in it. Having butchered chickens day in and day out for weeks while training at the restaurant, I know the parts of a chicken like the back of my hand. I can take apart a chicken in 3 minutes with my eyes closed. And yet, when I look at these pieces of chicken, bone-in or boneless, either one, I can't frigging tell what part of the chicken they are coming from. I have visions of some sweaty man in a dirty back room wielding a bloody meat cleaver. If it is even chicken to begin with.

This afternoon after our appointments (of which I am getting really tired) our family is going to venture to the Island to see what we can find. I'll report back.

{Oh and for my girls...the laundry question.....our guide Jason said he has made arrangements to bring our laundry back to the place they've always used on Shamian Island. The shop owner will come to the China Hotel to pick up our bags and bring us our clean stuff 24 hours later. We have not had it done yet but will let you know how it turns out as we hope to send some out today.}

Cici Day

I don't have words yet for today.

It was overwhelming.

All the Yangxi girls seemed to handle the transition really well. Cici wasn't thrilled with how we prepared her bottle when we got home and lost it for a while. She and I took a nap and she's coming around again. She's very suspicious of all of us. There are times when I can see the grief coming through full force. 

I am going to just post some pictures b/c I need to make a second attempt at a chinese bottle. 

More later or tomorrow!

the final countdown

Well I actually slept last night. Not a full night's sleep but 6 hours jet lagged and expecting a baby is pretty good.

It is 8:30 am on Monday.

Baby day.

 Breakfast was crazy. There were three families down there with us and we are all freaking out. Jitters today. Jittery excitement is felt all around. We are all over analyzing what we should wear, how many nannies will be with the girls, and how we are all going to get pictures of everything. Another father and I have video cameras and little tripods so we are thinking we will set up the cameras in the room to shoot the entire thing. We are already talking about trading still cameras for each family's event. This wild ride just got crazier!

We are now waiting to go down at 8:50 for a meeting with our guide.I assume we will be back in our rooms by 11:00 am to then sit tight for 3 hours! 

UGH! 

3 Hours!!!

And then it will be 2:00 pm and we will board our bus and go.

Guangzhou

Wow! What a day. 

Honestly. 

Really. 

What. A. Day.

We are in Guangzhou right now which is probably the single unifying city of all Chinese adoptions. Some people use Beijing as a port city. Some people use Hong King. Most people travel to one of China's provinces to adopt their children and then EVERYONE comes to Guangzhou to finalize things from a US immigration standpoint. We, however, were referred a baby from Guangdong Province (Guangzhou is the capital city for that province) so we will spend our ENTIRE trip here. 

We said farewell to our new CCAI friends who are traveling to Nanchang and Changsa today and boarded a train at 1 pm from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. The train station was a little crazy. We checked most of our bags through but once we went through ticket control, we then had to go through security before passport control. Security was, well, not very secure. We put our bags through the x-ray machine and then had to walk through a metal detector. However, both of us were wearing money belts loaded with more cash than I have ever had on my body....EVER. I didn't want to take the belts off and put them through the x-ray and since the metal detector didn't seem to be staffed by security, I decided to walk around it and not through it. No one noticed.

Passport control took a while but by 1:05 pm we were all on the train and we were pulling out of the station. 2 hours later we disembarked in GZ and went through a very thorough passport control to enter China.

Once we had our bags, we met our guide Jason who brought us to the bus and handed us our CCAI Group 1751 Schedule for the 10 days that we are here. We have 6 families in our group and 5 of us are adopting from Yangxi and one family is adopting a 10 year old girl from another Guangdong city. He told us that he spoke to the Yangxi director and said our girls were doing well but that they had never been in a car so we should expect the possibility of car sick kids. He then told the parents of the 10 year old child that she was very shy and didn't like strangers so they would have to be patient. Later most of us confessed that when we heard that we nearly cried on the bus.

Just take a moment to think about this. My nearly 10 year old daughter is going to see a peer adopted into another culture, race and language. If you are reading this, and you have a 10 year old, think about what they know. Think about who they are already at 10. And think about what kind of change that might be for a young lady. And lastly, I will leave you with this... we learned that she is the very last of her friends at the orphanage to find a forever family. I want so much for all this to go well for them. All of them.

We are staying at the China Hotel - a Marriott. The place is crawling with adoptive families and their new babies. And each time I see a new family I think, holy shit that is going to be me tomorrow! Our guide told us that CCAI has recently switched from the White Swan to the China Hotel because the WS is scheduled to close next month...for a YEAR! I hadn't heard a year but that is what Jason said.

Word to the wise.  

The China Hotel does have connecting rooms. We struggled with what kind of room set up to book for my family of 5 soon to be 6. I didn't want my older kids sleeping down the hall and while the Marriott here has 2 bedroom suites, they are incredibly expensive. And in addition to that, while they sleep 5, they only offer amenities for 2 people. So our party of 5 would have to pay for 3 extra breakfasts each day and 3 extra memberships to the executive level. So I got cheap. I yanked our plans for the more comfortable, but going to screw with my bank account 2 bedroom suite and booked a 1 bedroom suite and a standard room directly across the hall. And you may ask, why across the hall? Why didn't you ask for connecting? Well, we called CCAI and they contacted their reps who confirmed that this particular hotel does not have connecting rooms. I then called Marriott who put me on hold (twice) to confirm with the property directly about the number of connecting rooms they had. The answer was always NONE.

So much to my surprise, we have a 1 bedroom suite with a standard room CONNECTED. We have a huge living room, 1 bedroom with a king and 1 bedroom with two full sized beds and 2.5 bathrooms. Honestly we could not be more comfortable and we did it for a reasonable price! I am so so so happy!

So. Tomorrow. 

2:30 we get our girls.

2:00 we hop on the bus from the hotel and we drive to the civil affairs office. 

And before I say goodnight, I need to send a huge congratulations to my friend Whitney who welcomed a baby girl into the world yesterday. Life is good.

Entrance to our 1 bedroom suite. There is a 1/2 bath off this hallway.

Entrance into living room

Living room

 

 

Bedroom in suite

  

Bathroom in suite

 

  

Bathroom in suite

1/2 bath off hallway

From bedroom into bathroom of standard room

Bedroom in standard room

Long day in Hong Kong!

I've never been so tired in my life. Between the heat, the jet lag, and the touring around Hong Kong I seriously think I might collapse. It is almost 7:00 pm here and I rested my eyes for only 30 minutes today determined to kick this time zone adjustment before we get Cici on Monday. I mean really, if I have to wait 5 years for a baby, I should at least be well rested when she is placed in my arms.

This morning the whole family popped out of bed at 5:30 am. I'd been up since 4:30 desperately trying to will my body back to sleep but it was a no go. I only had 4 hours of sleep but between the time change and the sheer excitement about being here, I was up. SJ and I went to the gym, showered, and gathered the troops for breakfast around 7:30. We met some of the other families in our group down at the enormous only in Asia breakfast buffet. I really like this group and feel fortunate we've gotten to travel with so many people. Debbie and I were thrilled to add Julie to our travel group after CCAI released their travel network for our travel group. But there is another couple here too who had a 7/6 LID and has a daughter matched from Yangxi.  They are lovely people from Florida. There are two other travel groups with us here in Hong Kong - 1 group going to Nan Chang and the other to Changsa. They fly out tomorrow while us Guangdong families take the train. The Nan Chang families all receive their children tomorrow. We supposedly are going to get Cici on Monday. In our group of 4 Yangxi, Guangdong families Cici's friends will be Katie, Livi, and Ava! All are within a month of each other. Livi is joining an older sister from China while Katie and Ava will be their parents' first child.


After breakfast the group of 47 people (!) met int the lobby to hop on our tour bus with our guide Matthew to tour Hong Kong Island. We drove up to Victoria Peak, down to Aberdeen to see a fishing village by fishing boat, then onto Stanley to see the beaches and hit a market (we drove by Jackie Chan's huge house). We finished up the day at 2:30 back in Kowloon for a late Dim Sum. It was so much fun. I will say though that the winding roads up the mountainous terrain on Hong Kong Island in a large bus had me feeling motion sickness more than once. And then to step out into the unbearable mid-day heat was pretty tough on this jet lagged lady!

After lunch, my mom, Debbie, Ann and I went to my mother's favorite pearl shop here in HK and we all walked away with a bag of something! I got a very long strand of pearls that I intend to wear for a while but then have restrung for my two girls. I'm thinking maybe 8th grade graduation or something. We'll see. I doubt this will be our last pearl shopping excurision.

SJ and I are downstairs in the lobby trying to caffinate up ourselves and sugar-up SweetPea to get us as far into tonight without dropping. Buddy is a lost cause and is going to be in trouble tonight when he wakes up at 1 am and everyone else is asleep. If he wakes me up, I swear he'll never get another allowance!

So here are some pictures from today...........

View from Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island

Debbie and I on Victoria Peak. Debbie and I have been chatting for nearly 5 years and we met for the first time this morning! AND our girls are coming from the same orphanage and are only 5 days apart!

SweetPea and her new friend N. N's family and we flew together from Detroit! Both are 9 and finally getting their baby sisters!

 

SweetPea, N and Buddy on Victoria Peak.

Lots of little foos adorned the lookout area.

Daddy and his two - soon to be three kids!

One of our final pictures as a family of four!

Next stop after Victoria Peak was Aberdeen to see a fishing village. We rode these boats around the harbor to see HK fishing life.

Not in focus but I really like the picture...

Some of our CCAI group.

This is an enormous floating restaurant!

And Matthew said when we went around back and saw the kitchens we'd understand why we were not eating lunch here!

Buddy and Daddy

    

Our boat driver...

 

When we got off the boats there were people putting paper into large barrels of fire and someone was setting off firecrackers. We went over to see what was going on and it appears to be a celebration with an ancestral offering. Matthew told us that while today is August 13th on the western calendar but it is July 13th on the Chinese calendar which is a day they believe ghosts come back. So paper offerings were lit on fire to send up to their ancestors and food was put out for them.

   

 

 

We are here!

We landed in HK an hour early which was great! The flight was over 14 hours long which is hard for adults to wrap their brains around, nevermind kids. Buddy kept asking how much longer and I would have to quote it in movie time segements. We were about 8 hours away from arrival and he asked how much longer and I just replied "4 movies". The kids fell asleep shortly thereafter and we had to wake them for landing. They are such good travelers!

I didn't sleep much and am currently in the lobby of the Regal Kowloon having my second large beer of the evening trying to get myself sleepy enough to crash for the night.

We have a pretty big group of CCAI families along with us. We will have a tour tomorrow of HK Island with our awesome guide Matthew and then have Dim Sum in the afternoon.

Mom and I may be pearl shopping tomorrow. F.U.N!

Will check in tomorrow afternoon with some pictures I hope!!!

xo
from Hong Kong

We are off!

Airport antics

 

Well, we are at Logan! Never had an easier time waking up at 5:00 am. It was very hard to say goodbye to Parker the puppy dog. He's in good hands though. Our dog/house sitter is wonderful. 

The only issue to resolve now is seating. We have no seat assignments for any of our legs and we are hoping they can put us all together. Cross your fingers for us! 

Xoxo
SPY