Sunday, July 12, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Last Leg
We've made it to the last leg of our trip. We are now in Guangzhou and staying at the White Swan. The hotel is located on the historical Shamian Island, overlooking the famed Pearl River. We are actually going on our second day here. The flight from Nanning was only one hour and all the babies seemed to do well. It was still a long day for traveling...our flight didn't arrive until about 10 pm and we still had a 40 minute drive to the hotel.
This Shamian Island is by far my favorite area of the trip, even though it seems to be the most humid. There isn't as much of a language barrier, everyone seems to speak English. The island looks to be geared towards all the Americans that come. The hotel itself is very beautiful. There is a waterfall and fish pond on the main level. That first morning we went down and had the breakfast buffet you'd think we'd died and gone to heaven. The food itself was okay, but getting to eat something other than noodles for breakfast was a treat! Eric went and took care of some paperwork this morning while Nathan, Emily & I ventured out. We found the Swan Room, which is a playroom at the hotel. We also did some window shopping. We ate Subway for lunch.
This evening we met up with the other Holt families. Everyone seems so nice. I'd say there are about 16 families total. There are so many beautiful babies and children. We had a group dinner at an Italian restaurant. Walking back to the hotel we stopped and watched some people playing badminton.
These last few days have been especially hard. We've had a few meltdowns with both kids. Heck, the entire family! Emily still isn't bonding with Eric. She will look at his picture in her photo album we sent before we arrived and will kiss his photo, but she screams if he looks at her. She isn't even going to Nathan like she did in the beginning which in turn is upsetting Nathan. So for now we have a Mamma's Girl.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
What a ride....
I know we haven't posted for a few days.....we've been spending that time bonding with our daughter. I can't believe I just typed that....I have a daughter!
We are at the Majestic hotel in Nanning which is the capital of Guangxi Provence. We are in the southern end of China. Guangxi shares the border with Vietman. It is very beautiful here. When we were landing you could see all the green covered mountains. We landed just after 5pm on Tuesday, July 7th. It was about a forty minute drive to the hotel. We arrived just as the rest of our group was sitting down to eat. We were told that they would be bringing Emily to our room at 7:30 pm so we decided to join our group for dinner. There are 2 other families that have brought children with them, both are right around Nathan's age. Everyone is so friendly and welcoming. They have all heard about our adventure already.
We headed back to the room early to get ready for Emily's arrival. You could hear a baby crying in the hall and then the doorbell rang. I could feel my stomach drop. The moment we have been waiting for has finally arrived. As they enter the room Emily is still upset and crying. We try talking to her and showing her toys before she is handed off to settle her down, but nothing works. I finally hold her in my arms. What a wonderful feeling! I have my daughter!
For about the first 30 minutes she only wants me and not interested in Eric or Nathan at all. Finally after Nathan is acting silly and playing with her toys does she start to warm up to him. Over the next hour she has Nathan wrapped around her little finger. She learned very quickly that if she wanted Nathan especially to pick her up, all she does it outstretch her arms and wiggle those fingers and he's there in a flash. Nathan loves carrying around his sister. He has been so loving and caring with her.
Emily is so very tiny. The outfits I brought are too big, but most are dresses so we should get by okay. Our guide took us to Walmart yesterday and I picked up an outfit that was 9-12 and it seems to fit her good. We bought small size diapers and they fit perfect. I had even brought one pair of shoes that are size 5 and they are way to big for her.
We were sitting out in the hallway with some of the other families and letting the children play. Nathan was running around with the older kids and Emily was sitting down on blankets with the babies. Within a couple minutes Emily was running up and down the halls with the older kids too. Whenever she is around Nathan she is laughing and giggling, it is music to my ears. We also took her to the baby play room they have set up. Not much of a play room, but there is a toddler slide and teeter totter. Emily must have been exposed to a slide with her foster family. She knew exactly what to do. She was climbing up the stairs and sliding down. Emily also seems to love music. Her eyes just seem to light up and body moves to the music.
We went to the civil affairs office & the notary yesterday. Emily is officially our daughter. They gave you a brief interview at both places. With all the running around Emily feel asleep. I was able to hand her off to Eric while she was sleeping. This was the first time he has been able to hold her. Later in the afternoon she was back to not wanting Daddy around.
I feel so bad that right now she wants nothing to do with Eric. They warned us that the child will pick one parent usually to bond to at first. I took Nathan to the pool while she was napping hoping that if she woke up while we were gone it would give the two of them the quiet time they needed together, needless to say both were upset by the time we got back to the room.
The pool at the hotel has some strict rules. I think the reason for which is to make money. All swimmers must wear a swim cap ($20 yuan). All male swimmers must wear a speedo style swim suit ($20-$50 yuan). The cheaper suits are very girly looking too, but Nathan wore it anyways. Another one of the pool rules is no swimming if you have hypertension. All these rules, yet there was a little boy about 2 years old swimming completely naked in the pool....go figure!
Everyone in the group is getting tired of Chinese food by now so we got some taxis and decided to venture out for some western food. The hotel had some business cards written in both English/Chinese with some of the tourist spots and the hotel info so we could just show the driver where we wanted to go. I thought it would be an uneventful ride....WRONG! Most of you know the drivers are crazy here.......as we were driving in traffic a moped hit the taxi. The taxi driver stopped in the middle of the street and grabbed the moped. We are all just sitting in he taxi watching our driver yell at the moped driver. Our driver gets back in the taxi and is yelling, but in Chinese of course. Eric just looks at him and shakes his head since we have no clue what he said. We get pulled over to the side of the road along with the moped and the driver again gets out. Eventually our taxi driver hails down a new taxi for us and tells him where we want to go. We meet the rest of our group and the first thing they say is....."This could only happen to you guys." We found a Pizza Hut and had a great dinner. Eric ordered a kimchi pizza. Every since we traveled to Korea to get Nathan, Eric has been a fan of kimchi. He really enjoyed the pizza, but Nathan & I stuck to the American classics.
Emily is such a good eater and tries to be very independent. She wants to feed herself, but for the sake of bonding, I have been feeding her instead. You would have never thought the girl ate before. I was feeding her some rice and some was falling on plate. She kept picking up the place to get the rice we dropped. I brought a sippy cup from home, but she doesn't seem too keen on it. When we were at the store I picked up a different kind with a softer spout, but she doesn't really like that either. While we were at the restaurant I was filling her sippy with water. The lid was off of the sippy and she grabbed it to take a drink and did perfect with it. I think she must have been drinking straight out of a cup with her foster mom.
Since we have finally caught up with our paperwork, we get to join our group today for our first outing. We are going to see the countryside.
I'll try to get some pics loaded!
By the way......Facebook doesn't seem to work in this area.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Last Full Day
I'm happy to report that today is our last full day of quarantine. We are scheduled to be released tomorrow ( Tuesday - July 7th ). The other families in our group made the journey today to meet their little ones. We will fly directly to the Guangxi and get our girl! On a side note, Guangxi has been on the news a lot these last few days due to the flooding. I don't think its the area we are going to, but heck it would be another adventure to add to what we've already experienced!
Our adoption agency & travel agency have us scheduled for a flight at 2 pm which is the same time we are supposed to be released. Our agency had us write a letter requesting to be released early to make our flights, but we haven't heard anything yet. We did get paperwork today officially indicating that we will be released tomorrow, but it still indicates the 2 pm time.
We got a phone call from the U.S. Embassy in China today. They were checking on us to make sure everyone was okay and see if we needed anything. The U.S. Embassy also dropped off a care package for the Americans in quarantine. They brought some books & toys.
The air condition has really kicked in. They have continued to work on it and I think they finally got it right. We woke up this morning cold. We had to turn the fans off and cover up with blankets.
This will be my last post before we get our girl.............
P.S. Nathan had something to say:
thank you for the birthday wishes
Saturday, July 04, 2009
A Typical Day
We've had some people asking what our day consists of. It's not much, but here we go.
A little bit about the hotel itself. We are staying at the Yanxiang Hotel in Beijing.
The website makes it look a lot better than what it is. I can see this hotel having better days. Also keep in mind that many of the amenities that may be mentioned on the website, we don't have access to. Before entering any public areas you are required to wear masks. We have free local calls, room Internet, business center Internet, mini bar & self service laundry.
We've been waking up about 4am and will go sit outside by the fish pond to get some cool air while Nathan feeds the fish.
Breakfast is served from 7:30 am until 9:00 am. There is a buffet set up downstairs and they will fill your dish for you, but you have to take it back upstairs to eat in your room. Different things they have offered at breakfast are: scrambled eggs, french toast, bacon, congee, toast, cereal and rice.
We are allowed to leave the room and wander around a limited space. There is a barricade around the hotel and police guarding the hotel.
We have to be back in the room at 9:00 am for our first temperature check of the day. They don't really monitor the temperature check very well. They drop off a thermometer and come back about 10 minutes later to read it.
Lunch is served from 11:30 am until 1:00 pm. Same deal, go downstairs to get it and bring it back to your room to eat. Some items they have served are rice, noodles, soup, french fries, vegetable, chicken wings, sweet and sour pork.
The second temperature check is at 4:00 pm
Dinner is served from 6:00 pm until 7:30 pm
If you don't like the food that is provided, you can place an order for Pizza Hut, but this would be something you have to pay for. We ordered it the other night and it was served with ketchup. I didn't try it that way, but thought it was a strange combination. The meals do vary from day to day. I think my favorite thing I've eaten here was the smoked duck, but there were just so many bones. I'd say the daily staples you can count on are the rice, soup, bread, apples and french fries.
The hotel staff is very nice and as helpful as they can be. There are some language barriers as may be expected. The hotel staff is also under quarantine and haven't left the hotel since May 1st.
It's definitely not unbearable, but we'd rather be out seeing the sites and getting our little girl.
Friday, July 03, 2009
What a difference a day makes...
Thank you so much to everyone for all the emails,comments, thoughts and prayers. We are all doing good! Nobody has any signs of the flu. We did get some relief, they turned on the air conditioner late last evening. The hotel has AC, but they had all the air vents tapped off and the thermostats disabled. Yesterday they came into our room and just said they had some work to do. We had no clue what they were doing. My eyes got so big when I saw them uncovering the vents and messing with the thermostat. Eric & I were both in awe. Watching them work it looks like they have placed styrofoam over the part of the vent so the air won't recycle, but still letting the air to come out. After they left we went and checked the vents, but you couldn't feel anything. We figured we were wrong and just got our hopes up about the AC.
Throughout the day staff was working with AC for all the other rooms, but we still felt no relief. Someone finally came to our door and said they were going to move us to another room that was cooler. We packed up and were ready for the move, but they never came back. As I sat on the bed watching the room temp get up to 94 degrees, I felt a slight cool breeze. I climbed up on a table and placed my hands over the vent....it was COLD AIR!!! All your cool thoughts worked! When we woke up this morning the temp had only dropped to the 80's, but it does make a big difference. Last night I slept about 5 or 6 hours which is the longest since we've been in China. I wasn't up all night taking cold showers every couple hours. Lets just hope the room temp keeps dropping since the outside temp is expected to reach 107 degrees today.
I had always heard everyone say the beds are so hard in China. Sitting on them I did feel the difference, but didn't think they were all that bad, just like an extra firm mattress. After getting some sleep last night I can now feel the effects of the hard mattress. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to complain, but I now agree 100 percent, sleeping on the mattress is like sleeping on a cement floor.
Birthday Boy
This is the Mack Daddy birthday boy....LOL
Pink princess birthday crown.....check
PENS cup T-shirt......check
Face Mask....check
Birthday Ribbon....check
Mom's blackmail photo in 10 years....CHECK!!!
Thank you Korber family for the t-shirt! Nathan packed it in his suitcase as soon as he got it and wanted to save it for the trip!
Pink princess birthday crown.....check
PENS cup T-shirt......check
Face Mask....check
Birthday Ribbon....check
Mom's blackmail photo in 10 years....CHECK!!!
Thank you Korber family for the t-shirt! Nathan packed it in his suitcase as soon as he got it and wanted to save it for the trip!
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