Photos from Guangzhou

Hello again. Here's some more pics.

Grace in the outfit that her G-Grandma Breitwieser sent her.

Here is Grace with her gift from the White Swan Hotel and Mattel Toys. It's comonly refered to as the adoption Barbie. It's given to all the adopted children that stay in the White Swan.

Here she is with her very own Panda Bear.












Mommy heard there was a Starbucks near the hotel, so we had to get her a fix.

We went to dinner one evening with some very good friends that we made while we were there. Grace has been teething and doesn't take the pacifier very often, so the only thing that will quite her when she's fussy is to chew on the nipple of her bottle. Poor thing fell asleep while chewing on it.

Here are those very good friends: Warren, his wife Cristin, and their new bundle of joy, Mandy. They were sitting in front of us on the flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo. They overheard us talking to another lady across the aisle from us about adopting a little girl and that's how we met. They are using the same adoption agency as we are. On the next flight, from Tokyo to Beijing, they sat behind us. They left Beijing and flew to Guangzhou where they spent the rest of their time in China. We caught up with them again when we got there. They're from St. Louis. Our agency has an annual picnic in St. Louis every summer, so we are hoping that we can get together there sometime.

Here's Grace at her medical exam on Monday.

Here we are getting ready for the group picture and the traditional photo of the babies on the red couch. The red couch photo is as organized as it got. Once one or two babies started crying it was like dominos. There were a few babies with dry eyes when it was all done, including Grace.

Here she is on the flight to Tokyo. Our row had 3 seats. Ours were the window seat and the middle seat. There was a gentleman sitting next to me on the aisle. Grace was true to form. Right after we got on the plane, Mommy got a whif of something. We were in the middle of changing her when a really nice flight attendant asked the gentleman if he would like to occupy a seat in one of the exit rows so that we might have more room. He obliged, which gave us plenty of room as you can see.

This was a real treat. Before landing in Tokyo, the pilot came over the loud speaker telling us that out the left side of the plane we could see Mount Fuji. Lucky for us, that was our side. Really cool!

That's all for now.

Here are Some Photos for your Viewing Pleasure

Here are a few photos from Wuhan. These were taken Wednesday, on the day we went to the Hubei Provincial Museum.






Ready for bed that evening.







On Thursday, we visited the Yellow Crane Tower.


Here's an interesting picture. Take a look at the power lines in the center of the picture. Scary.










Baby girl's first plane ride heading to Guangzhou.

Photo Dilemma Update

Great news!! I managed to get ALL of the pictures and video off of the laptop a little while ago. I have a CD here of an operating system called PCLinuxOS that you can boot your computer without installing to the hard drive. I've used it in the past and knew that I could read windows files with it. I was able to connect to my main PC and copy over everything. So far it doesn't look like anythings messed up. I've randomly opened some of the pictures and the look fine. Today, I'll work on getting them posted to here.

We're Back!!

Hi Everyone!! We made it back yesterday. We touched down at 3:40 pm. All the flights went well. The flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis actually left EARLY!! Never heard of that before. That flight was a little over 10 hours. Grace did very well with a few little naps and one that was a couple hours long. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that one. Charlene was on my right, Grace cradled in my arms and a little Chinese lady sitting on my left, all of them asleep. Minneapolis airport was a royal pain though. When we checked in at the airport in China, the guy said that the bags were checked through to Omaha. I checked the little luggage sticker they put in your boarding pass envelope and yes it said to Omaha. In Minneapolis however, we had to go through immigration, Grace had a stamp put in her passport to make her an official American citizen!! It was nice, they had a special line for adoptions. There were a several of us on the plane that had adopted. We were second in line to go through Immigration. The other lines were packed. After that, we had to collect all of our bags (3 large suitcases) and go through customs. I don't know how many of you have flown a 747, but there are a tons of luggage. Our first 2 bags came out fairly quickly. I got worried about the third one. It was a cheap bag we picked up in China. It wasn't very good quality. It was kind of flimsy. When we packed it, we put things in there that we could afford to loose along with dirty laundry. The baggage carousels were jammed with luggage. They had airline people out pulling bags off of the carousels to make room for more. There were probably around 100 suitcases on the floor, the carousel was still packed, and more were still pouring out. Finally our last one showed up.

Then we went to customs. We didn't have anything to declare, but, you'll probably hear about this from Charlene later, I had a package of beef jerky in my carry-on. I didn't have to say anything, but the customs form asked if you have any meet products. I was honest and said yes. This is a package I bought before we even left here to go to China. Lucky for me, I hadn't got around to opening it and I even had the sales slip in the grocery sack still. So there was no problem. Just a few minute delay here.

Next, we had to re-check our bags. I turned the corner into this area and it was almost chaos, I'm sure it was going to get a lot worse. There weren't that many people waiting, but the belt they use to take the luggage back out to the planes wasn't working so there were bags piling up on the floor. The ladies there said that if you have to hurry to catch a flight, just leave your bags and go. We had a little more time, but people were beginning to stack up behind us. At the baggage check-in, one lady told me to just leave the bags. So I did, crossed my fingers, and we all headed through security.

When we arrived in Omaha, we were met by our friends Ruth, Cori and there son Ryan. We weren't expecting anyone. We looked awful after all that time. We had been up and on the go for almost 24 hours, but we were glad to see them.

We were very exhausted by the time we got home. It was probably around 4:30. The first thing I wanted, was a pizza from Pizza Hut and some "American" Diet Pepsi. For those of you that have not traveled overseas, some things, like soda, do not taste the same as they do here. Some are re-formulated for the locals. It's not that it tasted bad in China. It was ok. I just wasn't what we "liked". We had Pizza Hut one day there. It was just a pepperoni and cheese. It was ok. I was dying for a deep dish supreme though.

At the house, I think Chelsea was surprised to see us. I went to go take her out before Charlene and Grace went in. She didn't even make a sound when I came in the house and she was waiting at the top of the stairs just looking at me. Usually she's shaking her rump all excited. She didn't move until I said hi to her. Then she got excited. I think she was very surprised to see us.

Everyone has been so nice to us here. Ruth, Cori, and Ryan had some pink and purple welcome balloons on the table along with a card. Those are the colors we used in Graces bedroom. Our friend Angela made some meals and they were ready in the freezer for us. She also had some chocolates with Grace's picture on them along with her birth date and the day we got her. Cori's sister Lori made us some cookies. Charlene's dying for the recipe. They had chocolate chips and bits of cherry in them. Boy are they good. Lori's the one who stayed at the house while we were gone and took good care of Chelsea for us. Ruth and Ryan have been stopping by and helping with Chelsea too. Our neighbors behind us mowed our grass for us while we were gone. I already had it in my head that I was going to be mowing today. Everyone has been such a big help and we really do appreciate everything!

Last Day in China, Wednesday - 23 May

On our last day in China all that is on schedule is a visit to the US Consulate. Their offices used to be right next door to our hotel, The White Swan, but they've relocated across town. So it was a nice bus ride. Our last day there and we finally got to see the sun. It had rained pretty good on Monday. Got soaking wet coming back from Grace's medical exam. We had an umbrella that we borrowed from the hotel. Charlene was pushing the stroller and I was holding the umbrella to keep the two of them dry. At first the rain was light but Grace was still getting a little on her legs, so I gave the umbrella to Charlene, took Grace out of the stroller so Mommy could carry baby. They stayed mostly dry. In less than a minute, nothing on me was dry.

Anyway, everything went smooth as silk at the Consulate. They just needed to verify our identities with our passports. The last thing was to take an Oath of Citizenship for Grace.

Latest Update - Monday, May 21

We're truly sorry for the long delay in updates. Our laptop died on us Thursday evening. It tries to boot into windows, then we get the dreaded "blue screen of death". It's funny, the error message says that Windows was prevented from loading to prevent harm to the computer. If you continue to get this message, try disabling anti-virus, blah, blah, blah. Hard for me to disable anything when I can't even get to it. Oh well. It is very distressing. We had ALL of the photos that we had taken up until Thursday downloaded to the laptop. They are the only copies. I even thought to myself earlier that day that "maybe I should back these up to CD in case something happens". Ahhh. The power of hindsight!! Should have listened to my inner voice. I hope they are still there. I've got a chance to see if I can get to them this evening. As soon as I get the laptop up and running (if I get it running) I will post a ton of pictures.

Anyway. Everything is going very well. Mommy and baby are doing very well. We did some sightseeing during our last days in Wuhan. Saturday we flew to Guangzhou. It was only a 1.5 hour flight. Grace did extremely well (almost) during the flight. About half the way through the flight, Charlene thought she smelled something. Sure enough. Poopy diaper. I was on the aisle seat, so yours truly, daddy, had the task of taking care of my second solo poopy diaper in the teeny tiny bathroom. Poor Grace. I tried to be as careful as I could, but when I put her down, her head was under the towel dispenser. She didn't seem to care for something hanging over her face. So I picked her up to turn her around, bumped her head on the towel dispenser. That started the crying. When I went to put her down, she threw herself backwards and arched her back just as I was about to lay her down. So she hit her head again. She was very MAD this time and I hadn't even got her pants off of her. She was screaming bloody murder. I finally got her cleaned up, and it was messy. Front to back and side to side messy. I don't understand how it stayed in the diaper with all her thrashing around. She wouldn't even let me put her pants back on her, so I took her back to mommy and let her hold her while I slipped her pants on. I was pretty embarassed coming out of the bathroom. The flight attendants back there probably thought I was trying to kill my kid. She survived and all seemed to be forgiven after a few minutes.

We've been in Guangzhou for a few days now. It's very nice here. One of the co-ordinators that joined up with us here said that it had been very hot here. It rained before we flew in and it's been the most pleasant, if damp, since we've been in China. The area where we are has very European style buildings. We're in a deluxe hotel with a great view overlooking a huge river. Lots of boat traffic.

Grace had her visa photo taken yesterday and today (Monday) she got a physical exam. She's been absolutely the best baby. The only time she fusses is when it's time to eat, get a diaper change (when it's wet, when it's dirty she likes for us to find it out on our own), or when it's nap time. This afternoon, we are going shopping with our group. We've rented a bus that's supposed to take us to a really good shopping area.

Well, with any luck, we'll have photos this evening or tomorrow. Cross you fingers. Catch you later.

Day Three - Monday, More Photos

Hi, y'all! It is official. Gracie is our daughter! However, we need to stay in Wuhan for a few more days so her Chinese passport can be processed.
Yesterday, our tiny family ventured out to the supermarket. We received many looks and some smiles from the locals. No "fashion police" hasseled us about our baby not being covered so we must have had her dressed properly. The "fashion police" do exist. The elderly Chinese ladies tend to frown on parents that do not keep infants' arms and legs covered no matter the temperature.
Big news this morning -- Daddy changed his first poopy diaper - EVER! He completed the task expertly with a little assist from Mommy. He thought he might pass out from the smell, but managed to keep it together!
Gracie is a good natured baby. She only fusses when she is either hungry, tired or needs a clean diaper. We are truly blessed. She is a sweet, curious baby. She is quite routine oriented; her feeding and napping schedule were given to us by the orphanage and we find that she strictly adheres to it! Here are some photos of her first nap and first bath and a cute one we took this morning.
We thank everyone so much for your prayers. God is good and greatly to be praised!

GOTCHA Day Has Arrived!!

It's A Girl!! At long last. It's hard to believe it's finally here. Charlene mentioned earlier that it feels like we're just baby sitting. In actuality, that is what we are doing. Before we were given our babies, all the parents had to sign a temporary "custody" form. We have them for 24 hours temporarily. They want to make sure there are no incompatibilities between baby and their new parents. It was explained that this 24 hour period, will give our babies and us a chance to get to know one another and that if any parents decided it isn't right for them, they were under no obligation. I can't imagine anyone doing that.

After signing the form, we were introduced to the director of Civil Affairs. Then they introduced the orphanage directors. There were babies from 3 different orphanages in this province. Each director brought with them an extremely valuable gift for us. It's photo album of our baby in her first 10 months. Even a photo of what is possibly when she was found. The description of what she was wearing when she was found matched the photo they had in the album. We'll scan those when we get back and post them for all to see.

Wouldn't you know it. We were the 2nd family to sign the temp custody form, and THE last to receive our baby. There were so many people milling around that had just received their babies, it was hard for Mommy and Daddy to get to her. Mommy almost crawled under a table to get to her!



They were very kind to all the families. Everyone got a photo album of their baby and a gift bag with several bags of formula, rice cereal (I think), and some kind of snack cakes, a baby bottle, container for mixing, and a spoon. The bad thing was no directions in English. We were able to figure out the chart on the side of the bag.
Proud Daddy and baby bonding.

No one told us when the last time the babies ate anything. Grace started getting fussy and you could tell see was very tired. She looked like she wanted to eat the toy in the photo above, so we decided to try and giver her a bottle. Daddy expertly prepared a bottle for her despite the foreign directions and Mommy fed it to her and she hungrily ate most of it.


After several burps, it was back to more fussing and out and out wailing. Mommy held her to calm her down and we think she was just so tired that she refused to go to sleep. After a few minutes, she dropped her head on Mommy's shoulder and was out like a light. Daddy has to go take some documents to our coordinators and later make a trip to the supermarket so he gave directions to Mommy for another bottle.

Hope everyone enjoys the photos!

Day Two - Sunday, Fly to Wuhan

Sunday was uneventful. We got up, had breakfast, headed to the airport for flight to Wuhan. We arrived around noon. Beijing has a population of around 13 million people in and around the city. Wuhan has around 8 million and according to our guide "is a medium sized city". The rest of the day we took in a nap and went to dinner. After dinner we came back to our room and they had set up a crib!!

I forgot to mention that Saturday on the way back from the Great Wall, our driver took us by the new 2008 Olympic Stadium. I've seen it on TV before but in person it's very impressive. I took some pictures but with the film camera. Sorry. You'll have to wait until we get the film developed.

Well we're off to breakfast. It's almost 7:30am. At 10:30 this morning we get the children!! I'll definitely have photos up later. See ya.

First Day in Beijing, China

I'm actually a little behind on updates. It's already Sunday evening here. It was late last night when I posted the flight info. Yesterday we did the tourist thing. Our first stop was Tienanmen Square. There were some really nice monuments there. Chairman Mao Tse-tung is entombed in a very large building that unfortunately we could not go into because of renovation. The whole city seems to be undergoing renovation, getting ready for next years Olympics. They have some huge projects. We saw a lot of landscaping going on. A friend of ours came back last year with their baby. She said that they were trying to hide the poor areas. That's going to take a lot of landscaping.

Anyway, here are a couple pics from Tienanmen Square. On the left is one of the many monuments. On the right is Tienanmen Gate. The gate is actually on the north side of the square and across the road.












Once through Tienanmen Gate it is very short walk through the main gate of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is the largest palace complex in the world. Construction began around 1407. The architecture and craftsmanship are extraordinary.
































After this we had lunch in a "Chinese" Restaurant. The food was ok. Their specialty was roast duck. Charlene really liked it. Once we were finished, we went to Children's Hope International (our adoption agency) offices for an orientation.

Our next stop was the Great Wall. It's very impressive up close.













I apologize if the formatting doesn't look right. I'm having a very difficult time updating this blog. At first, I thought the computer somehow deleted the font used on the page. All I could see are little squares where there should be letters. That's the reason I was day behind in updating. Yesterday, I found I could navigate my way to through the log in and updating page just from clicking on what/where I remember things being. A search on Google had the answer to my problem. It's because of China censoring certain websites. I will continue to wrestle with this. Especially after the main event tomorrow!! We are supposed to receive the children tomorrow morning. We can't wait. Charlene finished packing the diaper bag earlier this evening and is now sound asleep and sawing some pretty big logs : )

Catch you tomorrow.

Hi Everyone. We made it to China ok, but not without problems. First one was before we even left Omaha. When we got to our gate at the airport, there was a flight heading to Memphis that was either delayed at the distant end or in Omaha, not sure where their plane was. They said the plane was broke and that they would have to get another plane and that the repair part would take 2 hours to get there. Then told us our flight would be delayed for about half and hour. After awhile, they told all the people going to Memphis that they had a new plane for them and that they needed to go to the baggage claim, pick up their bags and check-in again for the new plane. Then they came on and said that our plane was going to be leaving out of the gate next to ours. Not long after that, they came over the intercom and said the Memphis flight was back on. So all those Memphis people came pouring back to the gate. I'm really surprised that no one lost it. I expected someone to go off at being jerked around like that. I believe that they gave them our plane and the one that showed up for them was given to us. Before we boarded, our flight was switched back to its original gate. Charlene and I just stayed in our seats the whole time waiting for the dust to settle. Fianlly we were in the air.

We got to Minneapolis just fine after that. Waited to board. Twelve hour in the air. Charlene fidgeted the whole way. The second problem came when we landed in Tokyo. When we had checked in at the Omaha airport, we noticed on the monitor that the flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo was delayed a half hour. At first we were'nt concerned. A little extra layover never hurt. We touched down in Tokyo we had 45 minutes to get to the next gate. The bad thing was (and I don't know why this is) we had to go through another security checkpoint. Luckily I had chosen the right line to get in. It was a little long but really thin on people. The other lines were shorter but jammed with people. Another couple coming over here to adopt couldn't believe how fast we made through the line. Stupid me (blame it on the long flight), I had to go through the metal detector 3 times. I kept taking things out of my pockets. The lady suggested my belt. On the third try, she pointed to my METAL watch. So obvious. Duh! When we got to the gate they had already started boarding. In fact there weren't many people in line to get on the plane. Most were already on board.

From Tokyo to Beijing was THE best part. Nice newer plane. It was smaller than the flight to Tokyo (that plane was a 747). It had video monitors in the back of every seat. On demand movies (a ton of them) that you could pause, rewind and fastforward. You could play games, check out the map of our flight. It also kind of felt like there was more room.

E-mail Address

Just a last post before we hit the friendly skies. Anyone that wants to e-mail us while we're in China, please use this e-mail address:

gettingGrace@gmail.com

It's 8:50pm and we're still packing. Just got the car seat in the car awhile ago. Gotta go finish packing.

Almost set to go

Hi Everyone and Welcome!! I apologize for not getting this going a lot sooner than this. It didn't occur to me until about 2 months ago to do a blog. I had started one then, but am starting a new one out of privacy concerns just in case some unscrupulous person wants to take advantage of us being gone. The original one had all kinds of personal info on it.

Anyway. We're 2 days away from flying out. We're leaving on May 10, Thursday, flying to Minneapolis. From there we fly to Tokyo, then on to Beijing, arriving Friday evening around 9:30pm their time. They are 13 hours ahead of Central Time. 9:30pm Beijing will be 8:30am Central Time.

For anyone that hasn't seen all three pictures we received of Grace:



Here's a translation of a report that was sent to our adoption Agency.
She was sent to HuangGang Social Welfare Institute on 7-17-2006. The doctor decided that her birth date is 7-10-2006 according to her physical development. When she was sent to the orphanage, she was in a blue jacket with a picture of two baby elephants. She was covered by a red quilt. A bag of milk powder and a bottle were found with her. She is living with an orphanage employee’s family. She was named Huang Wang Bin. Huang is the short name of HuangGang City. Wang Bin is her name.

Getting back to our itinerary. We are in a group of 6 other families it appears. On Saturday, we will be sightseeing. On schedule are visits to The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and The Forbidden City. Sunday we fly to Wuhan, Hubei Province and on Monday we'll finally get Grace Rose!! Grace is actually living in HuangGang City, Hubei Province, a 2 hour drive from Wuhan. Wuhan is the capital of the province. Of the 7 families, only Grace and one other child are from HuangGang. The other children are from different orphanages throughout Hubei Province. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Wuhan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan

You can check out the current time and weather where we'll be:
Beijing
Wuhan
Guangzhou (also know as Canton)

Monday through Friday will be spent in Wuhan finalizing the adoption and sightseeing. Saturday we will fly to Guangzhou. We'll be there until Thursday morning when we fly out on our way home. In Guangzhou, we will have a free day on Sunday to do whatever we'd like. Monday, Grace will need to get a medical exam. Tuesday and Wednesday, we have an appointment at the American Consulate to begin the process to make Grace an American Citizen and to get her travel visa. Thursday morning we fly to Tokyo, then Minneapolis, and finally home.

We will have select pictures posted along with updates during our 2 weeks in China. We have limited space for photos on this blog. Other photos will be hosted off-site and we'll have links for those.