Saturday Shopping and Exhaustion! 10/20/07

"Saturday Saturday Saturday Nights All Right!"

Since I couldn’t sleep and Taylor was “up before the dawn” we had the opportunity to meet several new families at the White Swan Breakfast Buffett who had recently been united with their children for the first time! “Wonderful Feelings, Wonderful Day” (okay so I’m in the “tune” mode - you guess the tunes)... It was mixed blessings to see everyone, most of the girls NSN (Non Special Needs) between 8 and 12 months, and one older boy. One little girl reminded me so much of Taylor screaming when we tried high chairs I had to talk to the Mom. Amazing the varying experience of these children’s grief/bonding!

Well, onto the shopping! We contracted with Ann from Red Thread China (and if anyone is in Guangzhou and they want the best guide/dealer around, she’s your lady!). I started with PEARLS no less and then onto Jade, silk outfits and finished up with T-shirts. Having spent less than I would have figured but more than enough time shopping (especially since Andy and Uncle Doug brought the sleeping Taylor back to the hotel) I hit exhaustion and headed back for nap! We all crashed, except Uncle Doug who took advantage of the time and got the update on Alex’s game (Congratulations Alec!) among other things. A little complaining did us good and Taylor now has her own bed (and a soft one at that!).

We headed off to Lucy’s for dinner, an “All American Girl” or grill, but Andy just had to try something different, his soup was loaded with varying things we couldn’t identify and some we could. He did enjoy every minute of it. Sorry guys, not a lot of pictures of the street vendors food items today, I’ll get those next week when we’re back in Guangzhou, but tomorrow we’re off to Changsha! At Lucy’s, for some reason, Taylor asked about Julia (her Suixi sister from her adoption) because I think she remembered that we had dinner at the next table to the Livie’s and it was one of the first times Julia and Taylor had really been outside together. It was nice to know that Taylor remembers fun things from our first visit but makes me wonder how much more she remembers too! The Swan Room (a game room donated by Matel here at the hotel) has been cleaned up and there were not a lot of activities, then again, there are not a lot of children here now because of the trade show. “Toomorrow, Toomorrow” we’ll spend the morning at the pool (after I find Taylor’s bathing suite” and then head up to Changsha for a probably uneventful day, but I’ll post Andy’s meal again, can’t wait to see what he tries next time :)

Saturday Shopping and Exhaustion! 10/20/07

"Saturday, Saturday, Saturday nights alright"

Since I couldn’t sleep and Taylor was “up before the dawn” we had the opportunity to meet several new families at the White Swan Breakfast Buffett who had recently been united with their children for the first time! “Wonderful Feelings, Wonderful Day” (okay so I’m in the “tune” mode - you guess the tunes)... It was mixed blessings to see everyone, most of the girls NSN (Non Special Needs) between 8 and 12 months, and one older boy. One little girl reminded me so much of Taylor screaming when we tried high chairs I had to talk to the Mom. Amazing the varying experience of these children’s grief/bonding!

Well, onto the shopping! We contracted with Ann from Red Thread China (and if anyone is in Guangzhou and they want the best guide/dealer around, she’s your lady!). I started with PEARLS no less and then onto Jade, silk outfits and finished up with T-shirts. Having spent less than I would have figured but more than enough time shopping (especially since Andy and Uncle Doug brought the sleeping Taylor back to the hotel) I hit exhaustion and headed back for nap! We all crashed, except Uncle Doug who took advantage of the time and got the update on Alex’s game (Congratulations Alec!) among other things. A little complaining did us good and Taylor now has her own bed (and a soft one at that!).


We headed off to Lucy’s for dinner, an “All American Girl” or grill, but Andy just had to try something different, his soup was loaded with varying things we couldn’t identify and some we could. He did enjoy every minute of it. Sorry guys, not a lot of pictures of the street vendors food items today, I’ll get those next week when we’re back in Guangzhou, but tomorrow we’re off to Changsha! At Lucy’s, for some reason, Taylor asked about Julia (her Suixi sister from her adoption) because I think she remembered that we had dinner at the next table to the Livie’s and it was one of the first times Julia and Taylor had really been outside together. It was nice to know that Taylor remembers fun things from our first visit but makes me wonder how much more she remembers too! The Swan Room (a game room donated by Matel here at the hotel) has been cleaned up and there were not a lot of activities, then again, there are not a lot of children here now because of the trade show. “Toomorrow, Toomorrow” we’ll spend the morning at the beach (after I find Taylor’s bathing suite” and then head up to Changsha for a probably uneventful day, but I’ll post Andy’s meal again, can’t wait to see what he tries next time :)

Friday or is it Saturday...way to early to know :)

Friday, or actually Saturday morning and the weary travelers have found our home! We made it through customs with little to no effort and were met immediately by the White Swan guide whisking us away to the hotel in no time, being here though was another matter. The river lights that dance along the river are still beautiful even at 5:00 am which is sadly when I awoke from a meager a 4 hour nap, yet my other two roommates are sleeping peacefully. The hotel hasn’t appeared to change, but I don’t remember the beds being this uncomfortable (HARD is a mild term), and although I thought the internet was included its not so the blog will be updated all at once when I get around to going to the business center or stealing Doug’s computer for a little while. Nor was a bed for Taylor, and I just didn’t have it in me to fight for it after getting through our 27 hour journey to get here, but today will be another matter! Taylor has been an absolutely amazing little angel despite the two different groups that continued to stare at us during our last 5 hour plane ride, like they’d never seen a 3 3/4 year hold child having fun and giggling and playing on a plane (no, it was probably more that they’d never seen a blended culturally adopted family before). Taylor doesn’t like to have other people watch her so intently but she took it in stride when I told her that it was because she was so beautiful...Doug had that experience himself when he was upgrading his cell phone and the customer service representative couldn’t stop staring at the intense blue of Doug’s eyes.
Now for today, we meeting up with Ann from China Thread after breakfast and getting some guided shopping experience, maybe the silk market, the jade market and of course the pearls, but I’m interested to see where else she’ll have us wander too.
On a couple of personal notes, Taylor took a page of travel recommendations from her former travel partners (Sarah and Adam both adopted with her March 2003) and got to ride on the luggage cart and had a blast! We’re not sure if there is memory triggers coming through or just the excitement of the trip but she immediately wanted to see the gold fish that swim all around the dining room.
Kathy girl, you have GOT to sleep on the plane, there is just no way to make it without sleeping. I did nothing but sleep (all of 4-6 hours total between being kicked or head butted by the still famous "Tumble Weed" (Taylor’s nick name since her Gotcha day) and keep Taylor occupied.
If this works out right my next update will be all about the ***SHOPPING*** and I’m not one to usually look forward to it!

Thursday in flight From Andy

October 18th (Somewhere over Canada)
Andy here.. We’re on a 747 and just finished dinner. Everyone is doing fine and it hasn’t gotten to the boredom stage yet. Since we’re heading for Tokyo, there are a lot of Japanese folks on board. Everyone is very nice and polite and smiling at Taylor. She just finished watching a movie (thanks Pa!) and now is playing with her Leapster (Dora the Explorer). Taylor is being very, very good and her only complaint so far is that it’s taking too long to get to her sister! This little creature is a "grazer".. She hasn’t stopped eating since we left the driveway this morning! :) Right now, she’s listening to iTunes of her favorite Disney Princess songs.
Everything is still kinda surreal. It feels like we’re going on a normal vacation rather than heading to China to get Taylor’s mei mei. It won’t hit me until I hold Tess in my arms and concentrate on keeping her from going ballistic. That is my only anxiety... trying to figure out how to minimize the trauma that this little 2.5 year old is going to go through in the next few days. We are hoping it will be a fairly "soft landing" :)
Right now, we’re working on some sort of sleep schedule.It’s about 6:45 PM EDT but 12 hours (AM) later in China. We know that whatever we try won’t work totally, but anything is better than waiting for the "zombie" stage to hit.
Not much more to say... I’m going to try and talk Sharon into playing a few games of cribbage and then walk around the plane a few hundred times. :)
Will post a few pics of the plane ride once we get on the ground and get some sleep.
Andy

Today we're on our way, Thursday Oct 18th

This is Taylor cutting off the final ring! That means we leave today!

We're all sitting at the airport! Thank you Kathy for the ride up, unfortunately we forgot to take Corky out of the back seat (Corky is Taylor's Zebra). Guess this means that Taylor will have to pick out a new stuffed animal in China and fortunatly Taylor hasn't asked for it yet.

We're scheduled to depart at 12:05 and arrive in Guangzhou at 11:00pm on Friday (total time including to/from the airports will be about 27 hours.

We'll try to write often and include pictures when we can.

We love you all and appreciate all the support we've gotten while we were waiting for Teresa's referral.

The schedule is that we'll be getting Teresa on Monday morning (Sunday night back home) so by Monday afternoon we'll be sure to post some pictures of our Gotcha Moment!

Wednesday, Oct 17th... the night before

Well, we thought we'd be bored home alone so we had some company to share in our last night - Andy's son Tim and daughter Jennie helped to send us off as well as our good friends Kathy, Erik and Katie! Taylor thanks you again for the fun toys, between that and the goodie bag from the Morse's and Pa's DVD Player, Taylor should have plenty of activities to keep her busy on the airplanes tomorrow, and if not we'll make her sit next to Uncle Dougie for a while :)

Here's Jennie and Taylor's first picture together, Jennie lives in Canada so doesn't get to visit often.

Donation Thank You!

We would like to express our thanks and gratitude to everyone that donated money towards the washing machine and air conditioner that we will be purchasing with the Offer Family from California who's daughter is in the same orphanage as Teresa.

Thank you to: Todd, Gina and Anna Wilson (Anna is also from Hengshan, China), the Livie Family, the Reeves Family, Nana & Pa, Freedom Cad employees, the Frank Family and special thanks to Uncle Lou & Aunt Lauren for everything.