What's happening...

Hi all,

We apologize for no new entries on the blog since our return.  The jet lag has been terrible on the return and we all (except the baby!) have come down with a terrible cold. 

We'll continue to put pictures and stories out here as we catch up.

the Cawley's

Arriving Home!

We have arrived home!  After over 26 hours of traveling, we have made it back to our home in St. Loius.  We had a wonderful reception at the airport with some of our family that picked us up for the ride back to our house.  After discovering one thing that Elizabeth does not like (riding in a car seat!) we came home to a house full of more family and a lot of home cooked food.   Wow, was that a wonderful gift to come home to. 

Elizabeth adjusted to all her new friends and family as she did to us... very curious and observant and after an hour or so, giggling, talking, and loving.  She is not crazy about our dog but so far everything else is going just fine.

Elizabeth became a US citizen when her "feet hit US soil" so we took this picture of her becoming a citizen of our great country (the first time her feet were on the ground).   

Thank you all for the wonderful journey.  It sure is nice to be home!

Day 14 & 15 - Guangzhou

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for the blogging comments and guestbook entries.  We have had a wonderful time chatting with everyone and sharing our journey. While we have not had a chance to answer everyone's questions, we have read them all and have enjoyed it immensely.  We'll keep updating after we get back and settle in.

The last two days we have done a little sightseeing and today (Friday) we went to the American Consolute (in Guangzhou) to get Elizabeth's passport and immigrant visa.  We are free to travel back to the US and once we hit the ground, Elizabeth becomes a US citizen!

Tomorrow (Saturday morning here) we leave the hotel around 5am and will arrive in St. Louis at approximately 4:30pm on Saturday afternoon.  It's around 26 hours total travel time so wish us luck!  We travel from Guangzhou to Tokyo to Minneapolis and then to St. Loius.    We are really looking forward to being back home but will miss a lot about China, especially the families we have been traveling with the past two weeks,  whose presence on this trip made it so much easier, meaningful and fun. 

Here are a few pictures from our last few days.  We went to a park on Thursday and Friday, played ping pong with some locals, did a little shopping, had a very good Italian dinner Thursday night (after Becky, Danny, Grant, Anne Marie and Elizabeth were nearly lost by a misdirected cab driver), and found some amusement rides on Friday close by as we waited for our Friday visit to the Consolate to get Elizabeth's travel visa.

Good night for now.  We are off to bed for a few hours sleep before embarking on our LLLOOONNNGGG travel journey 1/2 way around the world to the states.

Elizabeth, Anne Marie, Jimmy, Grant, Danny, Larry, and Becky Cawley

Day 13 - Guaghzhou - November 12

Hello folks,

Today was a fairly laid back day for us.  Nothing planned except a 'dinner cruise' on one of the rivers here in Guangzhou this evening.  We had a lot of free time so we went out and did some souvenir shopping earlier in the day on Shamain Island, where we visited a few days ago for the medical exam.

Elizabeth continues to be... well "amazing".  Hard to say more...

Here are some pics from our day.

Day 11 & 12 - Guangzhou - November 10 & 11

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Day 11 pictures....

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Hey … we’ve missed a few days of blogging … So sorry! We only have one computer with us and between the kids’ homework and Danny’s social life, we’re not getting as much time to blog as we would like … Ha!

I’m enjoying my first cup of coffee since we got here … can you believe it? For some reason the cream here is brown, so I’ve passed. This cup is wonderful though … it’s from Starbucks! Such a small world we live in and since being in China we’ve really come to appreciate that fact.

We do very little here in China without our guides. But yesterday with a few instructions we took on the subway on our own. We actually got to where we wanted to go with the kind help of one Chinese woman and an English speaking Mexican man. Different cultures and ethnicity are wonderful! Our guides are Chinese men and women who all work for our adoption agency (Children’s Hope International - CHI) and live in China. We always have one local guide who lives in the city where we are staying. They have all worked for CHI for years and have visited the orphanages in the different provinces multiple times. They keep us laughing and busy seeing the city. While a relaxing day in the hotel or by the pool sounds wonderful … we can do that at home … which has been our motto: if we can’t do it at home, we do it.

This morning we went to Yuexiu Park. It was absolutely beautiful. The day was bright and clear, the breeze was wonderful and the air was fresh. This we really appreciated! I would guess that it’s been in the low 70s here everyday. This afternoon we went to visit a Buddhist temple. It was a beautiful and holy place. About 60% of Chinese people are Buddhist. After the temple we went to a modern Chinese mall (much different than our malls in the US). Our local guide has connections at some shops in this mall and this made our afternoon an exciting and eventful one!

Elizabeth is wonderful on our excursions. Most of the time she just sits in the stroller, smiles, jabbers and chats, and takes it all in, and naps from time to time. She does always let us know when she wants to be held and when she’s hungry or needs a nap. It’s amazing. I know I’ve used that adjective to describe her and this journey a million times, but it is just so perfect. I’m sorry that I’m being so repetitive. I’m beyond humbled by all of this and so thankful.

She is progressing so fast. In just over a week her fine motor skills and other muscle tone have advanced so far that she can now feed herself finger food without problem, she LOVES to stand on your lap, and she plays on her tummy without complaint. She still moves very little at night though and stays on her back. But she’s fussing more during sleep and I think it’s from lack of movement as her once dormant muscles don’t want to lie in the same spot for 10 hours anymore. Last night when she fussed, I rolled her over on her side in her sleep and she slept that way until morning.

I worry a bit about her sleep position because I found a small concerning lump on the back of her head. We saw a doctor yesterday here and I heard two stories (through translation) one that it is a result of her flat head and too much time laying on her back and it should correct itself as she grows. The second is that it’s a lymph node that will also correct itself as she gets older. “Normal, Normal”, was what I heard both times as well. I pray that this is the case. But I’m anxious to find out for sure. I have an appointment for her with our pediatrician the first weekday back.

Yesterday we went to Shamian Island for the medical exam and to do some shopping. It’s an area of Guangzhou that caters to the adoption crowd specifically. It’s a beautiful little island with tons of shops. On the way to the island our guide told us most, I think he said 90%, of households in China are double income and that the average monthly income, nationally, in China is 680 Yuan – the Chinese currency. That equates to 100 dollars a month. Unbelievable. And then we go into the shops and our guide tells us that all prices here, in every shop, are negotiable. And that we should do our best to get the price down. Needless to say, we didn’t do much negotiating. 100 dollars a month? Oh my goodness.

We’ve learned that everything is much smaller in China than in the US. Larry went into a dressing room (4 ft X 4 ft max) the other day to try on some sweat pants for the long plane ride home. He bent down to untie his shoe, got wedged in the dressing room, and ended up stuck in that position. As he finally got the door opened up, Larry came stumbling out of the dressing room and the clerk came over ‘yelling’ in Chinese for walking on the floor in sock feet. Apparently that is a no-no in China (the slippers on the floor in the dressing room should have been a clue but they did not have a chance of fitting on Larry’s fat feet). Finally, in his 2XL pants, Larry explained to the clerk these were “Too small, too small”. About to give up, the clerks went scurrying to the back room and 5 minutes later came running out with a dusty, unopened package, smiling from ear to ear, mumbling something that sounded a lot like “shree S L, shree S L”!! They fit! How could we not buy these after all the effort? We feel like giants here! I know we have not gotten bigger here but somehow Larry has grown to a 3XL pant size! (BTW: I’m a 2XL here - Can’t wait to get home!)

Across the canal near Shamian Island is an outdoor market called Qingping Market. You may have heard of it. It’s the place where the SARS virus started. And after visiting there, we’re not surprised. We are also pretty sure that most of the people there make the national average in wages. The pictures tell it all. It’s a real taste of “old Guangzhou”.

Our local guide here (Simon) tells us a lot about the history and current policies of the Chinese government as we drive around in the bus. He is very entertaining and honest. It makes us appreciate living in the US all that much more. All the Chinese people in the cities live in high-rise apartments (which are purchased from the Government) or dormitories (which are rented for a very small monthly fee from the Government.) No single family dwellings exist in the cities. You can see from the pictures that some apartments are new and nice and some are not. It’s not clear who chooses where you live.

We also try to get some insights into living in a communist society. The guides don’t want to tell too much about this and we don’t press but there are some telling comments that give us some hints. One of our guides on Election Day (in the US) told us “I cannot imagine what it would be like to vote”. We heard another story of the Chinese quizzing the US citizens about “when the election was decided”. They could not grasp the concept that Election Day was actually a ‘real’ vote and the president was not decided by some insider action beforehand.

We haven’t visited the countryside at all. Some in our group shared their personal research which revealed a possible reason; shame. The people in the countryside are even poorer and have less than those in the city. On our last day in Nanchang, our local guide there gave a humble and touching account of life in the countryside and in the orphanage. She was moved to tears as she told of her own struggles to get her family to accept that adopting and loving an abandoned little girl was a valuable way to spend the little time and money that they have to share. There was not a dry eye in the bus when she finished.

That’s all for today. We are off to bed for some rest. Tomorrow the American Consulate ‘approves’ all the adoption paperwork and finalize the visa for Elizabeth to be able to travel back to the US with us. 

Things are winding down for us here in China. Only a few more days until we head back home.  We seriously are having a life changing experience not only for Elizabeth but for us... though we are looking forward to getting back HOME.

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Day 12 Pictures

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Day 10 - Guangzhou - Sunday November 9

Day 9 - Travel Day

We spent the majority of today travelling between Nanchang and Guangzhou (pronounced Guan-Joe).  It's only about a 75 minute flight but with 17 families and 17 new babies (their first flight!) it was quite a long day as you can imagine.   We left the hotel  in Nanchang at 8:00am and did not arrive at our new hotel in Guanzhou until almost 3:30 this afternoon.  The lost luggage did not help speed up our travels!

Guanzhou is in the south east portion of China, similar latitude to Florida.  We heard the weather was going to be HOT (80's) and we were really dreading that.  We baked in the heat and humidity in Nanchang this past week (no air conditioner in the hotel) and we are now 400 miles further south.   We also heard the smog (pollution) was worse in Guanzhou and the population is much larger so the crowds and traffic are 'worse' than Nanchang.   We are really wondering how that could be possible because we've never really been OUT of a crowd since landing in China.  

The cities are very densely populated.  To give you a perspective, we learned today that Guanzhau is the 8th largest city in China with 11 million people.   In the US, the 8th largest metro area is Washington, DC at around 5.5 million people.   Anne Marie tells me that China has 1/3 of the worlds population and we often feel like they are all looking at us as we walk through the cities.

The GOOD news... this hotel is AWESOME.   It's a Marriott international hotel and caters to the US (western) travelers.    It's very new and has air conditioning (that works!),  Starbucks in the lobby as well as McDonalds and 7-11 across the street.  While inside the hotel, we feel like we are back home in the US.   We immediately ran to the McDonald's to have a late lunch of hamburgers, fries, and soda's and could not believe we were so excited to do so.  We NEVER eat McDonalds at home.    A 'bad' hamburger meal never tasted so good!

We did venture out later this afternoon to the grocery store to get some water, snacks, etc. for our 6-night stay here.  

We have few things to do here except wait... waiting for the babies passports/visa's to be processed, the remaining paperwork to make it's way through the Chinese goverment.  In about 6 days all of that is finished and we'll go through some 'official' procedures to complete the adoption.   We'll do a little sightseeing every day also....

Anyway, off to bed for us.  We are very excited to be sleeping in an air conditioned, smoke free, room with cable!  Ahhh.. the things we learn to appreciate when 12,000 miles away from home.

Day 8 - Nanchang - Friday, November 7th

Our last day in Nanchang – Friday November 7, 2008

Today was our last day in Nanchang, the city in Elizabeth’s province Jiangxi. Although we’re ready to move on, it’s sad to leave … this is Elizabeth’s city … where she became ours. It will always hold a special place in our hearts.

We got a copy of her ‘finding add’ today. When the babies are found the law requires that an add looking for parents or other kin be posted in the local paper. This was really touching. We also found out today she very likely was in foster care for 3 months or so, probably in the beginning. This could explain why she and the other babies are so healthy. They all appear to have gotten a good start. 

We had hoped to go to the park where she was found while we were here this week but we were unable to make this happen. It is too far from the hotel and transportation there and back just did not work out. This made me sad. I wanted to see it and be there. I think someday she will too and if so, we’ll come back.  

Beyond this we mostly just hung out at the hotel, visited with the other families and filled out some official adoption paperwork. Oh, and we got Elizabeth’s passport. We’re on to Guangzhou tomorrow for the last leg of our journey.

Tomorrow is Jimmy’s birthday! While we celebrated at home before we left we celebrated a little today too. Our wonderful guides remembered that 3 in our group have birthday’s this week so they got an amazing cake and we sang Happy Birthday!

Elizabeth (we call her Nini sometimes because her Chinese name is Lu Nian) had some ‘firsts’ today. She rolled over from her tummy to back for the first time, she slept on her side for the first time and she yelled at us for the first time. Yes! She not only has an opinion about things, she has an attitude sometimes! It’s SO cute... well for now it's cute anyway!  We look forward to more!

For Dugan, from Jimmy....

Hi Dugan,
Here are some pictures of our hotel in Nanchang that we have been staying at for the last 6 days. It's a pretty cool hotel and it has a ping pong room which we play every day. It's a 5 star hotel.

See you soon.

Your friend Jimmy.

Update from Anne Marie...

Dear readers,

There is a lot of pollution in China. It smells soooooo bad. Everyone smokes here. We are on a non-smoking floor in are hotel , Chinese people on are floor still smoke. They don't have traffic lights. People turn whenever they want. For people crossing the street, that's tricky. The Chinese people they just go. The cards, mopeds, buses and bicycles get so close they almost skin their backs. We are actually careful and cross when no cars are coming. Sometimes it takes awhile but we still wait.

The people in China are very friendly and work very hard. A lot of them know some words in English and some know the whole language. So when they walk by they either say "Hi", "Hello" or "Ni-How" which means Hello in Chinese. In the supermarket people are standing around waiting to help you.

I am popular in china. Everyone wants to have their picture taken with me. Yesterday we were at the pavilion; there was a news camera there. He took a picture of my family. It was so cool!


From,
Anne Marie Cawley

Day 7 - Nanchang - Thursday, 11/6

Hints on the pictures and slideshow....UPDATE

Hello everyone,

I wanted to give you a few hints on navigating the pictures and especially the slideshows.  I've tried to get the slideshows to go slower but am not able to do that when linked from the Blog.  

FYI, if you click (or maybe double click) on any of the slideshows or pictures you will open the slideshow or pictures live (higher resolution and ability to go page forward / backward at your own pace).   

Also, tonight we are having another group dinner and then going to a fountain light show so we'll be back later.  Pictures from the day will be on the blog a little later than usual so for those of you that look for pictures early in the morning in the US, you'll have to check back later in the day to see the days updates.

Happy blogging :-)

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I got a little mixed up on my dates and uploaded the "day 6" pictures into the 'day 5' folder.  So take another look at the slideshow from "day 5" below and you'll see some more pictures with captions have been added. 

I'll update 'day 7' tomorrow morning after I get some rest.    Hope you are all enjoying this as much as we are!  Have a great ham.

A (long) update on Elizabeth...

First, let me say THANK YOU for all of your comments!!  The first thing we do each morning is run to see the wonderful things you all have to say.  Every comment, and I’m serious, every comment, makes me cry.  Thank you!  The connection to all of you is SO comforting! 

I can’t believe we’ve only had Elizabeth for 4 ½ days.  It seems like she’s been with us forever.  The days pass quickly and being with her has been incredibly touching … sometimes our hearts ache for what she may have gone through, sometimes the results we see of her being in an orphanage make us smile and laugh.  We continually swap funny baby daughter stories and parenting advice with the other families in the group, which by the way has been beyond fantastic.   The families we are with are amazing!  I am so humbled to be part of this group.   I cannot imagine doing this alone nor can I imagine never seeing these people again once we go home.  They have touched our hearts forever.  I think 5 of the 19 families with us are from St. Louis, the rest are spread out across the country.  This makes me sad. 

We are told that usually the babies share cribs and we know for certain some didn’t as it was written on their paperwork.  The babies are finding their crib-mates as their parents connect. Two babies who were in the arms of their parents on the second day actually reached out for each other and hugged.  So cute!  The connections that God has shown us through all of this are beyond meaningful.

We were not allowed to visit the orphanage nor were we allowed to speak to any of the nannies.  Some of the nannies brought the babies to us for the first time in the hotel but left right away.  I’m sure to get back to the orphanage and the rest of the children.   Two women and the male orphanage director (the man who first handed her to me) did stay around to collect donations from us and to answer some generic questions about how the babies were cared for.  But some of us found out very quickly these three didn’t really know our daughters.  I approached one to ask her a few things and she didn’t even know Elizabeth’s Chinese name.  Based on this and Elizabeth’s response to her at that moment, I moved on.  I’m just going to trust that Elizabeth and God will somehow show us what we need to know about her life in the orphanage. 

And this is happening … Two days ago Elizabeth refused to take her bottle.  I could do nothing to get her to take it but at the same time I could tell that she wanted to drink it.  I tried everything, different temperatures, different nipples.  Finally I gave up figuring that it was just part of her adjusting to us and eventually she’d come around.  Well, we were getting ready to go out that night, so I put her in the stroller and put a bottle in the stroller next to her, really just to have a place to hold it.  The next time I looked at her she had picked up the bottle and was drinking it… but she was sucking on the nipple like it was a straw and holding the bottle upright.  And, she was so proud of herself!  The look she gave me with that nipple hanging out of her mouth was priceless.    So we guess that’s how she took her bottle in the orphanage and so that’s how she’s been taking it for us!   (BTW, she drank that one, reached up for another and has been slamming them ever since!)        

Overall, we think the orphanage took good care of her and we’re so thankful that this system of caring for abandoned children exists.   She seems to be very healthy.  She had none of the common health consequences we’ve read about that result from living in an orphanage, like infections, scabies, lice or parasites (that we know of).  She doesn’t even have a runny nose.  She’s 10 months old and she’s wearing 9-month old clothes and some bigger.  And she’s heavy.  But we haven’t weighed her yet.  The biggest side affects we see now are the back of her head is very flat from lying on her back in her crib so much and many of her muscles are underdeveloped. 

She doesn’t move when she sleeps (this is so wild) but she sleeps well.  (Praise God!!)  She doesn’t roll at all and all the muscles that it takes to roll are underdeveloped as are her stomach muscles.  She absolutely hates to be on her stomach and her reaction when we put her there appears to be one of fear.  So we’re moving slowly.  She could barely sit up the first day… but now she sits and balances so well she’s begun to reach out and try to grab things.   Her fine motor skills were also underdeveloped.  She couldn’t pick up the equivalent of a cheerio and feed herself on the first day.  She’s doing better with this as well. 

We also doubt that she had stood on her legs very much, if at all, in the orphanage.   She was afraid of this at first.  But then I took off her shoes and stood her on a cool mat on the floor.  I wish you could have seen her response, it was so cute!  She looked down at her feet, then looked up at me, smiled and then picked one up, looked at it again, and then tried to explore it further in her mouth!  I think it was the first time she found her feet!  We’re working on all of this slowly … getting her to sleep on her side, helping her learn to roll over, helping her put weight on her legs, and giving her time on her tummy.  

She is an amazingly content baby. (You all guessed this right from the pictures!)  Her peaceful demeanor reminds me of Jimmy when he was a baby … Remember him?  He would just sit on the floor and smile.  She does the same.   But we also suspect that this may have kept her in her crib on her back a lot longer than preferred.   We’re not sure if this happened in her orphanage, but we were told that some babies in orphanages spend as many as 22 hours a day in their cribs.  Her head and lack of muscle development do support this.  But some of the babies in our group are almost walking, so who knows. 

Elizabeth doesn’t do much crying at all.  She doesn’t even wake up crying.  She does have trouble falling asleep at night and cries then.  She appears to be looking for something, like she had a blanket or something to soothe herself to sleep in the orphanage.  This really makes us sad.  But we’re trying to help her through this transition as best we can and replace whatever that was, with our love for her.  It appears to be working.

Another amazing thing though is how curious she is.  She came to us this way, so the orphanage did a good job here too.   She reminds me of the rest of our kids.  They wanted to explore everything and so does she.  The Chinese people are so funny with us.   As you saw in the pictures, they gather in large crowds around us.  Chinese people are not shy.  They all have comments.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately sometimes) we can’t understand what they are saying.  We do get the gist of it though as some of us can make out a few words and through hand signals we almost always understand.  We also can tell from the looks on their faces whether or not they approve.  Most do.  Many comment on Elizabeth’s head.  One shop owner said “Big head. Big brain!”  Too Funny!  One told us: “Large head. Very intelligence!”  We’ll see.  One even compared her to Chairman Mao - the esteemed man who started the People’s Republic of China.  He too has a big head!  She even ran and got a picture of him to show us.  She said, “See, see, big head!”   But then again, one person told us as we were leaving: “See you!  Have a nice ham!.”   So we’re not really sure what they are telling us.”   

All in all it is a different world here.  We’re enjoying our time, especially the honest reactions we get from people, mostly regarding the babies and Anne Marie.  They are very kind to us, they always attempt to speak English to us and they really work hard.  It is something!  You go into a store and there are always 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 people following you around ready to help you.  And at dinner, you drop your chop stick, someone runs over to pick it up.  You pour yourself the last bit of soda, someone runs over with another bottle.  It is amazing. 

Well I better go.  We’re off to dinner.  We are all really enjoying the Chinese food for the most part.  This is a true growth experience for the kids!   We’ll talk to you tomorrow and look forward to your comments.  See you!  Have a nice ham!  

Day 5 &6 - Nanchung - November 4 & 5th

Thank you all for your comments on the blog entries and in the guestbook.  We LOVE hearing from you.  We try to put material out each evening so you can have something new to read every morning.  We rush to the computer when we awaken in the morning to read your comments.   There is one advantage to being on the opposite side of the world...

We are having a fantastic time here in Nanchung.   We have gone through some of the 'paperwork' needed to complete the adoption earlier in the week and now await "processing" so we can come back home.  After a visit to the notary on Tuesday, Elizabeth is officially ours!

Here are some miscellaneous pictures of our last few days out and about as well as some more of the sweet new addition.  She's adjusting very well to us as we are to her, learning something new about her every day.  

Read on for some more individual views of our trip from the family members.   We'll keep the pictures and stories coming.

Jimmy's Update - Answers to some questions...

Question #6 - What do kids my age do in there free time?

 

     Kids do lots of stuff like play with a Chinese hacky sack, and go to the park like us but in the morning it is very different.  In the morning people wake up and go to a park or field with a lot of people and they either do yoga, play there version of the flute or violin, play with ribbons, play cards, chat, sing karaoke, and many more. We saw a ton of people exercising. Not only kids but also parents participate in these fun activities. Fun Facts = At the park we went to there were more adults then Children.

 

 

Question #1 - How does the Chinese government compare to ours?

 

     The Chinese government isn’t a Democracy it is a Communist country. This means the whole country is run by one person unlike the United States is governed by the people. Another way is in China they have a Chairman we have a president. Lastly the Chairman only gets out of office if he is assassinated or is voted out but in the United States we change our president every 4 years unless he get’s voted in again. Fun Facts = The Last Chairmen in China was Chairmen Mao

 

 

Question #3 - What are the populations of the city you are staying in?

 

·      1^st stop = Beijing…………17.4 Million

·      2^nd stop = Nanchang……3,790,000

·      3^rd stop = Guangzhou…...7,607, 200

Fun facts = The population of China is 1,330,044,608

The population is more than a third of the world

Danny's update - Nanchung

Day 5, Tuesday November 4, 2008

Tuesday was a free day for us, but we still ended up pretty busy. We enjoyed an American breakfast (If you can call it that), and then left for the so called pedestrian street. This was a street in which there were no motor vehicles allowed, and shops lined the sides. You could consider it like an outdoor mall. We were very lucky that there no vehicles were allowed there; because it seems like most of traffic “laws” here are merely traffic “suggestions”. This creates crossing the street an interesting game and constructs traffic jams only a hovercraft could get out of.  (see picture; this is outside our hotel room window).

Also the poor translation of Chinese signs doesn’t help us out any. As one read on the Great Wall “speaking cell phone is strictly prohibited when thunderstorm”, and another “beware of fireproof.” It is that they don’t even try to get it right. But, overall China has been an amazing experience, Elizabeth has truly been a gift from God, and I can’t wait to return home!

Sincerely, Danny

Grant's Update

Dear Reader:

            Greetings from Nanchang, (pronounced nanchung) China! We are having a lot of fun. In Beijing (you know how that is pronounced), we saw the Temple of Heaven, an acrobat show, the Great Wall, (drove by) the Bird’s Nest, and Tiananmen Square. After we flew here (to Nanchang) we got Elizabeth Jean on November 3^rd, and she is a little bundle of joy. Her favorite toy, anything she can get her little hands on, including her own paperwork, and her nametag. Later, we will fly to Guangzhou, and get a few odds and ends finalized, before returning home on the 15^th. See you then!

Sincerely,                                                                                                                                                         Grant

Day 4 - Nanchung - Monday, November 3

Day 3 - Nanchung - Gotcha' Day - Sunday, November 2

I won't bore you with a lot of verbage because I know you are all waiting to see pictures of our new little girl.  Sunday, November 2nd was "Gotcha Day".   Around 3pm they brought Elizabeth to us as well, the 18 other familes got their little girls at the same time.  The pictures following tell the whole story...  She's a beautiful little girl, content as can be, and adjusting well to her new 'big' family.  We can't get enough of her...  We'll write more tomorrow as we get some more free time.

Enjoy...

Where are the PICTURES !!!!

Good morning (or is it good night) blog followers,

We are having some trouble getting pictures off of our camera that caused us to not have many pictures from the first day.  Sorry but we'll get this fixed very shortly and have a little more downtime to get pictures up on the blog.   Stay tuned....

P.S.  We meet Elizabeth for the first time on Sunday afternoon (your Saturday night back in the states).  

Day 1 - Beijing - October 31

After maybe 5 hours of sleep and a pretty nice (recognizable) ‘western’ breakfast, we met our tour guide at 8:00 in the morning for a very eventful first day in Beijing.  We first went to a park next to the Temple of Heaven and watched people doing “morning exercises”.  That is, thousands of people (mostly retired) go to a park every morning before work and they exercise. (Danny says it’s an outside Y.)  We saw all kinds of people stretching, scratching, grunting, playing music, singing, lifting and bending in all sorts of ways.  We also saw people doing tai-chi, doing the Chinese version of Hacky-Sack, dancing, ribbon twirling, flying kites and selling books, scarves, postcards and “real” Rolex watches, among other things.  Some remarkable things we quickly learned:  Beijing has a lot of people (17 – 18 million), people in Beijing ride their bikes to get around, Chinese people in the park are always smiling.  (It’s fun to do morning exercises!)   Chinese people like to pose with Americans and take pictures.  Anne Marie has reached celebrity status now based on the number of times she’s had her picture take with perfect Chinese strangers.  Too funny! 

The Temple of Heaven was absolutely beautiful and the weather this day was perfect, clear and crisp.   And the further we got from the center of the city, the fresher the air.  The trees and the flowers were very pretty, and the city of Beijing we all noticed was very clean.

From the Temple of Heaven we toured Hutong (which means ‘small streets’). Hutong is an old area of Beijing which the government is preserving as such.  No tall modern buildings are allowed and the current small dwellings and courtyards are being re-built.  We actually toured the city in Pedi cabs and went to a family’s courtyard, talked to the father about his home and family and actually toured his home.  We have lots of pictures (but due to technical difficulties, we can’t get them off of our camera for this day).  So, so different that anything we’ve ever seen in the US.  By US standards, what this family has is next to nothing, but they were so hospitable and so proud.  We were humbled.   

From Hutong we went to the Chinese theatre and watched an Acrobat show … well some of us did, some of us couldn’t keep our eyes open!