My babies have grown up!
2 years ago
Friday, July 23, 2010
Week 1 Update
It has been a crazy, busy, wonderful week home. We have all taken our turns being sick but we are all well now. The flights were looooong, but uneventful. If I did not know better I would think Anne has done this before, all except the security checks she did not want to walk thru those alone. Anne did not appreciate the long lines either, she is one to walk to the front and I kept her back you should have seen the looks I got, but she stayed:). We came home to a house decorated by Kate and Lia welcoming their new sister, the immediately chattered about and pulled her in all directions. Anne took it in stride and even seemed to enjoy it. Anne loved her room, but needed company. Katie complied and moved in within the hour she was thrilled. Anne is not to happy with the dogs and will run and jump up on furniture to get away from them. She has now warmed up to the little dog, Chloe, and carries her everywhere. We started with a english tutor, James, this week and Anne is working hard. We were going to wait a week or so but Anne wanted to start NOW. She is modivated and is already making progress. She still hates shopping and if we go near a store she grimaces. I conquered making rice porridge and it is pretty good, Anne said so anyways. We are trying to at least make Annes comfort foods. Next, dumplings. We are still a bit jet lagged but slowly recovering, it seems time is flying by now. Today we complete the paperwork for her Texas birth certicate and official get her name changed from Angie to Anne.... such fun. The DVD's and music we brought from China for Anne has been priceless, when she is missing familiar words she goes to those. Another cute thing Anne has done is look at a extended family photo and try to memorize who everyone is, afterwards she holds up the pictures and says "family". Things are good and we are counting our blessings.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Updated!
I typed this on my computer then pasted it all at once. Pictures are PAINFUL to upload, so only two are uploaded for now below the post...
Our medical appointment went smoothly. We had very little wait and got right through. Anne got three shots which she watched and took like a man. They confirmed that her vision wasn’t all that good for distance but otherwise healthy. I couldn’t find any abacuses like I saw last time at the front desk.
Anne’s going-away party was very nice. Holt did a very good thing at setting that up for us. We rented a whole “mini bus” for the day for a mere $75. We drove from the hotel to the orphanage, were the kids were anxiously waiting. They were all dressed in “orphanage blue” uniforms and then we went to McDonalds in the bus. There, more kids were already waiting from the group home I think. Anne really seemed to have a good time and the kids were playing with our iPhones. We were also passing the cameras around to let them take their own pictures too. Everyone got food, drinks and desserts and seemed to like eating hamburgers and french fries just fine. It looked like any typical birthday party at McDonalds. The hostesses (yes hostesses at McDonalds is just so weird) could not get over Matt’s hair. There is a blond boy in our travel group named Noah who is 6. We call him “Little Justin” because he reminds us quite a bit of Justin at 6. The hostesses at McDonalds were in love with Matt and Noah and taking pictures on their cell phones. I kept telling Matt that he is going to be a screen saver all over China. Many people stop us on the street to tell us what a nice looking kid Matt is and seem to love his broad shoulders. We get a lot of thumbs up from them. Sorry Justin, no soup for you! :-) Anne handed out her gifts and then we off to karaoke.
Walked about 10 minutes from McDonalds to the karaoke joint, passing the elementary where all of the kids had attended school. The karaoke joint was actually just outside the orphanage. We waited a few minutes in what seemed like an oven outside the place (a closed-in awning) and then finally got inside the AC. We got a private room and the kids all seemed to enjoy the music. We brought glow sticks (the kind that you break to activate and then use them as bracelets or necklaces) and that was a hit since it was dark. My camera was passed around again to get lots of photos. Matt and I were asked to sing so we sung All Star by Smashmouth. I was trying to get the kids to dance and jump around, but they just sat there and gave me that “Crazy American” look. Chris said that I seemed like an older brother not a father for dancing like that. What can I say, I’m just a big kid!
We got a group photo as we left karaoke and it was time to leave back to the hotel. Lots of hugs and a few kisses but no tears. Anne is very strong, or at least she appears so. Michelle was tearing up.
I consolidated all of the pictures from the party into one folder and Anne picked out her favorites. I then synced them to Michelle's iPhone. She is very happy to have pictures of her friends whenever she wants to see them. She seemed sad back at the hotel and this cheered her up a bit.
We are definitely venturing out more into the area off-island. We walked off-island looking for an mp3 player and found a Chinese medicine strip of shops. Picture reams and reams of herbs of every kind. There are side strips where you have hardware stores, shoe stores, caster wheel stores, etc. Food stores are located almost every 5 stores or so. They are constantly cooking or serving something. Each store is only about 15 feet wide by 10 feet deep. They pay no attention to any of the rules of merchandising!! I was looking in a case that had a car adapter for a cell phone, an angle grinder, and door knobs. What!!? Everything is just sort of shoved into the store with no planning whatsoever. Details matter not, and if you need to plug in a lamp over there and the plug is over here...you know what to do...drape that cord across the ceiling of course!!
There are very few immaculate shopping stores, even in the ritzier areas. Just turn your head to the ceiling in your ultra high-end jewelry store and you will find that the air conditioner is missing its grates and the upstairs sewage pipe needed to use this store to do it’s 90-degree right angle turn plus sump maneuver. It’s nuts. Everything here is at least a few degrees off of normal. At worst, it is completely different, like when matt spotted a bike that had more boxes attached to it than I could fit into my car. They guy had boxes extending like a 10-ft cube all around him, including a bridge over his head! I did not have my camera handy for that one.
We went to the local market twice already. We went the first time with the guide, Joyce. She helped us find the eyeglasses store. Once we were there, the lady at the store spoke pretty good English actually. We stopped by a DVD store to buy western movies for like $1 and Anne picked out about $40 worth of DVD’s and music. That’s a lot at $1 to $3 per disc... Our second trip was to pickup the glasses and we did that on our own. Joyce wrote down the Chinese name on a card. (I asked for the English name and she said “Why you want English name? What good is that going to do? You don’t need English name. Just show them the card!”) So I found out that the shuttle for the market left at 10:45 we got on and we were off to market without a guide. We picked up the glasses and looked around for a bit and then hailed a taxi. They man inside didn’t think that we could all fit, so Justin and I waited for the next one. A man drove up on a Tuk Tuk and offered us a ride. Think of a bicycle with two back wheels, a seat, and a cover. We passed Michelle, Matt and Anne in their taxi since our Tuk Tuk driver could go between the cars. It was neat and it only cost 20 RMB (about $3.) Pictures to follow. It was a short trip, so not too scary.
I went to the local electronics market and I was quite amazed. I think this is where cheap Chinese knock-offs actually originate. It took me a while to get it. I was walking through this big two-story room with a bunch of little counters. Behind the counters were whole families (screaming kids getting their diapers changed too) selling cell phones, mp3 players, iPads, etc. Behind them were bags of components, like display screens, cases, wires, keypads, etc. They were building the product right there and then selling it right there. No instructions, no packing, no published prices but they do show that it works first. I held a perfect iPhone 4 that looked just like the real thing except for the software, price was $75. I ended up buying an mp3 player for about $15 (which I thought was pricey but I was in a hurry.) and an iPhone wall charger with cable for about $3. Those go for $25 in WalMart back home. It also came with a car charger and looked like it came direct from Apple, even had packaging. I’m heading back there soon...
We heard stories from our local guides that Lucy’s is not recommended because a group got sick and posted it on Yahoo that a rat fell on their table. But we went anyway because we liked it last time. It was very good and everyone liked it. I had a chicken with cream sauce on top of a hash brown with bacon on top. Really, really good. Matt had a three-meat trio of beef, lamb and pork chop and was in heaven. Justin had sweet and sour pork (asian style) and loved it. Chris (our “neighbors” in the hotel and part of our travel group) had the hamburger and said that it was decent. We’ll probably be back. I had vowed not to eat any western food while in China but that vow was broken by the lack of variety near the White Swan plus I “broke the toilet” according to the boys, so I figured I needed to take a break from all of the Chinese. (“Umm, front desk, yes this is room 930, we need a new toilet. This one just isn’t going to work for us any more...”)
Our local guides are Catherine (the supervisor), Joyce, Pheobe, Winnie and a guy who looks like the Chinese version of Spencer on iCarly. I can’t remember his name. They are all nice. Catherine is a riot. She has been translating between Anne and us for us and she keeps cracking jokes. They all seem to work pretty late and have been there for us whenever we have needed them. Joyce loaded up Anne’s mp3 player with Anne’s list of songs.
I forgot to mention the plane trips, which is surprising since I like them so much. Our flight from Austin to Lax was boring and on an AA 737. It was quite a piece of junk! The TV monitors were from the 80’s and the in-flight movies looked like they were from VHS. There was a loud whine the whole time and I had crosstalk of classical music in my left ear. Come on, American, upgrade your damn fleet already!!
Once at LAX, we got in the longest line I had ever seen for China Airlines, waited for an hour, got to the front of the line and figured out that we were in the wrong line! Our tickets were for Air China. Thankfully that terminal was not too far and we walked right up to the counter. The terminal for Air China is very poor in Lax and once you get through security there is not a lot of choices for food or shopping, so we ate at yucky burger king.
Once we boarded our 747, things went smoothly. Too smoothly!! It was so quiet and smooth that I couldn’t sleep because someone was talking 4 aisles away. This was one of the smoothest planes I have ever flown. The video equipment on this plane was still pretty old, and in Chinese so that really sucked, but the video quality was better than AA. We got really good meal service and felt like we were taken care of. How do you make an 11 hour flight seem quick? Tell everyone that it is a 12 hour flight, and then do it in 11. We got in an hour early. I guess the pilot put the hammer down.
Our flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was on a 4-engine Airbus, again with Air China. It was a dual-aisle plane and was probably 75% full. Again, a very quiet, smooth flight. It seemed like the pilot was only using 50% of the throttles because he throttled down once we were at altitude. The airport in Guangzhou wasn’t very impressive for a city of this size and it was pretty empty in the middle of the day.
Our medical appointment went smoothly. We had very little wait and got right through. Anne got three shots which she watched and took like a man. They confirmed that her vision wasn’t all that good for distance but otherwise healthy. I couldn’t find any abacuses like I saw last time at the front desk.
Anne’s going-away party was very nice. Holt did a very good thing at setting that up for us. We rented a whole “mini bus” for the day for a mere $75. We drove from the hotel to the orphanage, were the kids were anxiously waiting. They were all dressed in “orphanage blue” uniforms and then we went to McDonalds in the bus. There, more kids were already waiting from the group home I think. Anne really seemed to have a good time and the kids were playing with our iPhones. We were also passing the cameras around to let them take their own pictures too. Everyone got food, drinks and desserts and seemed to like eating hamburgers and french fries just fine. It looked like any typical birthday party at McDonalds. The hostesses (yes hostesses at McDonalds is just so weird) could not get over Matt’s hair. There is a blond boy in our travel group named Noah who is 6. We call him “Little Justin” because he reminds us quite a bit of Justin at 6. The hostesses at McDonalds were in love with Matt and Noah and taking pictures on their cell phones. I kept telling Matt that he is going to be a screen saver all over China. Many people stop us on the street to tell us what a nice looking kid Matt is and seem to love his broad shoulders. We get a lot of thumbs up from them. Sorry Justin, no soup for you! :-) Anne handed out her gifts and then we off to karaoke.
Walked about 10 minutes from McDonalds to the karaoke joint, passing the elementary where all of the kids had attended school. The karaoke joint was actually just outside the orphanage. We waited a few minutes in what seemed like an oven outside the place (a closed-in awning) and then finally got inside the AC. We got a private room and the kids all seemed to enjoy the music. We brought glow sticks (the kind that you break to activate and then use them as bracelets or necklaces) and that was a hit since it was dark. My camera was passed around again to get lots of photos. Matt and I were asked to sing so we sung All Star by Smashmouth. I was trying to get the kids to dance and jump around, but they just sat there and gave me that “Crazy American” look. Chris said that I seemed like an older brother not a father for dancing like that. What can I say, I’m just a big kid!
We got a group photo as we left karaoke and it was time to leave back to the hotel. Lots of hugs and a few kisses but no tears. Anne is very strong, or at least she appears so. Michelle was tearing up.
I consolidated all of the pictures from the party into one folder and Anne picked out her favorites. I then synced them to Michelle's iPhone. She is very happy to have pictures of her friends whenever she wants to see them. She seemed sad back at the hotel and this cheered her up a bit.
We are definitely venturing out more into the area off-island. We walked off-island looking for an mp3 player and found a Chinese medicine strip of shops. Picture reams and reams of herbs of every kind. There are side strips where you have hardware stores, shoe stores, caster wheel stores, etc. Food stores are located almost every 5 stores or so. They are constantly cooking or serving something. Each store is only about 15 feet wide by 10 feet deep. They pay no attention to any of the rules of merchandising!! I was looking in a case that had a car adapter for a cell phone, an angle grinder, and door knobs. What!!? Everything is just sort of shoved into the store with no planning whatsoever. Details matter not, and if you need to plug in a lamp over there and the plug is over here...you know what to do...drape that cord across the ceiling of course!!
There are very few immaculate shopping stores, even in the ritzier areas. Just turn your head to the ceiling in your ultra high-end jewelry store and you will find that the air conditioner is missing its grates and the upstairs sewage pipe needed to use this store to do it’s 90-degree right angle turn plus sump maneuver. It’s nuts. Everything here is at least a few degrees off of normal. At worst, it is completely different, like when matt spotted a bike that had more boxes attached to it than I could fit into my car. They guy had boxes extending like a 10-ft cube all around him, including a bridge over his head! I did not have my camera handy for that one.
We went to the local market twice already. We went the first time with the guide, Joyce. She helped us find the eyeglasses store. Once we were there, the lady at the store spoke pretty good English actually. We stopped by a DVD store to buy western movies for like $1 and Anne picked out about $40 worth of DVD’s and music. That’s a lot at $1 to $3 per disc... Our second trip was to pickup the glasses and we did that on our own. Joyce wrote down the Chinese name on a card. (I asked for the English name and she said “Why you want English name? What good is that going to do? You don’t need English name. Just show them the card!”) So I found out that the shuttle for the market left at 10:45 we got on and we were off to market without a guide. We picked up the glasses and looked around for a bit and then hailed a taxi. They man inside didn’t think that we could all fit, so Justin and I waited for the next one. A man drove up on a Tuk Tuk and offered us a ride. Think of a bicycle with two back wheels, a seat, and a cover. We passed Michelle, Matt and Anne in their taxi since our Tuk Tuk driver could go between the cars. It was neat and it only cost 20 RMB (about $3.) Pictures to follow. It was a short trip, so not too scary.
I went to the local electronics market and I was quite amazed. I think this is where cheap Chinese knock-offs actually originate. It took me a while to get it. I was walking through this big two-story room with a bunch of little counters. Behind the counters were whole families (screaming kids getting their diapers changed too) selling cell phones, mp3 players, iPads, etc. Behind them were bags of components, like display screens, cases, wires, keypads, etc. They were building the product right there and then selling it right there. No instructions, no packing, no published prices but they do show that it works first. I held a perfect iPhone 4 that looked just like the real thing except for the software, price was $75. I ended up buying an mp3 player for about $15 (which I thought was pricey but I was in a hurry.) and an iPhone wall charger with cable for about $3. Those go for $25 in WalMart back home. It also came with a car charger and looked like it came direct from Apple, even had packaging. I’m heading back there soon...
We heard stories from our local guides that Lucy’s is not recommended because a group got sick and posted it on Yahoo that a rat fell on their table. But we went anyway because we liked it last time. It was very good and everyone liked it. I had a chicken with cream sauce on top of a hash brown with bacon on top. Really, really good. Matt had a three-meat trio of beef, lamb and pork chop and was in heaven. Justin had sweet and sour pork (asian style) and loved it. Chris (our “neighbors” in the hotel and part of our travel group) had the hamburger and said that it was decent. We’ll probably be back. I had vowed not to eat any western food while in China but that vow was broken by the lack of variety near the White Swan plus I “broke the toilet” according to the boys, so I figured I needed to take a break from all of the Chinese. (“Umm, front desk, yes this is room 930, we need a new toilet. This one just isn’t going to work for us any more...”)
Our local guides are Catherine (the supervisor), Joyce, Pheobe, Winnie and a guy who looks like the Chinese version of Spencer on iCarly. I can’t remember his name. They are all nice. Catherine is a riot. She has been translating between Anne and us for us and she keeps cracking jokes. They all seem to work pretty late and have been there for us whenever we have needed them. Joyce loaded up Anne’s mp3 player with Anne’s list of songs.
I forgot to mention the plane trips, which is surprising since I like them so much. Our flight from Austin to Lax was boring and on an AA 737. It was quite a piece of junk! The TV monitors were from the 80’s and the in-flight movies looked like they were from VHS. There was a loud whine the whole time and I had crosstalk of classical music in my left ear. Come on, American, upgrade your damn fleet already!!
Once at LAX, we got in the longest line I had ever seen for China Airlines, waited for an hour, got to the front of the line and figured out that we were in the wrong line! Our tickets were for Air China. Thankfully that terminal was not too far and we walked right up to the counter. The terminal for Air China is very poor in Lax and once you get through security there is not a lot of choices for food or shopping, so we ate at yucky burger king.
Once we boarded our 747, things went smoothly. Too smoothly!! It was so quiet and smooth that I couldn’t sleep because someone was talking 4 aisles away. This was one of the smoothest planes I have ever flown. The video equipment on this plane was still pretty old, and in Chinese so that really sucked, but the video quality was better than AA. We got really good meal service and felt like we were taken care of. How do you make an 11 hour flight seem quick? Tell everyone that it is a 12 hour flight, and then do it in 11. We got in an hour early. I guess the pilot put the hammer down.
Our flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was on a 4-engine Airbus, again with Air China. It was a dual-aisle plane and was probably 75% full. Again, a very quiet, smooth flight. It seemed like the pilot was only using 50% of the throttles because he throttled down once we were at altitude. The airport in Guangzhou wasn’t very impressive for a city of this size and it was pretty empty in the middle of the day.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Party Time
My VPN connection has been trash so posting was almost impossible in the last few days. I have been catching up with work now that it works again, so hopefully the connection will stay good and I can get some blogging done in the next few days.
Anne had her party today and we got to see many of her freinds. Picture uploading will take a while as I have almost a GB to upload. It was a very good outing. I could tell she was excited and it was a happy party, but we still feel sadness for her and them.
Everything is still going unbeleivably well, much better than I expected. Anne still seems like such a good fit for our family and she has been expressing it using the computer translator even though some of the meaning is lost we can still tell what she means. She said something like she would rather be with people that make her laugh than phony people. She also said a full sentence in English tonight! She likes to pick on the brothers too, just like a sister...
I've got so much more to write but I've got to get to bed. We pick up her eye glasses tomorrow. She has about +2 diopter uncorrected, which is about what I had in high school before I got my glasses. There was a huge difference. I know that she will be surprised.
I still have some gaps to fill in this blog, like how she went from An Qi (pronounced An Kay) to Angie to Anne.
Anne had her party today and we got to see many of her freinds. Picture uploading will take a while as I have almost a GB to upload. It was a very good outing. I could tell she was excited and it was a happy party, but we still feel sadness for her and them.
Everything is still going unbeleivably well, much better than I expected. Anne still seems like such a good fit for our family and she has been expressing it using the computer translator even though some of the meaning is lost we can still tell what she means. She said something like she would rather be with people that make her laugh than phony people. She also said a full sentence in English tonight! She likes to pick on the brothers too, just like a sister...
I've got so much more to write but I've got to get to bed. We pick up her eye glasses tomorrow. She has about +2 diopter uncorrected, which is about what I had in high school before I got my glasses. There was a huge difference. I know that she will be surprised.
I still have some gaps to fill in this blog, like how she went from An Qi (pronounced An Kay) to Angie to Anne.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Gotcha!!
Well the day is here I have had zero time to write! An Qi is here and is now to be known as Angie, which she prefers. She knows how to say yes in English and right now Michelle and her are going through the phrase book together, although all I that hear is Chinese so I think that they are doing it wrong :-)
Angie seems pretty happy but I can't imagine what is going through her head. We have spent some time with translators but don't want to overload her with too much info at once. So we are taking it slow for now.
More later...
Angie seems pretty happy but I can't imagine what is going through her head. We have spent some time with translators but don't want to overload her with too much info at once. So we are taking it slow for now.
More later...
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Great Wall of China
So today was a bright sunny day, which was awesome. Jerry, our guide said that China has been "guaranteeing" how many days of sunshine to expect in Beijing and that they are only 6 days off their target of 260 days a year. Pretty cool. Here is a picture of the great wall section that we climbed today. We went from below the bottom red arrow to the top of the mountain at the top arrow.
Check out Matt "flying" up the great wall!!
Here is Matt's final step on the great wall. We had been training for weeks for this moment. Matt wanted to stop at many times but he pushed himself. I honestly did not think he was going to make it in the time allowed, so Justin and I took off for the top. On our way back down, he was only 100ft or so behind us, which was amazing because that section was certainly kicking my butt. Many steps are 18" high one after another, which is more like a wall to Matt. So we turned around and finished it together after about 70 minutes of straight-up climbing.
Here is a photo of all of us a the top, taken from just a few steps from the top. They closed the stairwell to the top of the guard tower, so we couldn't get another shot from up there like last time. Bummer.
After the great wall, we saw hutongs in downtown Beijing and took a rickshaw ride. We then ate dinner with two other families at our favorite next-door restaurant, then checked out Snack Street. The kids were all excited to go see scorpions on a stick and such but wanted to leave right away because the smells were pretty bad.
Check out Matt "flying" up the great wall!!
Here is Matt's final step on the great wall. We had been training for weeks for this moment. Matt wanted to stop at many times but he pushed himself. I honestly did not think he was going to make it in the time allowed, so Justin and I took off for the top. On our way back down, he was only 100ft or so behind us, which was amazing because that section was certainly kicking my butt. Many steps are 18" high one after another, which is more like a wall to Matt. So we turned around and finished it together after about 70 minutes of straight-up climbing.
Here is a photo of all of us a the top, taken from just a few steps from the top. They closed the stairwell to the top of the guard tower, so we couldn't get another shot from up there like last time. Bummer.
After the great wall, we saw hutongs in downtown Beijing and took a rickshaw ride. We then ate dinner with two other families at our favorite next-door restaurant, then checked out Snack Street. The kids were all excited to go see scorpions on a stick and such but wanted to leave right away because the smells were pretty bad.
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