Trip to China
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Monday, August 25, 2008 Today had a few interesting elements, although in truth, even when we are doing and seeing interesting things, we are really counting the days in hours until we can get home and hug our two precious boys Louis and Nathaniel. After a fine buffet breakfast (more on that below), Daniel spent a couple of hours filling out forms for Eva’s immigration. There was something about sitting in a small hotel room with a number of other mothers and fathers, filling out forms that include questions about birthplace (city is “unknown”) and checking-off what happened to the child’s birth parents (options include: deceased, abandonment, desertion and a few others – we all checked the “abandonment” box – that was moving, and brought home in a particular way why were are all here, even though it is something we have all known and been thinking about all along. Colette used this time in the best possible way, more playing with Eva Grace! Words and even pictures cannot come close to doing justice to how cute, as well as beautiful and brilliant this little girl is! Her smile and laugh are adorable and her physical strength and rapid learning curve are astonishing. Even if most of a day is “only” spent playing in the hotel room with Eva, it is easily the most rewarding thing either of us could do here. Daniel got his opportunity for playtime with Eva (including giving her his first bottle) when Colette went and got a massage in the hotel. She was taken by surprise when the young Asian woman who was giving her the massage without warning climbed on her back and started walking up and down her spine! In the afternoon the families had our appointment for the girls to get their passport photos taken. It wasn’t exactly like the set-up at Sears with the pastel backgrounds and soft lighting. It was mercifully short though. There is a picture of it accompanying today’s post. Then we went down the street to a clinic for the babies’ medical exams. This was a fairly brief affair (after some waiting) with visits to three “stations” to check weight, length, and head circumference; temperature, heartbeat, and ears, eyes and throat. All of the medical staff was very nice, but Eva definitely did not like being poked, prodded and measured at all. A few of today’s pictures capture that. It was nothing that a nap, a bottle and a bath couldn’t fix, so by the time bedtime rolled around, Eva was back to her playful, charming, inquisitive self! Of course, it isn’t all developmental milestones, meetings with government officials, and cultural enrichment. There is also sustenance. Eva has it relatively easy; she can (apparently) get by on five or six bottles a day of milk and rice cereal (assuming it warmed properly to her exacting specifications). For the rest of us, we have to go in search of appealing and affordable meal options, a tricky combination here in our little part of Guangdong. The breakfast buffet is definitely a winner, with a range of plentiful options to choose from. After nearly two weeks, we have managed to strike the right balance when mixing American and Chinese breakfast options so, scrambled eggs and bacon (Daniel says it is the best he has ever had) along with a few dim sum items. As long as it comes with bottomless cups of coffee, we’re good to go! The large breakfasts have largely obviated the need for lunch. It is around dinner time that things get tricky. Eva is not yet a fan of restaurants, and her bath, bottle and bed schedule somewhat limits our dinner window. Room service prices are off the charts ($20 for a bowl of wonton soup if we are calculating the exchange rate correctly). The restaurants in the hotel (there are about a half dozen of these) are similarly pricey. Outside the hotel, we have not found a Chinese restaurant yet which appeals to us (and it isn’t like we are ravenous for Chinese food anyway at this point). We haven’t been able to bring ourselves to pull the trigger on Papa John’s Pizza yet, despite the convenience of hotel delivery. Colette dug out some information about a bagel store somewhere in Guangzhou that also has subs and Italian food, and delivers to the hotel, but they were closed by the time we called tonight. As a result, we have eaten (decent) Thai food three nights in a row, and we may set some kind of personal record of consecutive nights of Thai food over the next three nights. Since Guangzhou is one of China’s largest cities, with millions of people, it is probably a safe bet that there is delicious food to be had here, only we have been too lazy or otherwise constricted to find it. Still, it is hard not to be nostalgic already for the basement restaurant in Nanning where ten kinds of dumplings, countless noodle soups, and delicacies like sautéed alligator stomach (reader, I ate it) were available at all hours! Tomorrow we expect to be an eventful day, with daytime and evening outings that we hope will yield some worthwhile photos and narrative. Louis and Nathaniel, we are counting the days and we’ll see you soon!

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