Well, not really. But, in our mind it is. 

I’m taking a pause in the packing to compose one last blog post while on Chinese soil! In less than 12 hours, we will leave our oasis of the White Swan hotel and head off with the other Living Hope families for the airport. We will fly into Beijing with China Air, wait a couple hours and then board our Continental flight for Newark! Door to door, we will be traveling for about 24 hours….with a baby. Pray for us! This is the day I have really been anxious about for literally years. Since we started this adoption process, both Mark and I would talk about this long trip home with a toddler and just stop talking about it because we would break a sweat. 

Only 4 weeks ago, we got the news that China had granted us travel approval. Now, we have our daughter, and we are headed home. What a life-changing experience we have had. The wait is over, the journey to find her and meet her is over, all the paperwork is over, incessant calls to Sarah at Living Hope are over (well, officially they are. But, don’t worry, Sarah, I’m not going to let you off that easy). Now, the rest our journey begins. I can’t wait for Evan, Ash, and Drew to meet her. I can’t wait for the whole family to meet her. I can’t wait to see Lydia toddling around our house and sleeping in her crib.

God’s hands have been on this child from the first moments of her life, no doubt. He protected her and held her in His arms when she was held in no other arms. He set her apart for us and redeemed a sad thing into the most beautiful picture of His love for us. He prepared us and worked in us to open our hearts to her. He led us as we stepped out in faith to say yes to her when the doctors gave us much to be concerned about. We cannot leave this place without remembering what He has done–He has called, protected, prepared, provided, guided, redeemed, and sanctified us in all. We will not forget His work. The bag of stones given to us by her orphanage from the grounds of the orphanage will serve as our ebenezer, may they remind her of His goodness as well when she is grown. 

I know I will cry as we leave this place. How do you not when they have just given us the gift of a daughter? And, we have such sweet memories from the last 16 days and have built relationships that will last a lifetime. The Vance family, the Corbeil family, the Woods family, and the Bisignano family are now dear friends. I so look forward to planning times together again and seeing how all their children grow. Each one of their children is amazing, all with their own stories of God’s hands on them. I’ve already proposed an arranged marriage perhaps for Lydia and Jake Woods. 

I’m including some random pictures here for the last post–a picture of cutie patootie Jake. He’s a handful now, but he’s the cutest little guy ever. 

 

 

Here’s salesman Jack and me–we became friends over the week. He’s looking for an American girlfriend if anyone knows anyone interested. :) 

 

 

Also included a picture of us in front of the Pleasant Goat characters. This cartoon is the most popular one in China. These characters are everywhere. I tried to get a DVD of the cartoon in English, but they didn’t have any.

 

 

And, last, there’s a picture of Mark and Lydi enjoying the birds in the hotel lobby. 

 

 

A very special thank you to Ashley for posting all my blog entries and dealing with all those pictures I emailed to her to put on there. She’s been a real trooper–especially as she is preparing for her own trip to China! Next blog post will be posted by me from Phoenixville, PA! 

The only official item of business for us today was our oath at the U.S. Consulate. We weren’t sure what to expect with this. The consulate used to be in the building directly next to our hotel, until 2005, which made things very convenient for adoptive families. Now, it’s a 35 minute drive away. Using 2 charter buses, 42 Chinese children and all their families made the trek to the consulate building. I am not sure quite what I was picturing. I think I was picturing something more like a fancy embassy, but, it’s just rented space in an office building. So, all of us went up escalator after escalator to the 5th floor, showed our passports, and went through security to get to this large room for the oath. Everyone took a seat and waited to hear their child’s Chinese name called on the loud speaker. At that time, we went forward to one of 5 different windows and showed our passports again and verified that we were who we said we were and Chen Mei Yue was who we said she was. Then, we waited for each family to complete this step. When everyone was finished, a young American woman got up and spoke for a few minutes about the visa process and what their office does. She also told us that last year, there were 3.000 Chinese adoption visas given to children; and, for the first time, there were more special needs adoptions than healthy adoptions (57% to 43%). She went over some business items including some paperwork issues and how our children would become American citizens as soon as we pass through immigration at our prospective airports in the states. Right now, our children are still Chinese citizens, holding Chinese passports and are recognized only by their Chinese names. But, as soon as they stamp her passport in Newark, NJ on Friday evening, she will be an American citizen. Then, all 42 sets of parents stood up and raised their right hands and repeated the words of the young woman, promising that all the information we had provided to the government regarding this adoption was true to the best of our knowledge. She then congratulated us; some people clapped and hugged. And, that was it. Not a whole lot of pomp and circumstance really, but it’s nice to know that all the paperwork is done. All that is left is picking up her visa tomorrow and then we are headed home. 

 

 

We have departure on the brain; we started to pack up our suitcases some tonight. I’m trying to not think about the fact that we are facing that extremely long flight again now with baby in tow. And, at this point, Mark’s and my seats are not together. I’m so hoping that when my mom calls to confirm our flights for us, she can sweet talk them into putting Mark next to me in the bulkhead seats. Please, Continental, please!

We took our red couch pictures today as well. They didn’t turn out so great–getting a good picture of 4 children at the same time and even more people in the group shot is practically miraculous. I still would like to try again if possible. I really wanted to get the full red couch–don’t know how these pictures became tradition for adoptive families but it has been for years. Everybody gets their picture taken on one of the red couches in the lobby of the White Swan hotel. The other pictures were taken in the lobby as well. The workmen here were feeding the koi fish and then trying to scoop up one of the big mamas. Someone in our travel group saw them walk away with one in a bucket yesterday. I guess they cook these as well as admire them???? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With our free day in Guangzhou today, a handful of families got together and rented a bus to take us out to Safari Park about 45 minutes from the city. We took a tram (a mercedes tram–I didn’t seem to think this was an important detail. But, Mark has mentioned it several times, so I thought it must be blogworthy.) through the park to see the animals. It’s sorta like the safari ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom but we saw about 10x as many animals in a much smaller place. Rather than ride the tram, people can pay to drive through the park in their own cars. People were standing up out of their sunroofs trying to get the animals to come right over to their car. We saw one van full of people with their side door open feeding the gazelles right out of the van. PETA would be all over this place. But, we enjoyed it, and all the adopted kids (as well as siblings who were there) really enjoyed the day. The highlights were (1) me feeding a baby white tiger (it cost 30 yuan, about $4) and, of course, (2) admiring the pandas. This was a must do in my opinion, especially since Ashlyn adores pandas and believes that they rome the streets of China. I just couldn’t come to China and not see pandas! Lydia’s favorites were the parrots and the monkeys. 

 

 

We thought it was time to give you a little Lydia 101 so you wouldn’t be illyderate (get it?) since we are coming home soon. Of course, this is coming from people who have been with her for only 9 days, and one of those days we were so sick that I thought I might die in China (okay, a bit of an exaggeration there). Still, here is what we have learned thus far.

1. She’s got a few tricks–smacking her lips, hitting her hand to her mouth while making an “ah” noise, and shaking her head no for no reason.

2. She can say da, ba, and mama.

3. She has a big freckle on her tummy.

4. Although she hated her first bath and then wouldn’t sit in the water her second bath, by her third bath, she realized this was sorta fun. Now, she loves it.

5. Her favorite foods are bread and crackers–who are we kidding, she eats everything we give to her. Tonight that was tomatoes and cucumbers even. 

6. She loves her little blanket (we have named Ren Ren) and sucking her first two fingers on her left hand.

7. She smiles at everybody who talks to her and doesn’t cry often.

8. When she fell down today, she called out for “Mama” which clearly was not me. But, we are working on her understanding that I’m Mama and can comfort her.

9. She loves walking holding onto one of our hands.

10. She doesn’t like her hands touched unless you are holding her hand to walk with her.

11. She sweats like crazy when she takes her bottle and when she sleeps. 

12. She has had a little bit of hard time falling asleep at night. I hold her until she’s asleep and then Daddy puts her in the crib. Although she sleeps restlessly, she sleeps through the night until about 7am.

13. She has the smallest behind you have ever seen. It’s about the size of my fist. We think she should be nicknamed Tiny Hiney or Bitty Bum. Any other ideas?

14.  She likes being upside down and being thrown up into the air. When Daddy does it and then stops, she says “da” very clearly. We think it’s Chinese for “again.”

I’m looking forward to learning more about her as the days go on and having our other three learn too. We have a big day tomorrow–our oath at the U.S. consulate. After that, we just pick up her visa on Thursday and then we are finished here and have permission to bring this little girl home. Can’t believe it.

Offices and schools were closed today, but shops were not (they close for nearly nothing). So, we set out with the families from our agency here with us and visited the medicinal herb market and the pet market. Yes, contrary to what some may have heard, there are some pets in China. We learned tonight from our friendly salesman Jack at a local place that families are limited to one dog only and will “have a problem” if they have more than one. He made a joke about too many people and too many dogs and how they limit both. These markets were CRAZY. We saw dried deer tendons, snakes, sea horses, and (my personal fave) frogs (I thought they were dried rats at first. yuck!). They sold live scorpions and turtles and fish and chickens. One family pulled up to a shop on a motorcycle, bought a fish right there without getting off their bike, and waited while the lady cut it up for them right there on the sidewalk. We watched as a shopkeeper killed a chicken right there for a customer. It was an education. The pet market was slightly less icky–adorable kittens, baby ducks, turtles, crabs, bunnies, even chipmunks! We saw one guy ride up to a shopkeeper with a handled bag full of kittens. He sold them to the shopkeeper for 6 yuan each (about $.90) then rode away. The shopkeeper will turn around and sell them for a little more than that. We saw quite a few loose cats today–shopkeepers like to keep them around to get rid of the rats. Oh my. We continued onto a more mainstream shopping area that was just mobbed. Check out that picture Mark took of the crowd there. Can you see why we’d stand out here? We refrained from eating lunch there though–the fried squid a lot of folks were having just didn’t look so good to us.

Guangzhou is under some serious construction right now which makes walking around a little difficult, and everything is pretty messy. They are working super hard to make this place look amazing for the Asian games being held here in November. Mark took this picture of the guy working from our hotel room window. In the close up, it doesn’t look so bad. But, check out how high up this guy was. Yikes.