The Great Wall and Forbidden City

Today was a wonderful day. We started the day with a great buffet breakfast. It was definately westernized, but still had a variety of the "guess-what-I-am" type of foods. We then met our tour group at 8:30 to start the day. We started at Tian An Men Sqare then walked over to the Forbidden City. It was so cool to see all that history and learn about what occurred in these places. We will definately be renting "The Last Emperor" when we get home. I should have done more reading on Chinese history before this trip. There was alot of walking this morning as the Forbidden City is huge. It is very beautiful though, so it was all worth it. Everyone here stares at us and wants to take pictures of us. Not sure why? Our guide said it was because they have only seen foreigners on TV and not in person. Susie was pulled into a few of the pictures. The Chinese people are very forward and they would just come and grab Susie out of our group and drag her over to their group for a picture. Very funny. Next we headed to lunch and a tour of a factory that makes copper vases, bowlss etc. It was very cool to see all this stuff hand made. We got Maeve a little pig (she was born in the year of the pig) and picked up some other souvenirs. The lunch was very good and very traditional Chinese. You can see one of our selections in the pictures below. We were told to chew very good because the fish had many bones in it. I am still getting used to the food here. I love Chinese food, but this is very different than Chinese food in the States. It has all been good though and we are having a blast trying all the new items.

After lunch we headed to the Great Wall. What an amazing site. I feel like this was half the reason I wanted to come to China, just to climb the Great Wall. It was well worth it. We got lots of pictures. Susie dragged me all the way to the top. It is so much steeper than it looks in pictures. Needless to say, my legs are like jello right now! We got some cool gifts for the boys at the Great Wall! Tonight we are off to dinner with some families from our group. We have met some amazing families and it is neat to hear everyone's stories about what led them to adopt. A few of the families are on their second trip and have their first daughters with them. Many of the families have older children (10-17 years) and they are here too.

Tomorrow we are off to Nanning. We have to be ready by 4:00am. YIKES!! We have a bit of a rest day once we arrive. We will get Maeve on Monday and can't wait!! Enjoy the pictures. Believe it or not, the picture of the "urinal" is actually a ladies sqatty potty. It lays flat on floor. Public restrooms just aren't the same here. Another adventerous experience of Asia!!

Hello From Beijing

Wow, the world is really big. And it takes a REALLY long time to get from one side to another!! After 24+ hours of travel we are finally in Beijing and in our wonderful hotel. Our flight over was soooo long. We sat next to another adoptive family (hello Rebecca and Steve!) and they were great fun. It helps passing the 14 hours when you have some nice people to converse with. Unfortunately, they are not with our agency, so we won't be traveling with them, but hope to run into them again along the way. The plane was of course huge and the flight was pretty smooth. We had a horrible selection of movies to watch, but due to lack of anything better to do, I watched them all. Hopefully our choices will be better on the return flight, but of course we will have beautiful baby girl to keep us company that time. Once we got to Beijing, our Great Wall Adoption (GWCA) guides were waiting for us as promised. There were about 6 families on our bus from the airport to the hotel. We are from all over the US. So far there are 4 of us that were matched via the waiting child program, so that is fun. Our guide told us there are about 30 GWCA families in our hotel tonight! I feel like I am looking at all American couples and just assuming they are here to adopt, probably not the truth, but it is interesting to see why everyone is here.

Our hotel is very nice. The beds are quite firm as predicted by many other families who have stayed here. (Similar to bricks with sheets, but we are so tired right now, that concrete sounds comfortable!) I think our plan is to run out and pick up some bottled water then order room service and call it a night. Tomorrow we are off to a day of touring in Beijing. I will post pictures then.

Aidan, Cian and Fintan--we miss you already. We will try to SKYPE with you this morning!!

And Away We Go

I think we are finally ready. I am very worried about the whole luggage situation, but after reading numerous blogs of adoptive parents no one has even mentioned luggage and weight being an issue, so I am going to assume it is not. I think we meet the recommended weight for now and who knows what will happen once we are in China and we are allowed to shop. It has been a very emotional day around here. Susie has been crying off and on all day. Once it was time to put the boys in bed and say goodbye (we are leaving the house around 0500, so they will still be asleep) the waterworks started with everyone!! It is very hard to watch the boys get so upset and know there is nothing we can do about it. We know they will be fine and have a blast while we are gone, but it is still tough to get through. We did get both the Skype cameras to work, so hopefully all will function properly on the China end and we will be able to talk with them daily.
I have so many thoughts/emotions running through my head today. Will our flight be alright? Did we pack enough/the right clothes? What will Maeve's reaction be to us? Will she scream for hours that first day? Will the boys be okay here? and on and on and on....
I guess we will just have to see. Okay, well I am off to bed. I will try to post again once we are in Beijing. That will be Friday night for us and Friday morning for the US, so until then....wish us luck!!

Guangxi

Now here is a map of Guangxi. This is Maeve's home province. She is from Yulin (in the southeast corner of the province). We will meet her and spend a week in the capital city, Nanning. Hopefully we will be able to learn alot about her province and culture. We want to be able to share as much as we can about her first home with her when she is older.

Map

I hope you can see this map of China well (click on it to blow it up larger). I wanted to give an idea of where we will be and where Maeve is currently living. We will first travel to Beijing, way up north. This is the capital of China. We will spend 1-2 days touring and then will fly to Maeve's home province of Guangxi. It is the province just above and east of Vietnam. We will be in the capital of Guangxi which is a city called Nanning. Maeve is actually from a city called Yulin, but unfortunately we are unable to visit this city. (Next time!!) We will spend a week in Nanning and then will fly to a city called Guangzhou which is in the Guangdong province. This is the province just east of Guangxi. This is where the American consulate is located. From how we understand it, the Chinese portion of the adoption is completed in Nanning and the American portion of the adoption is completed in Guangzhou. Luckily for us Maeve is from a warm part of the country, so most of our trip will be warm. Beijing will be chilly, but we will only be there for a few days. Okay, only six more days. It is getting hard to concentrate on anything else other than this upcoming trip!!

8 days

We are getting closer and the "to do" list seems to be getting longer. Today I managed to get a hodge-podge of over the counter medications that I think we may need in China. Having never been to China, I can't figure out how readily available these type of things might be, so I would rather come prepared. Susie picked up some trinkets yesterday too so I think we have everything ready for traveling with Maeve. Hopefully we can get all our stuff into two bags within the 40 lb weight limit!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all. We started our day with gifts for the boys. They were very excited with their valentine's gifts. I spent the morning running around town on adoption stuff. We sent our travel payments to GWCA and hopefully our experience overnighting something with FedEx will go better than our experiences with UPS. I then headed over to the mall to finish up our gifts for the Chinese officials. We now have the four female and four male gifts that are recommended. We still need to pick up gift bags, but Susie will go that this week.

This afternoon we had Aidan's basketball game. After the game we met my parents and sister-in-law out to watch the KU-KSU game. It has been a great day. We also found out that my sister-in-law has two computer video cameras that she has never opened. We were just about to buy some for our trip so we could Skype with the boys in China. Now we don't need to do that!

Eleven more days!!!

Travel is set!!

Finally we got the word. We are heading to Beijing on 2/26 (14 days away!). We are flying out of Chicago and will arrive in Beijing on 2/27 at 4:20pm. We will then head to Nanning, Guangxi on 3/1. We will get Maeve on 3/2 (she will be 17 months that day!). We will hang out in Nanning until 3/7 when we will fly to Guangzhou, Guangdong. Our consulate appointment is 3/11. We fly to Hong Kong and then back to the US on 3/13. We are so excited and thrilled to finally be at this point. Now the rush to get everything done and the boys ready to be without us for 2 weeks. It is hard to believe we will meet our 4th child in ~2 weeks!!!

The Room

I think we have Maeve's room done. All we are missing now is a little Chinese girl to place in it. It was pretty easy to transform this room from boy to girl. When we originally did the room, Susie was pregnant with Fintan and we didn't know what we were expecting, boy or girl. So we painted the room green. Once Fintan was born we added lots of blue to make it a boy's room. Now we just removed the blue and add some (alot) of pink to make it a girl's room. I think it turned out really well. It is hard to see the curtains in this light, but they look really nice.

Pictures

I haven't added pictures for awhile and surely wouldn't want anyone to forget our other three children. Here are some pictures of the boys today. Aidan had a sleep over last night so he is not home yet. You can see Fintan's new favorite toy...a sponge??? Anyway. Cian is wearing (of course) his favorite footy pajamas. He is rarely out of them these days. They are all doing well and healthy. No current runny noses, which is such a great thing at this time of year!

TA!!!

We received our TA!! Our agency is requesting our Consulate Appointment (CA) today and hopefully that will be finalized by Monday. No specific travel dates yet, but we are hoping for departure on 2/26/09.

One Day More?

One day more 'till revolution, we will nip it in the bud. (to steal a line from Les Mis) We have received word that TA's did not come today, but our agency has reason to believe ours will arrive tomorrow. Unfortunately they are never 100% until the package arrives and they see our names. So now we are hoping again for tomorrow.

Will it or won't it???

Well tomorrow is the day. If we are going to get our travel approval (TA) and leave for China in February, we should get our TA tomorrow. Of course this is not to say it won't arrive some other day, but we are very hopeful to receive it tomorrow. In addition to wanting to get home in time to get Maeve's passport in order to go on our cruise without fear, also have physician appointments set up for her in March that we will have to reschedule if we do not leave in February. This is not the end of the world, but more of a pain. Oh well, we will see what the stork brings tomorrow!!