Guangzhou City Tour

The best part for Dez is the shopping, best part for Jim all the down time, and ahh sleeping for the first time with Kendall in our bed all night. Since we leave in a few days it is time to get all the squeaky shoes, etchings, and art work! The hard part is to remember what you can fit in your luggage. I think I will be throwing some of my clothes out to get some of Kendall's SHOES home.

We went to a very nice department store where you could get your fine China set made, they design and paint it right there for you, the artists on the island all go to art school here to learn the trade, however the ones in this upscale department store had the title of Master Craftsman who have been doing this for 20 years or more at a minimum. We watched one artist painting the China in the store. Here is a video of an artist painting the inside of a glass globe. The artist used a hook paint brush, it really was amazing to see!



We were amazed out how talented these artist are. We also found a guy that paints everything without a brush, he just uses his fingers and palms.


Here is a Jade carving of a pirate ship, hey Chandler what do you think of that.

This morning we went to a active temple, this temple is still in use by monks, and worshipers, we gave offerings to the God of good fortune, the God of Women who was the God of Mercy. We did the traditional incense burnings at several of the Gods, very neat!

One of the top things was the blessing of the babies, here you see the monk blessed Kendall and Dez. He dipped a leaf in water and sprinkled it on them, What an amazing thing to watch and be part of.

And as always Kendall and Dez get mobbed. I think Kendall is going to think she is a movie star, she better learn to write her name first.

We also visited the Chen Family Temple, also known as Guangdong Folk Art Museum, it is a temple for the Chen family only, which Cyndi explained this last name is as common as Smith is in the U.S.

It is not an active temple it was built in the 1890s and has nine halls and six courtyards. Its windows, door frames, and pavilions are lavishly decorated with intricate carvings and sculptures. It is now the largest and best preserved and decorated ancient architecture existing in Guangdong province. The decoration combines wood carving, brick carving, stone carving, clay sculpture, ash sculpture, brass and iron, it also had traditional new year painting, and other art forms. The special historical, artistic, and scientific aspects of the temple have made it an important attraction in Guangzhou. Cyndi also explained that the brick carving seen above is very hard to work with because the material is so soft.

Part of the group at the entrance to the Chen Temple.

Jim wants to get this shipped home for our front door and the sculpture for the yard!

Cyndi our WONDERFUL guide and Kendall, we just love to see pretty girl laugh!

Here is a picture of our group at Lucia's official Birthday party last night at one of the best Thai food restaurants we have ever eaten at! That is it for today, tomorrow we take the traditional red couch photo of all the babies on our group and shopping at Quing Ping Chinese herbal market. We can not believe we are almost on our way home, we love it here, but miss Chandler sooooo much, and all of you! We can not wait for you all to fall in love with Kendall even more then you already have :)

Welcome to Guangzhou!

Yes, we LOVED seeing "Real China", but we are still American born and bred and we so needed to be here! Everyone in our group is chipper and happy and we just feel CLEAN! The water in Nanchang is a tinged brown, here it is "US NASA Certified Filtered" water at the Victory, we have a HUGE room with a sitting area, big king down comfy bed, even Kendall's bed has memory foam! And all for a mere $65 a night which includes a buffet breakfast. We are in much needed heaven, traveling anytime is tiring, but try 6 hours with a airplane and bus full of babies, and our little Kendall was amazing!
Shamian Island, where the US Consulate is and our hotel is located, has a total area of 1/2 sq. mile total. Nestled on the west, facing the famous Swan Lake, surrounded by the Pearl River, Shamian is one of the Guangzhou's most prized possession. It has a rich history, it once had been a British and French Settlement which is clearly visible in the more than 150 European-style buildings and 158 old trees that flank its streets, we feel like we have been transported to a European city with it's cobblestone lanes, it is truly beautiful! Kendall went to her 1st Birthday party, Lucia her foster sister turned 1 on Friday, so Kendall got her a cupcake for her 1st B-Day and then tonight the group went to the best Thai restaurant for her official B-Day. It was really special for us to be there with Lucia, whom Kendall spent the first year of her life with. Their finding ad was even in the paper together since they were found 5 days a part. Needless to say these two will remain friends FOREVER we hope! This picture is of the two empressess togther.






Kendall was busy taking notes of how well Lucia ate her cupcake!

Here are the clothes police in action this is an example of what we tell you happens in town!

Here are several people doing their morning Tai Chi.

Kendall's first Dr's appt. for the required U.S. Consulate appt. where she weighed in at 20 lbs and 32 inches long! We will of course check this at home, as one baby was held up and the Dr. said yep 17 lbs. She was so good all these screaming babies and she was sleeping until her hearing was checked, this kid is a true trooper!

Tomorrow we go to visit a family temple and the have the monks do the traditional blessing of the babies.

Real China

Ni Hao from Real China!

Do not ask why they all give the peace sign when they take pictures, so I did too!

Today we toured the country side, this was a small village outside Nanchang which was said to be a step above where our daughters spent their first years of life. We are humbled by the generosity of these people, their love for their children, yes love! It is not there fault they must give up their daughters, they are a product of circumstances and many, many, years of tradition, and value. We should never judge, this is why we get the reputation as pushy, opinionated, and RUDE Americans. These children are a little behind developmentally, however I am asking myself by whose standards. I think about my my own children and the things I do for them, that maybe when they are parents they will be told oh do not do that, it is bad for the baby, I mean, we do what we know and what we are taught.

The villagers we met were welcoming, this one family bonded with us, the mother took us into her home and was so proud to show us her professional portraits she was able to take of her two children. The thing I have learned from today was humility, and to be so happy for what I have and my children, and yet to remember things do not make you truly happy, family and good health is what matters! Here in china we were told that they recently did a poll conducted by the government to see how people felt and rated their happiness level, the people in the countryside reported 85% were happy while the city people who have more clothes, cars, and apartments reported only 50% were happy. This is what we saw today, yes they have no running water, they have different health standards then us, and it

is different, but they are happy and humble.


We took candy and food for the villagers and the one women you will see was so gracious and told our guide Cindy too much, we do not need anymore! Later you will see her home, which is shared by her two children, her and her husband and her in-laws.

Sorry to go off on my tangent, I am just very touched and realize that all of China is not like the huge fancy hotel we are in, and the Wal-Mart and McDonalds on every corner, this was REAL China, approx. 85% live like what we saw today and worse.
We had our laundry done as you can see from the picture, they wrap your things in plastic like they are brand new, my jeans look BRAND NEW! The cost for Kendall’s clothes was FREE, the total for everything was $10 for a load and a half of laundry and pressing, this was cheap, and all of Kendall’s stuff, blankets, bibs, you can not beat it!

Since You Tube is down we can not upload video on the blog, so the pictures will have to do. At some point the video will be uploaded, may not be until our Sat since tomorrow our Friday is a travel day to Guangzhou.

Ashley: By the way, the picture of me (Dez) standing on the center of the town in Hong Kong i.e. Friday the 19th blog, was taken in Hong Kong’s "Time Square". So yes, Hong Kong is very much like New York, it has so much to offer, theater, museums, shopping, and oh did I say SHOPPING! Every designer label is there, Abercrombie is just as popular with the young crowd as it is in the US, and American Eagle, Louis Vutton is the BIG purse in HK and here in China. The purses in China are knock offs however!

Kendall is again doing amazing, she is very much a schedule baby like Chandler was, she needs her naps and if she does not get them watch out!!! She likes to babble and is such a great sleeper, she went to bet at 9pm and woke at 8:00am! Wow are we lucky!!!!

We are off to the Wal-Mart again, I can not find diapers here in town, the reason you can see from the picture of the split pants they do not use them!

We asked Cyndi why the tushys are not covered and she said that here in China they believe that the babies have fire in their behinds, so no need to cover!

The picture of the older gentleman was a taxi ride offered to us last night, we had to pass, the thought of this frail old man carrying us back to our hotel was a site we would rather not see!

We hope to get the video uploaded ASAP, again may not be able to post until our Sat. night due to travel, I just checked You Tube and it is still down :( hope the pictures help!

Busy Day

Went to the Pavilion which was very nice, bought lots of stuff there. Things are so inexpensive, we saw some really funny things, they had bugs in a resin and put a chain around it and called it jewelry. Crickets are very popular here, cricket fighting is HUGE! So lots of crickets on necklaces. The funny thing is we all thought we were going shopping today at like a store hence the name "Pavilion", so when we drove up to this huge "tower" it was funny, yet very nice and interesting.

The pavilion is named for a man that is a famous poet here in Nanchang, he is the Robert Frost for the locals here, and all through China. Our guide was telling us they all must learn this poem in grade school. We filmed the scroll which showed the Chinese poem and let me tell you it is 10 x's the declaration of independence we had to memorize as kids! We saw a wonderful local folk show performed by some beautiful Chinese women, Kendall slept through most of it, she really is a trooper, we tend to be out as a group touring during her morning nap, but with the carrier she is able to sleep!

















When also did a little more shopping in town. We ventured out We have been told that Kendall is a very beautiful baby, one women from her city Nanfeng which is 3 hours north of where we are at, said that the water there in Nanfeng makes beautiful babies, our guide translated it for us, this lady was very pretty herself, so maybe the oranges they grow there have something to do with this. We think she is pretty cute too, but the locals in Nanchang really ahh over her!

Weirdest site this far has to be the split pants that the little children where, look at Kendall's referral picture those lovely pants she is in are split pants, they are completely open in the middle and here we are walking along a very upscale open shopping area and a mom opens her child's legs and the little 3 year old pees, needles to say we are burning our tennis shoes before we leave, realizing now it is not good to step in the wet spots ughhhhhh! Sorry this is one thing I can not when in rome do as the romans, with Kendall....


As for Kendall, she is again doing great, every day new things and we see big changes in her. She is switching things from hand to hand better, she reached for Dez while we were out shopping tonight, it was a very deliberate grab, she wanted her attention then a huge smile! It was a melt your hear moment for us all :) We discovered that she likes to already abuse her parents, you can see in the video her trying laughing as she kicks Dez.

As for Chandler his adventure was Disneyland with Grandma Thelma, Grams and Grumps he told us he went on the Haunted Mansion and was not even scared, he loves Buzz Light Year and of course Pirates, his favorite! We miss him soooo much, he has a bit of a melt down that morning when we talked to him, but looks like Disneyland was just what he needed that day!

We are off to the country side tomorrow to see what life is like for our babies where they are from, most likely the posting wont be until the evening time for us, which is mid morning for you all, thank you again for your thoughts, we just love that the Internet, it is so fantastic that you all get to see her already!

We can not e-mail people direct while here, it keeps kicking our e-mails back, we can recieve just can not respond except of you have roadrunner like us and Dez's mom, weird! So do not think us rude! If you have questions I am posting Dez's moms e-mail here to reach us or you can leave it on the blog comments, off to bed it is so late and the internet is really slow for us tonight.

Raelene's e-mail: kretch@ca.rr.com

Kendall Developmentally

We are off to the pavilion and lunch but wanted those developmental buffs and mommies, to see where Kendall is developmentally, she is right on track for a 6 month old baby, i.e. discovers toes, babbles at inanimate objects, can not sit up yet on own (but doing those crunches with mommy to build the tummy muscles) transferring objects from one hand to another, so here is a quick post for today and we will of course post tonight when we return, it is 9:30 am here and 5:30 pm for you guys at home.
Enjoy!



P.S. She likes being semi-naked now! She is discovering she has body parts underneath the massive layers of clothes she used to wear!

Shopping

Well the girls went to Wal-Mart and bought the store out, cost about $2.50. Things are pretty cheap except the stuff from America.

We went out to dinner with the group tonight. We ate lots of interesting foods. It was pretty good and we found out that Kendall LOVES tofu, the girl can't get enough. Jim had to eventually stop her after the 3rd one. We have opened our minds up to new things, you all would have be SHOCKED at Dez, she tried everything, this is the spicy capital and she ate it in stride, our favorite was the bamboo and peppers! Oh and the meal was like 10 courses and a "fine" restaurant where reservations are required, and it cost $6 for our family!

We took Kendall out for a walk on our own today, Wow!!! We would get swarmed by people wanting to talk to her and us. Our guide gave us a card that reads in Chinese that we adopted her and are taking her to America. At first people glare then they give you the thumbs up! You can not believe how happy and responsive people are to us, one lady told Kendall "Your momma and poppa, good to you, take you to USA". You cannot go anywhere without people staring. We were warned by our translator to have her in many layers or people will get mad at you. Well the "Clothes Police" will get ya, We had her in 2 shirts , 2 pants and a big snow jacket, plus a warm hat, not good enough, one old lady cme up to Dez and zipped her jacket around Kendall, as you can see in the picture she was plenty warm. People would come up and feel Kendall's clothing and jesture to us to put more clothes on her. I guess the rule is, if she can put her arms down, not enough layers! They believe that many layers protect the babies from the environment, hello how about some environmental controls on your cars, and no SMOKING EVERYWHERE!!!


As for Kendall, she is starting to really come out of her shell, we are seeing more and more of her personality. We have heard her little voice now which is because of her big brother, I had here babbling looking at a picture of Chandler on the computer!

Kendall still hates baths, but we will get her used to this, what a concept, bathing your baby,again something the Chinese do not do, we still can not get over that they do not believe in bathing babies! And according to Cindi never in the winter, that is just not done. We explained to Kendall in the US we just have issues with body funk :)

Our guide Cindy is amazing, she is from Beijing and will be with us the entire trip, she and Dez were talking about the formula, and she says to Dez " I am not sure why you Americans think we Chinese are lactose in tolerant, we drink milk, eat yogurt and only some people have allergies to milk products". She went on to explain that as of 10 years ago only the babies were given milk with the food cards, in the last 10 years as the economy has changed they can all afford milk, she said she did not drink it until she was in her 20's. So we changed Kendall to milk based formula, Enfamil can be purchased at where else but good ole reliable Wal-Mart! The cost is the same here too, just like at home.



Oh and Dez and Cyndi have agreed to disagree on the begging here in China, Dez has not stopped giving every young child begging on the street corner a few Yuan. However, Cyndi says it teaches the kids to not get a job, to not work, their mothers are healthy they should work! Well Dez says that it is not the child’s fault the parents choose to beg, this is what the child has learned, so why should the child not get some money, this is not like our beggars, they are not getting money and then getting loaded, they are eating with the money! One group about mugged Dez for her KFC sandwich! It is not as bad as the begging in Mexico, but it is sad when you have this tiny little girl asking for 1 Yuan which is like a dime to us!

Before we go tonight, we wanted everyone to know your comments have meant so much to us, the tears are flowing reading your guys thoughts, and that on the other side of this world people are falling in love with Kendall, just as much as we are! Thank you everyone for being there for us, for sharing in our adventure!

Chandler you have an AWESOME time at Disneyland tomorrow, we know you will have a blast! xoxoxoxoxox

Big Smiles

Well it's been 24 hours that we have had her and what an amazing day it's been. From the second we got her until now she has come out of her shell and is showing us what a bright shining star she is. She finally smiled earlier in the morning for the first time. Now if one of us walks in the room and smiles at her she gives us the cutest smile I have ever seen. To prove that here is a short video.

We have also found that she is very much her mothers daughter. If she does not get her way she throws the biggest fit. It has been very hard for us to be away from Chandler, but we have been using Skype to talk back and forth and with the web cams it has been great. Here is Kendall talking to her big brother for the first time, I'm sure they are coming up with a plan to drive their parents crazy.

While we have been in China, Chandler has been busy building the coolest pirate ship around. Chandlers adventure continues next week with his trip to Disneyland, where he will check out all the cool rides so when his little sister goes there he can show her where they are.

Well we are off to a play date and pizza with all the other parents, we'll keep everyone updated on our big outing tomorrow to WAL-MART!!!

Gotcha Day

Well the day finally arrived, here is a little video of the moment.



What words can describe our feelings, joy, love, and oh my gosh can this girl CRY! Chandler you had better get ear plugs! We get to Nanchang about 1:00pm, we meet Tracy and Mathew from New Jersey on the way over, we all came from Hong Kong, we get off in Nanchang and a man is holding our names up, our guide not there, luckily another big adoption group is there and the guide for them says "Oh, I know Cyndi your guide and you get on the bus with this man he will take you to the Hotel..." Ok why the heck not we are in communist China where there are military men everywhere in the airport, way different then in Hong Kong, so we get off this bus and go to the hotel where Cyndi our lovely guide tells us we have less then one hour to get our stuff dropped off, paper work, and go to the civil affairs office to get Kendall.

So we are scrambling around the room trying to baby proof things expecting a almost one year old and remembering fondly Chandler and how he grabbed, touched, and put everything in his mouth, and yet, all for nothing, she does not want you to put her down!

We get on the bus to go to the Civil Affairs office, we get up there, Cyndi tells us will be about 1/2 hour for the babies to get there, we are the first group to walk in and there are pink bundles of little babies! We am freaking, is this Kendall, then we here yes these are the Nanfang babies!!! We are looking at all the pink stuffed babies and we were not sure which one was Kendall, and trust me everyone was in the same boat, then Dez took another look and the one on the end is her!Yep they call us and we are the second ones to get our little girl! She has filled out in the face, and she has he reddist little chapped cheeks! The rest is literally a blur, one things is for sure she did not cry at all until we got her to the hotel where we literally stripped 5 layers off! I will go into the rest of the details later, lets just say that China is dusty, and well dirt sticks in amazing places. From the moment we took those clothers off she showed her temper! She was MAD!

The orphanage director told us she was a happy baby, yet she has a temper, when she is mad she throws temper tantrums, and yes they are right!!!! She is sad, you see it in her eyes, but she is the most cuddly little thing, this one is her mommys girl with that temper! I have to go for now, we are exhausted and Kendall is finally a sleep... We are off to take the oath to take care of her and educate her, tomorrow, we will maybe get info about her foster parents, so we will post more later...

Hong Kong

Ni hao:

We made it! We had a great flight all was smooth, we landed in Hong Kong at around 6:00 am, and checked in to our beautiful hotel. We are staying at the Renaissance Harbor View (Courtesy of Dad's Marriott point's,Thank you Dad) in HK's convention center district , they gave us a free upgrade to a Super Deluxe, yeah! We are over looking the harbor which is beautiful. Nice comfy bed was calling our name, well it looked all fluffy and soft until you sat on it! It is HARD as a rock. But after trying to sleep on the plane this bed was heaven. We took a 3 hour nap showered , called Chandler via skype (WOW what a great thing this Internet phone and video is), and we were off shopping. Food was the first order of business and I hate to disappoint everyone, we ate at Mc Dondalds. It tasted exactly like home!

HK reminds Jim and I so much of Okinawa, it is lush and surrounded by water, the main hub of HK is like Naha was in Okinawa, we feel so comfortable here. There are a lot of Britain's who live here, and almost everyone speaks English. Very safe and the shopping is amazing. I feel like I am in New York or the Miracle Mile in Chicago! They have every designer store you can think of. We are eating in the hotel tonight, then tomorrow if the weather permits we will take a tour of the harbor on one of the many ferries.

Tomorrow we will go shopping again, so far we have not noticed that anything is very cheap. The food is very cheap, like we both ate at McDonalds for $5. They also have every resteraunt you can think of, they have an Outback, Morton's, Tony Roma's, Crispy Creme's and California Pizza Kitchen. Things like make-up are not very cheap, I went in to Lancome and Dior and they are the same. Coach is the same here, looked at a Coach purse same price as the Dos Lagos Coach store! Food products here are cheap, dinning is cheap, Evian water was $1.00 so very similar to the US. I have heard that HK is not cheap, so we are saving our major shopping for Nanchang.

Just for Chandler, we went to a Toy's-R-US , it sales everything like ours, prices again about the same, no bargains here! We took a picture of the local meat store which is amazing, you will love the video of the hanging food. The sea food stores are very fresh, you pick right from the tank, octopus, lobster, and Chandler's favorite CRAB LEGS! Today was fun, we enjoyed "people watching", and going into a local gorcery store! Tomorrow we will go to the true shopping "The ally" where we have read the good bargain shopping is...

We are on a quest for a wire less lap top mouse, no luck yet mom, and of course Jim checked out many of the electronic stores which he said a blue tooth equipped lap top was about $500 cheaper then at home. Everyone here is cell phone obsessed and IPOD ear phone seen everywhere. In the middle of HQ's time square they had a Apple and Nike demonstration of a new Nike shoe that has an IPOD adapter, feels like home.

Enough for tonight we miss everyone. Will not be able to post again until Sunday after we get Kendall!!! So the next post will be on GOTCHA DAY! We can hardly believe it!

Wan An

Packing for China

Packing, what an adventure! Internationally we can pack 2 HUGE suitcases at 70 lbs each, however inter-china we can only have one checked bag each weighing no more then 44 lbs, and we can each have on carry-on and we need these to carry items like duct tape (apparently they are really hard on luggage and often rip your baggage so good ole duck tape to the rescue). So for 14 days we get 44 lbs worth of stuff, and let us tell you when carrying things like an industrial size bottle of Pepto Bismo, ahh the necessitys while in another country, formula, diapers and various size of baby clothes, it adds up quickly.

Anyway we are all packed and waiting, we also found out we get Kendall on Sunday the 21st WOW we will get off a plane from Hong Kong to her provenience and have her in our arms 2 hours later, the reality of this is sinking in and we are sooo happy.

Chandler is excited to go to his Gram & Grumps, he also got his 1st gig! He was cast for a 2 day photo shoot with Disney toys. He is excited about this as are mom and dad, we are sad we will not be there to see him in action but this will help the first few days go fast.

The pictures show all the stuff we packed and we put a picture of big brother Chandler with his new Build - A - Bear, he made one for his little mei mei (little sister in chinese)and will give it to her at the airport!

So keep us in your thoughts, we will miss all of you so much! Chandler we will be home sooner then you realize!

The nursery

Ok, so we waited to do the nursery until after referral, and as you know the referral came Nov. 30 so this meant, we were taking on this task at Christmas! Crazy yes, so while I am busy shopping and baking, Jim is painting, and painting and oh did I say PAINTING! The stripes, great idea, looked simple enough, but oh my did Jim have to work!

So picture the weekend of Christmas, Jim has a whole week off to complete the room, Chandler's off from preschool, and wham we get sick, not a little sick, BIG SICK! Oh, and Jim gets called in to work on Sat.

Yet, we finished it, and it was so much fun! Dez's mom did a wonderful job on the letters (Yes she is amazingly talented) and Chandler and mommy painted the doors and closet while daddy was working as to not get our time line all messed up! After calls to our neighbor Joe and Natalie (thank you for your assistance) the crown molding goes up and TA DAAA the room is done on schedule.