Ellie - The Hof Finale

The rest of Monday…

We did finally get a naptime completed – see picture below.  We never did get the backpack or shoes off.   Shoes are going to come off before bed, but we will probably let her sleep with the backpack if it becomes an issue.

We ventured out for a few groceries and road the toddler roller-coaster (aka escalator).  She had a blast with that!  We knew that the Chinese people were going to stare and were mentally prepared for that, but didn't expect to be stopped on the street – 2 times in our 3 block walk.  We probably should have made little cards in Chinese with a polite statement of our situation.

We have mastered bathroom communication and she is indeed potty trained as we suspected. 

Tomorrow is more official stuff in the morning and then downtime in the afternoon.  We met another family from Utah adopting a little 8 yr old boy, so we might try to hook up with them if they are game.

If you are an adoptive family in the wait – put this on your list of things to think about.  We were going to download some blockbuster movies on demand to watch.  I think you have a few days to watch it from the time you START to watch it.  Anyway you are not allowed to download or rent movies from outside the US, so plan ahead. J Also, our hotel does not have on-demand movies either on the TV.

All in all, we put today down in the success books – we are so thankful that she is peaceful and even if at times nervous, she does seem to be agreeable to hang out with us.

She is definitely much more comfortable with "mama" and Dana is doing a great job building on their relationship. She is becoming more comfortable with Rob as the day rolled on as he was able to feed her dinner and play with her until bedtime. Tonight she was repeating words from a picture book that Rob was reading to her, which was super cute. Towards the end of the night, she was "talking" more and more. Some of it sounds like actual Chinese words and others sound like 2 year old babble.

We were told by the orphanage worker that Ellie has yogurt every night before bed, so we made sure to buy some when we were grocery shopping. We wanted to have a good signal that it was bed time.

Bedtime went much better than we had anticipated. Since we couldn't get her to take off her backpack or shoes all day, we thought that at bedtime that we'd have a major fight on our hands. Dana fed her some yogurt and then pulled out some PJs. Off came the shoes and the backpack and on went the PJs. No fight, no crying, just peace. Thank you Lord for hearing and answering our prayers. When Dana placed her in her crib, there was a little crying, but Dana was able to quickly calm her down. All in all, I think she is glad that it's bedtime, but she just didn't want us to get off that easy J

Good night our little angel. Sleep well.

Her Build-A-Bear bunny, Brit Nicole, has been a hit. We have dressed and undressed her several times today.

Getting on the escalator at the mall. This mall has a grocery store on the bottom level and that is where we were headed.

One of many smiles that we saw today. Escalators = Poor Man's Roller Coaster

I will not sleep. I will not sleep. I will not.....ZZZZZZZZZ

Gotcha Day

Now in Hangzhou

The last day in Hong Kong was uneventual. We had a geography moment when we were trying to decide if we were going to an international terminal or domestic leaving Hong Kong, then we realized that EVERYTHING is international!

Our flight on China Eastern air was ok. The plane was a pretty run down 737.   We had seats in row 32, which turned out to be row 6, or row  2 of economy.  We are not sure why they started the numbering system at 31, but it was a nice surprise to see where we were.   They were in an extreme hurry for service and by 26 minutes into the flight, our food service had been delivered and cleared.  We had about 5-7min to eat our food.   They did come around with drinks, but only offered them to the row in front and behind us, we were skipped.  No big deal, just odd.

Our hotel here in Hangzhou (pronounced hung - joe) is nice – we are glad we are staying in Marriott properties. Because of the Marriott Rewards program, we get free room upgrades, free breakfast, and access to the Executive Lounge. All of these have been a great blessing.  This morning while we were in the lounge talking with the concierge about maps and things to do – a guy walks in wearing slippers and his bath robe and seemingly not anything else….  I guess the hotel has made him feel very much at home! HA!

Today the goal was to find this children's store that the hotel told us about, We just wanted to see what options were available once we know sizes and such. We walked and walked and walked some more and could not find it.  We were on the right street, but the numbers kept starting over… So counting down from one block we got to 285, then the next block the numbers started at 340?  We were looking for 278, but never found it. We did find some markets, an expensive grocery store and other things. 

After searching unsuccessfully for the children's store, we decided to recoup at the local McD's. I know, I know, we wimped out and should have tried the local fare, but it had already been an adventure and we just wanted to order by number :)  However, once we got inside, there wasn't a number ordering system visable and all the menus were in Chinese, so we got out our Kwikpoint card (card with lots of different pictures on it for international travel) and were ready to order. As we got to the counter, the cashier pulled out a menu that we could point to. Whew! We have been to McD's in India and Ukraine (among other places) and each had numbered meals to choose from, but not this one. Rob had the spicy chicken sandwich (unknown at time of order), which he said they must have got the recipe from India as it was a SPICEY chicken sandwich.

Hangzhou is not nearly as easy to get around as Hong Kong. It was difficult to determine which street we were on or which direction we were traveling on it. After some time, we figured it out, but it is not obvious. The streets and sidewalks were pretty crowded. Scooters sometimes travel on the sidewalks and are all electric, which is cool, except you can't hear them coming. Cars all seem to obey the traffic rules and drive in their own lanes (unlike Ukraine or India).  People seem to cross the street whenever and will do one lane at a time – sort of like frogger. After all the walking, we decided to hail a cab for the way back to the hotel and it  ended up being less than $2, which made us wonder why we walked so far at the front end of the day!

Tomorrow is the big day – At 9am local time, we will meet our new daughter and bring her back to the hotel with us. We still don't have a clear understanding of our itinerary, but we think the business portion of the day will be short.  We don't even know who will be there other than Ellie.  Communication so far has not been great, but we hope to be more in the loop tomorrow. Our anxiety, fear, excitement, and joy have been all over the scales today. "Gotcha Day" is always exciting, but is always very hard as Ellie's world is getting turned upside down tomorrow. Please continue to pray for her and for us as we both start this new chapter of our lives together.

Plane to Hangzhou, china

Room at the Courtyard Hangzhou

Gas masks for fire, provided by the hotel,

Fun treats at the supermarket.

Street vendor -- Bunnies anyone?

Sidewalks in Hangzhou. It's like a mini sturgis rally

Thanks to Lisa H. and Lisa S. for answering the mystery fruit question. It is called Dragon Fruit. They also pointed out that the comment feature was not enabled. To post a comment you need to click on the Date/Title of the post [i.e. "June 2, 2012 (Post #2) -- A Note about posting comments" above], then you'll be able to post a comment if you would like.

Long Day Exploring Hong Kong.

We were up and ready to go early yesterday (about 4:30am). We started the day by taking the ferry over to the Kowloon side of Hong Kong.  Hong Kong is such an easy city to get around. From the taxi system, subway/tubes, ferries, it is all very easy to navigate. We would definitely come back here again. While waiting for the ferry, we saw some vending machines that were funny so we thought we should share (Pictures below).

Once in Kowloon, we took the subway to near the markets and then walked and walked and walked. We saw the Flower and Goldfish markets on the way to the Ladies Market. Once we arrived at the Ladies Market, we were disappointed to learn they don't open till 1230 and we had about an hour to kill. Rob used his coffee honing skills to find a Starbucks where we enjoyed a coffee, snack, AC, and sitting.  We did get a little shopping done and then took the tube back to Hong Kong Island.   I use the word tube here because we found out that the "subway" is the pedestrian underground to escape the heat and avoid the traffic.   We loved that as long as we could keep our bearings.

On the way back to the hotel we were going to pick up the hotel shuttle at the train station.  Dana used her internal compass to get us to the right side of the building, but Rob used that important Amazing Race skill of RE-READING the clue!  With that, we realized that we were on the wrong level at about 3min before the shuttle left. Thankfully, we made it to the shuttle just as they were about to close the doors.

In the afternoon we went to Victoria Peak a.k.a. "The Peak". To get to the peak you can either hike (VERY long hike) or take a tram, which is what we decided to do. The wait for the tram was about 25 minutes and was very crowded with all the camera yielding tourists of the area. While at the top, we decided to eat dinner at a spaghetti place.  Dana ordered what looked like a baked spaghetti creation with cheese on top.  It came out – noodles, some diced tomatoes with a slice of American cheese melted on top and tasted like spaghetti O's.  So if you have a kid who is a fussy eater, you can create this and tell them that it is internationally inspired cuisine! Haha.  Rob's selection of the Japanese fried fish with curry rice was much better.

One of the goals of yesterday was to see the Hong Kong light show.  At 8pm every night, the skyline on Hong Kong Island lights up. To see the show, you need to be on the Kowloon side of the bay and that was the plan for us until about 6pm when jet lag was in full force.  We decided that we were not up for it and decided to hit the Executive Lounge in our hotel for snacks and refreshments. We did see a bit of the light show on the local news and we will probably buy the post card.

Today we are up early again (4am). Today's plan is to lay low at the hotel and to rest up. We will then fly out this evening to Hangzhou, China.

We're leaving on a jet plane....