Ellie - The Hof Finale

Things we miss:

• Our kids
• Being able to brush your teeth with tap water
• Going out in public without feeling like you are a walking display for all to stop and stare at.

Things we love:

• Huge breakfast choices with no dishes (this one will be a huge wake up call for Ellie haha)

• Wide variety of coffee choices (Latte, cappuccino etc) all day
• Naptime

Sunday was shopping on the infamous Shamian Island.  You could Google the history if you want, but at some point the British owned it.  We think the British have done a fine job with things they once owned. The island is a popular spot for photo shoots – both wedding and just normal magazine stuff.   We will post a picture of this later.  They go into these little vans to change clothes for the next shot. The heat index was around 110-114 yesterday. I don't know how they are changing clothes in between shots, since we were sweating just standing in the shade!

Sunday night we went over to the Garden Hotel to have dinner with our friends from Utah.  The lobby is very nice, but our friends are not happy at all with their room. The hallway is being used as pet bathroom area, they got snubbed in the hotel restaurant and could not get served, she is seeing new bug bites on their son and is wondering if there is fleas or bed bugs in their room, English amongst the staff is not common so they have to rely on their facilitator to communicate with the hotel staff, and the internet is about as fast as dial up. We had considered changing hotels, since our rate increased early this week and our facilitator has repeatedly made it clear that she is not happy with our choice of hotels, but after hearing this couples problems, why would we move?   There are so many adoptive families in our hotel and Holt International even has an office here, so this can't be that bad.

We all went to Pizza Hut for dinner.  Other than the service being really slow, it was good pizza.  Both our kids did great considering the length of time it took to get all things done.

Highlight of the night was after Dana took Ellie to the bathroom she came running out to Rob and wanted him to lift her up.  That continued into the night and she let him carry her to the cab.   This is so encouraging and will make the return trip a lot easier if she can have 2 parents instead of 1.

On Monday, we had our follow-up medical appointment to check the TB test. Ellie was not happy to be back in the medical facility, but with a well timed fruit snack distraction (provided by mom extraordinaire), she only cried a bit. Afterward, we went to the zoo – heat index again over 100 and our facilitator says there are a lot of mosquitoes, sounds like a great day at the zoo!   We saw the panda bear as well as the usual zoo line up. Ellie wasn't terribly interested in the animals and didn't want to get out of the stroller, but all in all, it was a good outing.

For lunch we wanted to pick up some fast food noodle something on the way back to the hotel.  Our guide who has lived here for 30 years didn't know of any food near our hotel – only near the Garden Hotel, so we had to drive by that hotel on the way back to ours.   The lunch ended up being a little over $7 for 2 bowls.  That might not sound like much, be we can get 3 full meals at McDonalds for less than $6, so we were a bit taken back at the prices of this local restaurant.  Perhaps the prices were higher since it was right across the street from the Garden Hotel.

We are having a few issues with pictures, but hope to post more within the day.

Saturday was the medical exam.  Ellie was in all kinds of an attitude at breakfast and we knew we were in for a fun day! J The first station at the medical is the visa picture – just the picture.  Ellie went completely hysterical, crying and having a fit.  We will try to post her visa picture later – but we thought if the picture was bad, just wait till we have to deal with needles!

Ellie clung to Dana for her life during all the exam stations. At the ENT station, the doctor said that he didn't even have to use the tongue depressor since she was screaming so loud, he could just look down her throat. I think we won the award for the loudest child at the medical exam. It was exhausting for everyone.

We went back to the hotel for naptime (for Dana too! :) After nap, we decided to venture out to check out the local scene and see if we can pick up some additional clothes.  There is a children's market just down the street.  We saw a store selling shoes and as we looked in the window at the shoes, the store worker got up and turned off the lights. Apparently, he was now closed at 4:13pm.   We were not optimistic we were going to be successful. On the next floor, we found some willing shopkeepers and managed to pick up a few things.   The clothes are definitely more expensive than we were thinking they would be. We bought a pair of sandals, 1 pants, 1 shorts, and 2 shirts for $103 CNY which is about $16 USD. The shirts are very thin (actually 1 is a PJ shirt that we are going to use as a normal shirt). $16 doesn't seem a lot of money for what we bought, but the quality is also not very high.  We are struggling to find "simple" clothes.  Everything is blinged out with added bows, lace, glitter and such.

Later we went to the executive lounge for dinner. Whatever fight we have had with our agency about hotels – not having to pay for breakfast or dinner and having access to snacks all day is a blessing for sure. Ellie had been looking at our family picture book before dinner, so we let her take it to dinner. That was all fine until she started to tear the binding apart – like down to the staple level.  Dana took it away from her and she got upset and wanted it back. Well anyone can see where this is going….. When Dana wouldn't give it back to her, the tantrum began.  Dana and Ellie left and went back to the room for the all out screaming fit.  Dana sat on the couch while Ellie stood in the room and screamed while looking in a mirror. After about a minute, Dana calmly said "if you are done having a fit, you can have some banana".  As if a light switch went off, she took a big sigh, came over and had a bit of banana.  Dana then asked her if she was ready to go back and see daddy… another big sigh and then she pointed to the door and said "daddy".  So back to the lounge we went where finished out the night without event.

Earlier in the day we had met an adoptive family from NC that had just arrived in Guangzhou. We let them borrow our stroller that we had rented for 24 hours from the concierge.  Post dinner, we were giving Ellie a bath and the family stopped by to return the stroller.  Dana talked to the family for a bit and Ellie let Rob finish bath time, including letting him hold her all wrapped up in a towel.   Priceless night for Rob.

Bedtime is almost unreal.   We start the routine with yogurt and PJ's.  After she goes to the bathroom, she just goes and crawls in the pack-n-play without issue.   We are sure this won't last forever, but boy is it nice not to have that fight everyday.

Sunday we are off to Shamian Island to do some shopping.

Made it to Guangzhou..

It was a long day – we checked out of the hotel at 11 – went to the orphanage.  This has to be the nicest orphanage we have seen.   It is a like a small city – complete with a running track!  Pictures to follow later.   There is only 1 orphanage per city, which was surprising to us.   They had a music room, separate buildings – really it was remarkable.  Almost makes the required "donation" seem like it is going to the places it should for once.

As for Ellie – she did great with the whole trip – waived to some workers we knew, but held on to Dana for most of the time. At the end, her special nanny came to say goodbye…. Something we had requested NOT happen.  This involved a bunch of tears on Ellie's part and made for a sad exit….  Her fit wasn't long, and there was candy involved, but it was upsetting for us nonetheless.

Off to the airport (note no naptime or lunch in these events).   Security was a bit of heartache as Dana's passport number was on Rob's ticket.  We didn't book these tickets, our agency did.  They got a supervisor involved and all seemed OK.  Nothing like being held up with a passport issue in China to make your heart skip a beat J  The rest of security was fine, although they of course made Ellie take that precious backpack off, which proved to be a near on the floor tantrum – but backpack back on and 2 smarties later all is well.

We are all getting pretty hungry at this point – Ellie had just about exhausted our supply of cherrios we brought.  Rob went scouting for some food, but none of the airport restaurants had take out – all sit down.   We wanted to sit near the gate, so we ended up with pop, a candy bar, and a box of shortbread type cookies.  There was nothing to be found in the pretzel type category.  Most of the packages in the store were totally in Chinese and seemed to be meat or soup related.

Our flight was delayed – due to weather.  We couldn't figure that one out, nice day here and there.  On the board they just put "Delayed" – with no time.  They had a hand written sign on the desk that said under new time "not fixed yet".   Hungry, tired with no end date of departure – makes happy travelers.   Ellie and Dana road the poor man roller coaster while Rob hung out by the gate.  About 20seconds after we committed to going to a restaurant for food, they announced our flight – YEAH!

Bus to tarmac to plane uneventful, although very hot.   Shortly after wheels were up, Ellie fell asleep and slept until we started our decent.   We saved her food and had her munch on some as we were coming down.

A bit of a scuffle with our agency about hotels – classic example of REALLY bad communication, but we are in the Marriott that we had made a reservation for. 

Saturday morning is medical – always a painful part for the parents in the adoption process.   We are not looking forward to the TB test.  US Consulate things on Tuesday – we are back to doing a bit of paperwork, which is always more exciting than waiting around, as bad as that sounds.

Pictures and more tomorrow sometime.

Thursday was another tourist day.  We took a boat ride on the West Lake – which is what makes Hangzhou one of the biggest tourist towns in China.  We say "town" in jest however – there are over 7mil people who live here.

Ellie got hungry or tired or just decided she was 2 and comfortable today.  She was a little "atti-TWO-dy" while walking around.  Our guide asked her if she wanted to stay and play around outside for a bit longer and she stomped her foot with a "NO!".   It's been awhile since we have had a 2 year old, we are trying not to laugh out loud at her behavior.

After tourist stuff – we were able to find her finding spot (The place where Ellie was found after being abandoned).  Our guide was excited it was still there as sometimes buildings are torn down and new ones put up. She was left in a busy, but residential area, so she would have been found very soon we think.

For lunch Rob went with our guide to a nearby noodle place.  They were not at all happy about the westerner being in the store and were VERY slow in preparing the order – serving plenty others before ours.   We are convinced had we not had the guide, we would not have been allowed to order at all. The noodles however were fantastic, and we wanted some for dinner – so we asked one of the bell boys to go get us a bowl of noodles, which happened for him in lightening fast speed.  Even with a huge tip to him, our total was only $3 for a bowl at dinner.

Uneventful evening around the hotel – Ellie was a bit more fussy then she has been – we don't know if she is just becoming more comfortable and therefore more 2ish, but when it became close to bedtime – she actually started to whine and pointed to the bed.  As if to say "why are you keeping me up so late?".  It was funny and as a big bonus, she let Rob put her to bed, so that was a happy ending to the day.

Friday will be a big day for Ellie. We will start the day by going to the orphanage. We are quite nervous about this because of how withdrawn she became the other day when we were back in the room where we first met her. She will not have an official naptime due to the schedule (hoping she'll sleep on the flight), we are switching hotels (could be stressful for her), and finally it will be her first airplane ride. Please keep us in your prayers. I think that we'll make it through fine today, but it might be quite a rough day.

More pictures will be posted later/tomorrow.