Day Two - Changsha

Well it is 1:35 pm here in Changsha and Mom and Daughter are down for a nap. Our schedule today was breakfast, meet at the bus at 9:30 to go to WalMart. She is ruined already! I must say that overall these are very friendly and helpful people. They range from courious to where they come right up and start talking to Gracie to an appearance of almost anger. I want to say "What are you looking at" to some at times but I know that my reaction, not knowing the circumstances could very easily be the same. They have never been aggressive or rude however. Most just give a blank look as we walk by. Changsah is a busy city. From appearance it resembles most large cities in that there is a tremendous amount of traffic and people. I am sure in one of my previous blogs I noted there are about 3 million people here. It is amazingly clean. The people dress very Western with a tinge of local idenity. Our drivers in both Beijing and here in Changsha are marvels. These folks drive so close to one another you literally could touch the other vehicles. It is organized chaos and they do it quite well. In Beijing there was every type of food one could imagine. Here in Changsah it is pretty localized. You still have KFC and McDonalds, even Pizza but not much other international cuisine. Tonight we go to a "Famous" restaurant that's name translates to Red Eyes because it is very spicy. I was told that Susan our guide, who also happens to be our Helping Hand Representative, ordered "spicy fish head" as one of the dishes. Honestly, I can't wait to try it. Deena has done quite well in trying new foods and using chopsticks. Nothing Green yet however. The food is typically served on single item platters and at every table is a very large lazy susan to rotate the dishes directly in front of each of us. There is usually only one serving of any particular dish but there are no fewer than 5 or 6 dishes. This is all complemented by lots of rice. A point of interest is that you do not eat rice with chopsticks, they are used to shovel or push rice into your mouth by raising your bowl or small plate. Drinks are served only slightly chilled and there are no diet drinks with the meals as part of the service. Always a coke and sprite type of product, water, hot tea (which has not disappointed me yet) and beer. I find myself at night drinking a cup or small pot of the local tea in the room. In every room there is a water pot to boil water. This is used for tea and purifys what we need to make Gracies formula and wash/rinse our dishes. They are pretty cool. It's amazing how one makes do and becomes creative on ways to get things done as we have to rinse our tooth brushes in this water too. Needless to say we boil a lot of water. They supply you with drinking water in the rooms but it is only two bottles a day. We find our selves refilling them with the cooled purified water we have boiled. Well I need to sign off as "if the Girls wake up" we are going on an adventure to a drug store across the street from the Hotel to find "100 Year Old Chinese Formula". Later!

Rick <>< (copied that from pastor Chris)

It's Official

Here she is guys. Pictures 2 and 3 are from inside of the Department of Civil Affairs in Changsha (the city we are in). Picture number 1 is on the bus going back to the hotel. We will be here for 5 days total than on to Guangzhou. Gracie is beautiful. Her temperment is very playful and she talks alot. She eats well so we know she is a Coon. For a group of babies that left the only thing they know as home at 4:00 this morning, they are all doing very well. It is difficult to think that less than 9 hours ago her life was so different. Now our lives are so different. Tonight at 6:30 we have a dinner for the adoptive families. Here in Changsha there are only three from our original group here. We will catch up to another family in Guangzhou and the 5th family of our party left yesterday for Guangzhou to travel home after that. The hotel here is pretty amazing. It is a first class establishment that appears to cater to families adopting. There are statues of mothers with Babies, play rooms, toys, etc. Ironically it also attracts a large number of business men and the facility has businesses w/in. The people are awesome. Changzhou has about 3 million people and appears to be a much more liberal city. It is know for it's night life and restaurants. We have eaten quite well. In the morning it is a Western Breakfast with hints of Asia, rice, gongi, vegetables and dumplings. Along with this of course are waffles, eggs, bacon, etc. Most of our big meals to date have been very traditional. Well we need to get Gracie ready for dinner hoping she does not fall asleep before we go donwstairs. More later, enjoy the pictures and oh yea, by the way YEE HA! Praise God!!

She's Perfect

GOD IS SO GOOD! If you think that I was screaming this statement you are correct! After waiting almost two years for this process to complete, we arrived at the Office of Civil Affairs this morning at approximately 10:00 local time. We were leaving the office at 10:30 with our babies. What a whirlwind event. We have to return to the same office for paperwork at 2:30 which takes about two hours but officially she is now Gracie Marie Ming Coon. She is a healthy "Hunan Girl"!! For those of you who are unaware of what that means, she is "firey and opinionated". Already sounds just like her mother, imagine that! She has what appears to the "Gringo" eye a bruise referred to as Mongolian Spot on her back. This looks like a faint brusing that will fade as she gets older. It is said this is where she was pinched by God in the womb. After seeing her, holding her and feeling her breath on my neck I believe it. She has a strong grip and right now a pretty funky hair-do. We are not sure if this was from heat rash or something else. To describe it, if you shaved your head up the sides to just above you ears, and then let it grow in a couple of days along with a cowlick in the front of varing lengths, thats it. I am going to get my hair done like this!! In turn I will be speaking to others in our group to get the same style so be prepared. Later this evening we will add photos to the site. I must tell you that in the excitement of the moment, and again I say it happened pretty quick, I forgot to take the lens cap off the movie camera and was "just filming away" saying "It's not working!" Eventually I figured out what I had done and got some good stuff.

Mother's Day

Well this will be somewhat short, as it is 10:30 pm Sunday, and we get our beautiful little Gracie in about 12 hrs. It was quite a busy day again, all on about 6 hours of sleep since we left DFW on Thursday AM. We went to Tiennamen Square today and the Forbiddin City, an incredible amount of history and a ton of people. The most exciting thing we did today was go to an International Church Service in Beijing. It was very much like our service at home and the title of the sermon was "All God's Children are Adopted", it was very emotional as they also celebrated Mother's Day also. We are now in Changsha (Hunan), our babies will be brought to the Civil Affairs Building tomorrow around 10, then we have several steps of paperwork to do and then they are ours. It still hardly seems real! Hope all you MOM'S AND MOM'S TO BE HAVE A WONDERFUL MOTHER'S DAY!

Deena

Day One In China

Here we are at The Great Wall. What an awesome experience. There is no reasoning as to the steps however, they range from flats to 4 to 12-14 inches in height in some places. The wall is a facinating structure that twists and turns itself around the mountain. The towers you see in the distance are/were Guard Towers to look out over the valley to watch for raiding Mongols. Some are quite small others fairly large as they were used for garrisons. It was a beautiful day to be there as well. We climbed to the tower just over our inside shoulders, roughly a million miles away and 40,000 feet. Seriously, there are some 25,000 towers that line the wall and they are two arrow shots from each other in spacing. This way the soldiers could defend the whole wall at any given time. At this point in our day we were coming down and looking for a "Coke Lite". We tried to post additional photos but did not have the patience this evening. The Great Wall was our second stop of the day with a Jade Factory being the first. It is quite interesting to see how jade is carved and polished, not to mention how it was graded on a ABC type of scale. On the way back to the city we stopped at a Vase manufacturing facility. Famous for vases and lacquer paintings, this was something to see. Lastly we visited The Summer Palace in Beijing to more amazing buildings and an opportunity for everyone to get a look at "the Gringos". Our day begins early tomorrow as we go to The Forbidden Palace, an International Church and ultimately fly out to Hunan. Well it's 10:30 so gotta go for now. It's less than 48 hours before we get to see our "girl".

Rick

We're Here!!!

Well everyone we arrived today in the massive and I mean massive city of Beijing. It is actually quite facinating and beautiful. It is a mixture of Old World Culture and the most modern. It is very early morning your time 4:45 a.m., we on the other hand show the local time as 5:45 p.m. Tomorrow we go to a Jade Market, the Summer Palace and The Great Wall. We are running out of gas so more later!!

Rick & Deena

One Week From Today

We can hardly believe it but in 1 week we will be in China to begin a journey that will last "the rest of our lives". The journey of bringing one we waited so long for home. There is so much to do in these last couple of days it seems like the lists never end. At 7:40 a.m. on the 10th however when that plane takes off, we will go into a 3 day labor with delivery scheduled for Monday. It will still be Mothers Day here in the states, so "Happy Mothers Day" all. This is so beautiful because on Thursday the the 10th when we depart, it's Mothers Day in Mexico. (What that has to do with anything, I don't know it just seems to be monumental.) We are going to make a valid attempt to update the blog site while in China. I can not wait to send pictures back for all to see. If I am not crying too hard the first time Mommy holds her Gracie, we will put it on the web. God is so good and we have been so blessed.