Adoption Blog

Last Day in China

Well, our China journey is coming to an end. We have an appointment at the US Consulate at 11:30am to take an oath, we check out of our hotel around 2:00, and our flight leaves at 6:30pm. What an incredible journey!

Kaylee is doing GREAT! She is making a lot of progress with her muscle development. And she smiles and laughs all the time. She is one of the happiest babies I have ever seen.

We have thoroughly enjoyed China, but we are ready to come home.

Here are a few of my thoughts on China...

Out of the three areas that we visited, Hong Kong, Changsha, and Guangzhou, we enjoyed Changsha & Guangzhou the best. But we were not crazy about Hong Kong. HK reminds me of NYC and I'm just not a big fan of mega cities.

Changsha was great because it was more authentic than Guangzhou. The area surrounding the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou was sort of a tourist trap for Adoptive Families. You had to venture beyound walking distance to see the real Guangzhou. But Changsha was the real deal. It was an extremely heavily populated area. Traffic was scary. It was worse than NYC and LA combined. Haha... And it's amazing to see people on old bicycles riding out in traffic. It's even more amazing to see one of these bikes pulling an old fashioned cart that is overloaded with supplies. You wouldn't believe how much stuff they pack into a cart or on trucks. It's actually very funny to see it. You just watch thinking it's going to come crashing down. But it doesn't.

Guangzhou was also nice. Most families from the US who adopt from China stay at the White Swan Hotel because the US Consulate is a few blocks away. This was one of the nicest hotels we have ever stayed at. They have a clinic on the third floor, a play room for children/babies, and a waterfall in the middle of the hotel. Every adoptive family that stays at the White Swan gets a Barbie Doll from Mattel. But not just a normal Barbie Doll. This is a Mother with an adopted Chinese baby girl. On the back of the box it reads "This souvenir is presented by Mattel (HK) Ltd. to adopting parents of Chinese orphan children staying at the White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou, China." Very nice!

As I mentioned before, the area around the White Swan is sort of a tourist trap for adoptive families. But it's actually very nice. There are tons of things to buy. And if anyone has already been there they will certainly agree. Most of the people in our group had to buy an extra piece of luggage to haul back all of the stuff they bought. Including us. It's a lot of fun. The shops are great. You negotiate the price of everything. But it's not bad. And the thing that I really appreciated was that it is not a high pressure sales environment. You will get people standing outside of their shops asking you to come in. But I just always told them that we would come back tomorrow. :-) And they were okay with that. I've been to cities where people made you feel like they were going to go hungry if you didn't buy from them. Guangzhou is not like that. If you go, be sure to stop by The Lady Bug (next to the 7-11) and get some sqeaky shoes. And go by Jennifer's place and get a few traditional Chinese dresses for your daughter. The best part is the price. I've never seen $1 go as far as it did in Guangzhou!

The people in China are extremely nice. We really enjoyed all of the people at the hotels. They went above and beyond anything we experience at the best hotels in the US. And they do it with such a sincere attitude. It appeared as though they were very proud of their country and they wanted us to leave with a fantastic impression. Hat's off to them. We could learn a lot from them.

I do have 2 complaints though. First, the smoking. Ugh... it seems like almost everyone in China smokes. And if you don't you are treated like a minority. We asked for non smoking at a restaurant and they put us in a small roped off section in the back. Haha... They smoke in every building. They were even smoking at the hospital. They think nothing of sitting down right next to a baby and having a smoke. They even smoke in elevators! Ah, elevators, that is my second complaint.

I have never seen anyone treat elevators like the Chinese do. If you are on a packed elevator and you think it is full, you might find another five or ten people who try to pack in. I actually missed my floor once because I was crammed in the back. It's unbelievable. And although I found the Chinese people to be very friendly, they sort of have an aggressive approach to elevators. Several times I had people just rush past me to get on when I was not only the first one waiting, but the only one waiting until the doors opened. Then, out of nowhere, ten people just fly past you like you aren't even standing there. I'm left staring at a full elevator. The people on the elevator are probably wondering why I'm not getting on. But I prefer to wait until I can catch an elevator with a little bit of breathing room.

Well, I guess I have one more negative thing to comment on. The food. We just didn't enjoy the food. Partly because we were a bit cautious. But in general it just wasn't good. On two occassions, people we were eating with found a chicken head in their food. And one time we ordered beef with another family and there was this long round thing in it. When our friend Gary asked the waitress what it was she said it was a goose neck. But we ordered beef??? The best meal of the day was always breakfast. The hotels have huge buffets. But by the end of this trip we were done with breakfast buffets.

Let me wrap this up by saying it was a fantastic trip. Our adoption agency, CCAI, did a fantastic job. They took care of every detail for us. And the local reps that work for CCAI in China were the absolute best!

China was awesome! Our little baby girl Kaylee has already changed our lives. And we are so happy that we made the decision to adopt from China.

What an incredible journey...

Posted by Mark at February 1, 2005 07:25 PM