Adoption Blog

Shot & Cheesecake!

Today, Naomi & I got our third & final TwinRix (hep A & hep B) shot.

We received our first TwinRix shot on Oct 6th, 2004 & the second one on Nov 17th 2004. The first two shots protected us while we traveled. And technically, the third one is not required. But by getting the third shot, we are now protected for life.

On the way home, we stopped by the Cheesecake Factory and bought two pieces of cheesecake (we got them to go so we'll eat them this evening). The bill for 2 pieces of cheesecake = $15.12!

Zoinks! $7.56 for a piece of pie. That's wild! This better be some goooooood cheesecake!

Letters from China

In the upper left margin, you will see a link called Letters from China. If you have some spare time, read through them. They are emails that I wrote home to family and friends while we were in China. I finally decided to share them here at the Adoption Blog after receiving a lot of email requests asking for information about our trip to China.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading through them as I added them to the site. It brought back a lot of awesome memories. What an incredible journey!

Home from China

I tink i em stuffering fum jed wag...

31 hours of travel. Ugh... But Kaylee did GREAT. She travels like a champ! Perhaps she is destined to be a pilot one day. :-)

At approximately 10:00pm last night I had the pleasure of saying "Welcome to America" to little Kaylee as we touched down in San Francisco. At approximately 10:00am this morning I had the pleasure of saying "Welcome Home" to little Kaylee as we arrived at our house in Raleigh.

What an amazing journey...

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...

Red Couch Photo

Most groups that stay at the White Swan take a Red Couch Photo. Kaylee was sleeping so Naomi had to hold her.

I added more pictures. Click on photos in the upper left margin. You might have to click on REFRESH or hit F5.

White Swan Hotel

Yesterday we arrived in Guangzhou and we are staying at the White Swan Hotel. Almost everyone from the US who adopts from China stays here because the US Consulate is close by.

The hotel is beautiful. I'll post pictures of the hotel and more pics of Kaylee later today if I get a chance. Kaylee is doing GREAT!

Pictures

Click on Photos in the upper left margin.

Gotcha Day!

We have Kaylee. She is GREAT.

We had a real adventure yesterday that included a trip to the hospital. But the news was good. I will post details when I get a chance.

I'm having trouble FTP'ing so I can't post pictures at the moment. As soon as I can I will post pictures.

Kaylee is beautiful.

Hello from Changsha!

We just arrived in Changsha. It's 10:56pm Sunday night. We have a meeting at 7:50am in the morning to fill out paper work. Then, we leave around 10:00am to go get Kaylee.

Wow! I guess that's about the only word I can come up with at the moment...

Photos

I added a photo album. Just click on the photos link in the left margin. I haven't taken many pictures yet. But I'll take more and add them as soon as I can.

Heading to the Airport

We are making last minute preparations for the trip. Our flight leaves at 2:00pm this afternoon. I'm taking my laptop so I will posts updates and photos while we are in China.

It is truly amazing to think that we are days away from seeing Kaylee for the first time.

Here is a quick review of our itinerary:

Wednesday: Fly to Hong Kong
Thursday: Arrive in Hong Kong, rest & recover from trip
Friday: Group tour of Hong Kong
Saturday: Depart Hong Kong for Changsha (this is where Kaylee is)
Sunday: Gotcha day! We will receive Kaylee at approximately 10:00am
Monday: Registration & Notary appointments at the Civil Affairs Office
Tuesday: Free day - optional shopping trip to get baby supplies
Wednesday: Free day - optional 1/2 day city tour to visit Embroidery Factory
Thursday: Free day - documents returned from Civil Affairs Office
Friday: Depart from Changsha to Guangzhou
Saturday: Free day
Sunday: Kaylee gets a physical and photo for her visa. Group meeting
Monday: Free day - Kaylee's visa will be delivered to the U.S. Consulate
Tuesday: Go to U.S. Consulate to take an oath
Wednesday: Depart from Guangzhou for home
Thursday: Arrive home at 9:44am

We Are Going to China!

We received confirmation today on our travel dates. We leave on Wednesday the 19th and return on February the 3rd. 16 days!

We fly from Raleigh to Charlotte, Charlotte to San Francisco, & from San Francisco to Hong Kong!

Wow! I can't even begin to tell you how exciting this is!

Travel Updates!

We interrupt this blogcast to bring you the following information...

Our Travel Update arrived today! We don't have an exact departure date yet but they told us to be prepared to leave between 01/19 & 01/22.

Wow, this is awesome!

Travel Group 715

We just found out that we are in travel group 715. At this point that doesn't really tell us much. Our agency puts all of the June DTC families into travel groups based on where their babies are located in China. Monday we should know what providence we will be traveling to. But this is cool because now we can get to know the other families in our group before we travel.

Ouch Part II

We just got back from getting our second set of immunization shots. Today we got TwinRix (combo of Hep A & Hep B) and we also got Typhoid. I think we could have skipped the Typhoid shot, but we just prefer to err on the side of caution.

After we get our 3rd and final TwinRix shots the total cost for immunizations will be $765! So that's what I mean about Ouch! The shots don't bother us at all. The real pain was the cost. :-)

Ouch!

Noami and I got our immunization shots today! We both got TwinRix which is a combination of Hep A and Hep B together. We also got an Adult Polio shot. And I got an MMR.

We need to go back in 30 days and get another TwinRix. And then again in six months.

We decided to go to the county health department instead of having them done at our doctors office because it was a bit cheaper. The total cost for the shots today was $315. The TwinRix shot costs $70 each so we still have another $280 to pay because we need two more shots each.

We're going to talk to our adoption agency and our doctor about malaria and typhoid.

Immunizations!

We've got an appointment today with our doctor to talk about immunizations!

Update: It looks like we'll need to get the following...

- Flu Shot (we get these each year anyway)
- Adult Polio
- Hepatitis A (2 shots - 1 now, and 1 in six months)
- Hepatitis B (3 shots - 1 now, 1 in one month, and 1 in six months)
- MMR (measles/mumps/rubella - For me only. Naomi has hers)

We're trying to determine if any of this will be covered by our health insurance. If not, we're probably looking at somewhere between $600 and $800 for both of us.