Day Out

This morning we headed to Anna's orphanage around 9am. We were still a little leery about how Anna might react, but on the way there she fell asleep in the carrier, so we thought it would work out just fine for her to visit.

We were greeted by the orphanage director (we had met her already as she brought Anna to us on Monday), she is friendly and seemed very fond of Anna. The other couple that is here was on the visit with us as well. We were told that there were about 600 children there, but only 100 of them actually lived in the orphanage, the rest were in foster care. We found out that Anna had only returned to the orphanage 2 days before we met her. The orphanage was very clean and the nannies were all very friendly...in fact when we entered the living quarters, about 5 nannies came out and surrounded Anna going on and on about her. We don't know everything they were saying, but they all seemed to love her and Anna did great with it all (the carrier really makes her feel secure)!

After the visit, our guide took us to a traditional Chinese tea house where we were about to sample several local teas. It was a really neat experience!

We found a play area in the lobby of the hotel and met the other couple for a play date late this afternoon. After dinner tonight we decided to give her a real bath...Greg inflated the ducky tub we brought and she loved it! After bath, baby had bottle and baby fell fast asleep...it's 9pm now and she has been asleep for about an hour! All in all - a great day here in Kunming.

Better night

We had a much better night here in Kunming. As I type this Anna is still sleeping and has been sleeping soundly for almost 9 hours straight now. Yesterday changed things up a bit and it seemed to help. The first big change was I started "wearing" her yesterday - the first time was as we went down for breakfast and she was asleep w/in minutes and woke only toward the end of breakfast and let me feed her some eggs and rice. After breakfast we walked to Wal-Mart with our guide, Anna stayed away while we were there, but was asleep again on the walk home and allowed us to lay her down once we were back for a little bit. She played, fairly happily all afternoon. Our hotel had a fire drill (yes, a Chinese fire drill) at 2:30pm, so we went on a walk with another couple to a nearby lake...she slept in the carrier the whole time. So, when it came time for bedtime, we decided not to even put on her pj's, but instead we just put her in the carrier and decided to walk to hotel until she fell asleep, ... she was asleep within 30 minutes and let us put her down when we got back and is still sleeping peacefully. Praise God!

This morning we are meeting our guide in the hotel lobby at 9am and heading to the orphanage. We are hoping this won't be upsetting to Anna. We are still deciding if we want her to go in or not. We're still when the took her back to the orphanage from her foster family, we'll find out today.

After the orphanage visit Helen, our sweet guide, is going to take us a traditional Chinese tea house, we're looking forward to that!

We'll leave with a couple pictures - one as she was bundled up for our outting yesterday and the other of her sleeping this morning. We will try to update again this evening. Words can't express our thanks to you all for your thoughts and prayers.

Prayers Please

No pictures this time, just a request for prayers. Anna seems to be having some serious bouts with grieving, particularly during nap/bed time. She has been mostly very content otherwise, but during these times she makes it clear that it is not us she wants (at least not yet). We were aware that this was likely to happen, but it is very difficult to watch and not be able to do anything for her. This is also obviously affecting sleep time for all.

We know that we have your prayers already and have felt those prayers. Please continue to pray for Anna and for wisdom and strength for her new parents. On a lighter and more rejoicing note, we just had our first poop! :)

Thank you all for all of your thoughts, prayers and words of encouragement. We hope to update you soon with more pictures (sorry no video, having trouble uploading) ... and perhaps some progress with the transition of our new family.

Love,
Greg & Laura

Our First Night

Well, we survived our first night. It was a long, sleepless one though. After having such a great day yesterday, poor Anna had a pretty rough night last night. We think she was grieving pretty hard when it came time for bed. She cried on and off pretty much until about 4am until she finally let Greg put her down. Before that we had her in bed with us and she would almost fall alseep and then she'd keep looking up at us, as if she was just checking to see if we were still here...heartbreaking! We all slept for a few hours after Greg put her down.

This morning, though, she woke up a happy, smiling girl. Please pray that she has a better night tonight. Today we are going to Wal-Mart with our guide - although Greg already made a trip there early yesterday evening with an adoptive father from Holland (they met their son at the same time we met Anna). Anyway, today we're taking the camera to Wal-Mart - Greg said it was picture worthy!

This afternoon we might venture out to Green Lake Park with the other adoptive couple here. It's supposed to be really nice. Either tomorrow or Thursday we'll get to visit Anna orphanage, although she wasn't there long, she went to live with a foster family last September.

We'll leave with a few pictures from yesterday (click to enlarge) Oh, and from what we've seen Kunming is beautiful, the temps are in the 60s and really pleasant, also much less smog that Beijing.

Too Good To Be True

We promise to get you more later, but wanted to get a quick post out ...

How could we possibly describe this day? We met our Anna and she is even better than our dreams. Things happened very quickly (more details later), but couldn't have gone more perfect. She didn't cry, she didn't even fuss or wimper ... she smiled.

Enough talk ... here are a couple of pics from the first time holding our beautiful baby girl ...

Quick update from Kunming

We made it to our hotel in Kunming about midnight Sunday night. We thought we'd go ahead a post a few pictures from our last day in Beijing...Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and The Temple of Heaven. They were all amazing! We really enjoyed Temple of Heaven as there is an area when you walk in that all of the retired people gather and play hackysack, sing, dance, etc...it was awesome to experience that!


Our flight to Kunming took off at 8:10pm and we landed around 11:30. We are at the Grand Park hotel and it seems very nice. We are meeting our guide, Helen, in the lobby at 8:30am and heading to the civil affairs building where we will do some paperwork and MEET ANNA!!!! So, it sounds that will happen fairly early in the morning. Not sure of our schedule after that, but as soon as we get back here and get a chance, we will post pictures!


Here are a few pictures from our last day in Beijing:

Bye from Beijing

Good morning / evening, All! Well ... we have a big day ahead of us. As mentioned in our previous post, we will have a somewhat leisurely morning and will meet our group at Noon to head out for some more sightseeing ... which we will wrap up this evening. Then we will be delivered with all of our stuff to the airport to catch a 3-hour flight to Kunming, departing at approx. 8:10 pm. That will put us getting in pretty late, and we imagine we will have an early morning the next day ... The Day! So, perhaps this is the calm before the storm(?) :) God has prepared us ... we are ready.

So, in all likelihood this will be our last post before Anna is placed in our arms (chills as I just typed that!). It 's hard to believe the time has arrived ... we woke up this morning feeling rested and talking about how, in just a matter of hours, we will be on a plane to our little girl. Amazing what God has done.

We'll leave with a few pics. from our hotel room here...note that glass wall you are seeing on the other side of the bed is the bathroom, not a lot of privacy going on there!

p.s. We are able to read to read your comments now and they are keeping us going - thank you all so much!!

An Amazing Day

Ni Hao (hello)! Today we woke up 5:30am, feeling pretty rested and ready to start the day. The breakfast buffet was wonderful - best.coffee.ever! We met our guide and the other family we are here with in the lobby at 8am and hit the road for The Great Wall. It was about an hour drive from our hotel. On the way we, stopped at a Jade Gallery and did a little shopping. The Great Wall was awesome! The sky was clear and blue and while the temps were cold, the winds weren't too bad. We hiked to the 4th tower, which according to our guide Michael, made us heroes! Afterwards, we drove to the Friendship restaurant for lunch. We had a couple hours downtime in our room before heading to dinner with our travel mates...that was a pretty funny experience! Greg and I took them to the restaurant that Michael took us to last night because we figured we could just order the same thing as last night ... well, we did, but we had a little trouble when it came to ordering the hot tea to drink, none of us knew how to say tea and nobody at the restaurant could figure out what we were saying. It took about 10 minutes and a lot of laughing between all of us, but we finally got it figured out! After dinner we loaded up and headed for the Flying Acrobat show...it was amazing!

We're headed to bed now. Tomorrow we checkout at noon and head to Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, and The Temple of Heaven. Our 3 hour flight to Kunming is at 8:10 tomorrow night and at that time we will find out what time Monday morning we get to meet Anna! We can't believe it's time - we can't wait!!!!

Here are some pictures of our day (click to enlarge):








Our guide, Michael

We're here!

We made and are in our hotel in Beijing! Our flight got out of Chicago a little late, so we landed in Beijing about 5:05pm. The flight was long, we slept maybe 4 hours on and off...glad to be here! Once we got through immigration and got our luggage, we were greeted by our Chinese guide "Michael". He was waiting for us with an AAI (our agency) sign along with another couple from AAI that landed a couple hours before us. It took about 45 minutes for our driver to get to our hotel, we got checked in and then went to dinner. Michael took to a restaurant next door and ordered up 5 dishes for Greg and I to share...needless to say, it was way more than we needed. It was all great and only cost $10.25.

 

We're back in our room now, it's 9pm and we're ready to crash. Tomorrow we will eat the breakfast buffet in the hotel and then meet Michael and the other couple in the lobby at 8am and head to the Great Wall. We'll do a bit more touring after that, then we get a break for a couple hours before going to see the acrabat show tomorrow night!

 

That's all for now.  Thanks for all of your comments, now that we're here and blogger is blocked, I need to try to find a way to read the comments! Love you all!! Pictures to follow...

Beijing Bound!

(not our plane)

We made it to Chicago safe and sound. It's still snowing here, but our flight is on-time to depart to Beijing at 12:43. Thanks for all of your comments and so, so much for your prayers!

For you "foodies" out there, as we were sitting here typing this, we looked behind us and saw Anthony Bourdain looking at the departure board and then took off in a run to make his flight. He looked just like the same day-old self that you see on TV.

Still have a couple hours before we board, I think we're going to get a bite to eat and will be ready to sleep once we get on the plane. Next update should be from our hotel in Beijing!!

So far, so good

Went to bed about 1ish this morning and the alarm went off at 2:15. Our flight is on time to Chicago...hope to board in about 15 minutes or so. Now we just have to pray that Chicago isn't too delayed. We'll have a 5 hour layover there.

Quote of the day (so far): As we were eating a breakfast sandwich at the airport this morning, Greg very matter-of-factly says, "You know, this is a pretty big deal." I just about choked on my sandwich and laughed for about 5 minutes straight!

Anna's Room

Thought we'd leave you with a few pictures of Anna's room. It's pretty much complete, just need to hang a few more things once we get home.

We're all packed and heading to bed for a few hours sleep. The car to take us to the airport is supposed to be here at 3:34am (yikes). Please pray we get out of here and Chicago despite the snow!

Less than a week until our Forever Family Day!

Last night as we were making yet another (and hopefully last) trip to Target at 10pm, we realized that this time next week we would be waking up from our first night with Anna!

Thought I'd do another test post with the picture of Anna ... we just can hardly wait to scoop her up!!

Testing

Since blogger is typically blocked in China, I'm testing out the option to email our posts to blogger. If this one works, I'll try another later today with a picture.

 

Please pray that our flights all stay on schedule with this snowy, freezing cold weather we have happening right now ... not to mention the record breaking cold and snow that is happening in Beijing! Can't wait to get to the 60s in Kunming. Can't believe a week from now Anna will be with us!

Here is our itinerary!!

Well, we finally got our flights booked - our sweet China coordinator, Ming, ended up helping us get a good deal through another travel agency out of New York and saved us just over $350 on the flight we wanted!

Jan 7th we'll fly to Chicago at 6am and then go Chicago to Beijing and land in Beijing Friday at 4:25pm. Then on the way home, on Jan 22, we'll go Hong Kong to Chicago and Chicago to home, landing at 4:46pm Friday, Jan 22.

Here is what our in-country itinerary looks like:

January 8, 2010 - Arrive in Beijing.Your guide, Jean, will be there to meet your name

January 9-10, 2010 - Sightseeing in Beijing, which may include Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square and the Great Wall.

January 10, 2010 - Flight to Province. Our guide will take you to the airport in Beijing to then fly to Kunming in the evening. Your local guide, Mary will meet you in the airport terminal with the AAI sign. On your way to the hotel, your guide will inform you as to when you will see your child. It may be that same evening or the following morning!!!

January 10-15, 2010 - Processing paperwork in Kunming. Our guide will arrange your daily itinerary while in this city. Simply follow their instructions regarding the civil affairs appointment, notary office and checking your adoption paperwork.

January 16, 2010 - Flight to Guangzhou. Our guide will take you to the airport to fly to Guangzhou. Your guide, Judy, will meet you there with your name.Your child will need to have her medical exam done in Guangzhou prior to the Embassy appointment. Your guide will arrange this for you.

January 18, 2010 - Medical exam today.

January 19, 2010 - Your appointment with the U.S. Embassy in Guangzhou is today at 10:00 am. You do not have to appear at this appointment. Our guide will carry in all your papers at the time of the appointment.

January 20, 2010 - Today is at leisure.

January 21, 2010 - You will visit the U.S. Embassy today for your ceremony and receipt of your child’s visa to enter the United States. It is a brief ceremony. You will likely be able to take pictures outside the building.

Evening train to Hong Kong.

January 22, 2010 - Flight home!!