China trip – Day 5: December 2014
Note: We finally got some more videos uploaded to the Day 4 SmugMug gallery. There’s only 1 video that’s causing us some problems and won’t upload, but otherwise every picture/video we took from “Gotcha†day is there. Also, there’s only 2 videos in this Day 5 gallery for now, but we’re going to try and add more later.
Leslie: Sorry for the slight delay in this post. Jeff and I fell asleep at 8 pm when we were putting Han to bed and so we didn’t finish writing up the day or get anything posted. I’m sure you will all forgive the delay.
Today we completed all of the adoption paperwork, meaning that Han is legally ours forever! We cannot believe how well everything has gone up to this point. Last night Han slept between the two of us. He had no trouble falling asleep, but it is kind of hilarious to watch. He talks to himself and plays for about 5 minutes and then just rolls over and is asleep. In the middle of the night he woke up, then cuddled up next to me and grabbed my hand and wrapped my arm around him then fell back asleep. We actually had to wake him up this morning, but there were no tears, just a smile after a short moment of confusion. He ate a great breakfast, including his first taste of peanut butter, which he LOVED. As is common with children from orphanages (so we have heard), he will eat and eat and not ever stop, so we do have to cut him off at meal times. It feels really horrible telling your child that he cannot eat anymore right now, but we really don’t want him to make himself sick. It does seem as though he is starting to understand that there will always be more food available; so we are hopeful the overeating won’t last much longer.
Anyway, after breakfast we still had some time before we were meeting our guide, so we walked around on the pedestrian mall outside of our hotel. It is a much different experience early in the morning. Rather than hordes of people, there are large groups of adults doing Tai Chi. We also saw what appeared to be a meet up group of people with their small poodles. Tiny, fluffy dogs appear to be popular here. After our walk we met up with our guide, Amanda, and drove to some government office (“Registration Center for Marriage and Adoptionâ€) where we completed our adoption paperwork, had a small interview where we were asked why we were adopting and what our plans were for Han’s education, then had our first official family photo taken for our adoption paperwork. We then headed over to the office of the notary and finished all of our signatures. At that point, the adoption was final. It felt slightly anti-climactic as it felt like he was ours from the moment they brought him to us, but now we have the official paperwork from the Chinese government. We thought we had to wait until Friday to get his passport, but they gave it to us when we completed the paperwork. There seems to be some paperwork on the back end that the Holt office has to complete, but everything we need to do is done for now. When we fly to Guangzhou on Friday, we will start the process of getting everything ready for his immigration to the US; but Wednesday and Thursday of this week are free days for us to tour Shanghai.
We went back to the hotel to have a rest after the busy morning. Jeff went out and brought lunch back to the room. We have discovered that Han LOVES soup. He also does not know how to use a spoon (we are fairly certain all the children are fed by the caretakers at the orphanage), but has a very independent streak and wants to do things himself. Lunch was messy. After lunch Han and I took a nap. When we woke up we all went out and walked around a beautiful park that is about 5 minutes from our hotel. When we started to get a little cold, we walked through another mall (seriously, there are gigantic malls every 5 feet). Han is a big fan of escalators so we rode up to the seventh floor and then back down. We ended up going to dinner at a Kenny Rogers’ Roasters in a different mall. Why Kenny Rogers’ Roasters? Because Kenny Rogers, that’s why. The menu was awesomely bizarre. Jeff just got a “traditional†roast chicken dinner (actually pretty similar to what you’d find in the US). I ordered what she thought was a baked potato stuffed with vegetables and cheese, but what turned out to be a baked potato stuffed with vegetables and mayonnaise. That first bite was a bit of a surprise. Han had a bowl of soup and then parts of our dinners. After dinner we went back to the giant children’s store to buy a bib for our messy messy soup lover and we let Han pick out a small package of cookies (“Hello Panda†creme-filled ones, which you likely have seen before as they have them in the US). He was beyond excited about the cookies and held on to them, tightly, the whole way back to the hotel. We barely made it in the door before he was trying to rip into the package.
When we received descriptions of Han prior to meeting him there were several times where he was described as “naughty” — that personality is starting to make an appearance. He is going to be a handful in the very near future. We ended up having to take some toys away because he was throwing them. Right now it doesn’t seem to phase him, he just moves on to the next toy, but we will see how things progress.
It was a really great, though exhausting, day. We are still so amazed by how well the transition is going. Han refers to Jeff as Baba and Leslie as Mama when he is trying to get our attention, he loves to cuddle and be tickled, and is very quick to smile. He is a very easy child to fall in love with.
Jeff: Since Leslie did the play-by-play, I’ll do the color commentary.
During our morning walk, it was interesting to see people just out in the open exercising. There were two separate groups (mainly older women) doing tai-chi. The groups were about 20 meters away from each other, one group dressed mainly in red, one mainly in blue, so it looked like they were preparing for battle. The small fluffy dog meet-up was nearby. There were a few people just doing random calesthenics on their own. One guy was running backwards back and forth in front of a store. Two older women were in front of a department store doing subtle coreagraphed dances while a boom box played pop tunes like Blurred Lines. (They were actually pretty good dancers but had absolutely no emotion on their faces.) It was interesting to see everyone “exercising†in this very public place but also a bit bizarre.
The “official†adoption process was pretty straightforward. It feels a lot like going in for a medical procedure, or buying a house, where they ask you the same questions over and over and over, and you fill out the same information about 50 different times. Given how many times I’ve had to provide the info, I’m surprised I don’t have our passport numbers and their expiration dates memorized by now.
The other woman in the pictures at the “Registration Center†(where Han has his green hat and backpack on) is one of the nannies from the orphanage. She spoke no English so conversation was tough but he obviously knew her very well. The other family who we met yesterday (their son being from the same orphanage) was there too. We all went into this room that looked like a Vegas wedding chapel where we had the “official†ceremony. We got up on stage and got the official paperwork and got our picture taken, and they did the same.
Notaries here are different than in the US. Here they’re more like lawyers — we had to go to a special building that it seems like is just full of notaries and the waiting room felt like a DMV. If you want to get married, buy a house, etc. you have to come to a place like this. Luckily I think there was a guy from the orphanage who acted as our “advance team†so it didn’t take too long.
They seem opposed to napkins here, which is a problem when you have a small child who likes to eat soup and has extremely limited ability to use a spoon. At most restaurants, you get 1 napkin at your place setting, and the napkin is best described as a single square of 1-ply toilet paper. I’m amazed at how they do it, especially considering how messy it can be eating with chopsticks. We found napkin dispenser at Starbucks, much like you’d see at one in the US, and grabbed a whole bunch to carry around with us. I think the other customers thought we were crazy but we went through half of them at dinner.
There are so many stores and restaurants here. For people like us who are indecisive with restaurants, it’s a challenge. Limiting our choices to places that have (a) picture menus and (b) at least some English on the menu has helped. We were the only people in the restaurant for dinner, but that may say more about the fact that we ate at a Kenny Rogers Roasters than anything. It was interesting to see the menu talk about “traditional†American dishes and seeing things like pineapple fried rice and milk tea on the menu.
I’ve was prepared for more native Chinese coming up and asking questions about Han — is he your baby, is he Chinese, etc. — and having people stare. We were told to expect this — Chinese people are just curious and they act as one big giant family. Maybe it’s because we’re in a big city and it’s easier to blend in, or maybe it’s because this sort of thing is more common here, but it hasn’t really happened too much. We were told to expect grandmothers coming up to us to give us unsolicited advice. Our guide Amanda did tell us to make sure we bundled him up well when we went outside. He had 3 layers on, but I think it’s because they were 3 “normal†layers. Kids here are not just layered and bundled, but each layer seems to be puffier than the last. The feeling seems to be that if they can bend their arms or legs, the aren’t bundled/padded enough. It is very cute to see kids all over, basically looking liked human-themed stuffed animals.
I did break down and ask Amanda to explain the currency to me. The Yuan bills I could figure out, but there are coins too, which I wasn’t expecting. Imagine that if there were dollar bills AND dollar coins, and there were dimes AND bills that were the equivalent of dimes, and there were 50-cent pieces. Combine that with the fact that there are 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, and 1 yuan notes, and that 100 yuan is equivalent to about $16, and it means that I feel like a big spender with my pocket overflowing with random bills and coins.
Food here is generally pretty cheap — enough food for the 3 of us for lunch was about $12… of course, it took about 7 bills and coins to pay for it.
See videos and pictures below or in our China: Day 5 SmugMug gallery.
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