Trip Photos Update

Here is the Fishing Girl statue in the Pearl River, the symbol of Zhuhai city (Jan. 21).

Jan. 21st, Zhuhai orphanage, the assembly hall, 

looks to be prepared for Chinese New Year celebration.

Miss Zoe "undercover" at the Victory Hotel in Guangzhou.

This photo was taken on Jan 20th. I and a Chinese comedian irritating mom by shutting the eyes, are waiting in the Immigration Clinic for Haifeng to finish.

This photo was taken on Jan. 20th, for the trip to the Immigration Clinic for Haifeng's physical.

Here is a picture of the lobby of the Victory Hotel.

This second photo was taken on Jan. 19th and represents the government building in downtown Guangzhou where we applied for the expedited passport.

This is a picture of Carrefour, the large French grocery store, where Haifeng got food she likes. It was taken on Wed, Jan. 19th, when we went there and applied for her expedited passport.

This picture was taken on Jan. 18th as we went back to the Guangdong Civil Affairs office to finish our paperwork.

The lady in front is the nanny who brought Haifeng from Zhuhai
and the lady behind her is Helen, our guide

The above photo was taken on the day we met Hai Feng.

Zoe and Me at the China Coast race in the Lion's Club in Hong Kong, which served as the gym and restroom for the starting area.

This picture of Zoe and me was taken by Julie outside the Comfort Inn by Detroit airport on the morning of Jan. 14, when we were delayed one day by our late flight from Jacksonville on the 13th.

This picture shows Haifeng with her teacher and Zoe 

at the Zhuhai orphanage.

Friday, February 18, 2011

We've been home three weeks now and Haifeng has made amazing strides.  

The first two weeks she was very depressed and missing her friends in Zhuhai orphanage.  Since then, we have had a wonderful interpreter over who has helped her immensely.  A vietnamese grandmother, friends of us, has also done some "teensitting" for us.  We have set up her computer and she is talking with her friends now.  

Today, she got a clean physical on her first visit to the doctor.  Perhaps China's signing of the Hague Convention was the reason our doctor here accepted her vaccinations she got at the International Immigration Clinic on Shamian Island, Guangzhou.  She got four shots there and thankfully, they were accepted as valid and she's good to go for school.  We plan to start her on February 28th.  We had resolved ourself to the fact that at 13, her adjustment would probably be very slow.  While her acquiring of english is still ahead of us, we are very thankful for the great strides she has made in the last week and the enormous number of people who have helped.  

Our local chapter of adoptive families also held their Chinese New Year's celebration last saturday night, Feb. 12th.  They very thoughtfully seated us with a family whose 18 yr old daughter had come over at 13.  She talked with Haifeng throughout the night.  Haifeng was also able to see all the adopted kids smiling and enjoying themselves.  This also had a very positive impact.  

We are looking forward now to the Spicy Hunan Reunion in June and continuing to make progress in the intervening months.  We feel so blessed at her progress, but the credit goes to Haifeng who has gone through a month that the rest of us can only marvel at and done remarkably well.

 

 

Saturday, January 29, 2011

We boarded our Hong Kong-Detroit flight on time and zipped back over Taiwan and Japan, then the Russian coast, south of Anchorage and down across Canada into Detroit.  Haifeng was probably "lost" in her own mind, but she did admirably and caused no problems.  This was especially commendable because we had found out she had some motion sickness, not being used to even riding in cars.  The pilot got us to Detroit 10 minutes early.  After 15 hours, you appreciate every minute.  

We could see the difference versus Chicago in 2007.  We had immigration to ourselves.  A few minutes later we heard the announcement for the flight from Tokyo to come to baggage claim.  Maybe that 10 minutes did it and got us ahead of them.   We remembered hustling nonstop in 2007 and barely making our Jacksonville flight.  This time we had an easier time of it.  In Jacksonville our daughter Jenicka picked us up, even though she had a bad cold.  

It's so nice to be home!

Thursday and Friday Update

Thursday, January 27, 2011

 

We departed the Victory Hotel in Guangzhou at 7am.  Helen and Mr Chu, our driver, took us to the airport and got us checked in.  We hated to say goodbye to them, but we are looking forward to a couple days in Hong Kong where enough people speak english you can do your own thing like in europe much easier.  

We flew Dragonair, a subsidiary of Cathay Pacific, to Hong Kong, with an Australian pilot.  We were glad we had already gotten flights over the fast train, because Chinese New Year or Spring Festival travel has already began big time in China, resulting in a extremely packed Guangzhou train station as many workers leave there for other parts of China.  Even our flight was slow to take off.  

Zoe meant to sit by mom but we had two pairs of seats in front of each other and Haifeng sit by her.  Zoe dropped an instant tear, but by takeoff, she was encouraging Haifeng, who was on her first flight, with "I love you" in Chinese.  

When we got to Hong Kong, we knew where to go to catch the hotel shuttle from our experience on the 16th, so it was a quick transit.  Both of them watched cartoons together Thursday night after we had dinner.

 

Friday, January 28, 2011

 

We started out the day apprehensive that Haifeng would go anywhere and I can't think of a city I would hate staying in the hotel room more than Hong Kong.  

Well, we first strolled into the Citygate Outlet Mall, adjacent to the Novotel Hotel and they got a few things.  There was a big grocery store there called 'Taste'.   Haifeng and Zoe picked out some snacks they wanted and that seemed to pave the way for going to the cable car for a neat excursion just outside the mall.   We didn't plan it that way but it worked out great.  

It's called "Ngong Ping 360".  It's a cable car ride across the bay and up over the very steep mountains above Lantau island.  We took the cable car and she rode it just fine.  Meanwhile, Zoe's mouth is nonstop, she jaws about the incredible scenery with her classic, "oh my God" and the chinese family with us in the cable car, laughed and repeated her phrase "oh my God", just like Helen our Guangzhou guide did for the last 10 days.  

When we got off the cable car, we walked through Ngong Ping Village, the souvenir shops, and on to the Tian Tan Buddha, supposedly the largest free standing buddha in the world.  Both girls got cotton candy walking back through the village.  Yes they had cotton candy.  

Back at the hotel, we got Zoe her McDonalds and Haifeng got wonton soup from room service.  I had a nice hour run around the bay by the hotel.  

Tonight we'll make one more trip into the outlet mall.  We are ecstatic our "guideless time" in Hong Kong has went off so well.  Hong Kong is such a neat, international city.  We had for tv the BBC, France24, russian, chinese, portuguese, espn asia, just about everything.  There were hong kong school kids in plad skirts, perhaps residual evidence of the British system. 

Tomorrow we endure the long flight to Detroit, then the more reasonable flight to Jacksonville.  

We'll get pictures posted in the next few days.  We have plenty.

Wednesday Update

I did my last workout in the Victory exercise room this morning and crossed the highway one more time up to the shopping area to get Zoe one more order of chicken nuggets.

In the afternoon we went on one more tour to a park and to a museum. The museum was about the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, an emperor of the small Nanyue kingdom around Guangzhou that was eventually overrun by the Han Chinese, the majority. The website is http://www.gznywmuseum.com. I think it roughly covered the period around 200 BC. It was very educational and Haifeng started asking a lot of questions about if from the guide Helen, so maybe she's a future history major.

When we returned to Shamian Island, we received the brown envelope at the White Swan, which we must deliver unopened to US Immigration in Detroit. We go to the Guangzhou airport early tomorrow to fly to Hong Kong where we will be Thursday and Friday, before we fly out on Saturday.

We're going to miss our guide Helen who has been such a great support and escort.

Visit to the Zoo

Today we went to the Guangzhou Zoo in the morning, another chilly, cloudy day. Haifeng saw her first zoo animals because there is no zoo in Zhuhai. Ha. Zoe campaigned until she rode the merry go round. We saw the pandas, tibetan yaks and camels and the rest. There was also a gator pool with a water ride that circled the gators and plunged off into the splash at the bottom.

Would you believe the old dude running the ride was hawking loudly for us to take the ride just to make a yuan even though we would have froze once we hit the bottom of the slide and got drenched in the water.

After that we went to a tea house for some tea, dim sum, etc. It was another enjoyable time learning about the way the Chinese enjoy their tea time. Haifeng and I both enjoyed the chili sauce but I let her take care of the chicken feet again. More power to her.

When we got back, I trudged through the herbal market to the pedestrian street by Holiday Inn to get Zoe some more McDonalds chicken nuggets. They are both happy campers now.

We have an afternoon tour tomorrow and Helen our guide picks up the visa packet at the Consulate.