Getting Ready for the Big "Gotcha" Day!

0531 - Beijing to Zhengzhou (Capital of Henan province) It feels like we're couples in a show called the Amazing race where couples of all different nationalities, abilities, conditions, and shapes are racing to find the treasure. In this case, each couple will be rewarded with an adoption child. It was rough but we made it fron Beijing to Zhengzhou 1130am with minimal problems. Our guide brought us directly to the check in counter for our flight and when we reached the security check point, the guard pulled me over to question my water purifier bottle. What was in it? "water" Why is it wet inside? "the security check point does not allow us to bring in any liquids" eventually I made it out back to Arlene with my water bottle. I didn't hold up the group too long, everyone else went crazy and ran to Starbucks for a drink. The cool thing is that no one here is worried about the swine flu and we had no check points to go through.

We were all picked up by another CCAI rep to be briefed on the days ahead. The group will be receiving their matched child Monday at 10am. Except for one family. Locke you will see your child at 330pm because your child will be coming by train and it is very long ride to come from orphanage. We need to try and go to bed now at 11pm and will have a very long and exciting day tomorrow. Please pray for us and the other families that the bonding transistions will go smoothly. It's hard to type in a dark room so I need to sign off.

(Comments are being forwarded to us and are much appreciated!)

Our First Full Day in China

Today should be our first full day in China. The time is 543am and I'm finding it hard to sleep due to the hard bed. Looking forward to our first buffet. I think people think we're crazy here because we keep taking pictures of the food and even the dishes. haha

The buffet was really nice. It was really nice eating with big plates again. We could drink a lot of juices but was reminded about that we couldn't just drink their water. It was funny seeing roughly 9 families up at 7 am loading up on everything from yogurt to wonton soup, chow mein, and sausages. The best average price for water is 2 bottles for 5 rmb dollars.

We then went to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City and the Hutong section area and a silk factory. We had over 13000 steps. It tuned out today was the beginning of a 3 day holiday and it felt like everyone wanted to go to the same place. The weather was blue sky, light clouds and breezy. It was great and wow it was really sunny. The light fog I believe was pollution that is slowly catching up with us. Arlene and I both have sore voices, mucus buildup. We walked through the FC on the main center line direction and it was beautiful. I was worried about pick pockets and I had to act really mean sometimes to the peddler sales people and random people that would surround us closely for no reason. There were guards/police everywhere. We heard that a teenager tourist girl was taken to the police station for littering a piece of paper. She must of did it on purpose in front of them. At FC we were listening to our guide, when a little chinese boy pulled his pants down 15 feet away and did a number #1. We were soo shocked that no one took a photo and no reacted but us. We were laughing too hard. We saw this incident again on our way back to the bus.

We had a good history lesson on FC and everyone was exhausted by noon due to the pollution and walk. We had a nice 12 course meal. One teenager had to try a little bright red veggie and ended up drinking up a half a pitcher of water afterwards. He didn't heed my advice about peppers. He said he knew what he was doing. He underestimated the power of a small red pepper. He did heed my advice about milk later to neutralize the effects.

We went to a government silk factory afterwards. We had a great lesson on the silk worm, and their products. It was like a live government informercial and it was impressive and kinda pricey. Many of us couldn't buy much because we were still packed to the limit on baby stuff and couldn't pack any more. We wanted to buy a silk bed cover but after they nickel and dimed you, it was roughly $500 dollars US. Here are pictures of a rickshaw . . . the Hutong Section . . . and a waterway.

Bits & Pieces on Adjusting to Our First Day in China

It's 5am and I'm semi wide awake. The beds are hard here and I really appreciate being able to drink water anytime back in the states. Many of the locals here keep speaking to me in Mandarin and they give me puzzled faces when I can't speak. The restaurant waitress kept staring at us because we wanted a big bottle of cocacola (they had no bottle water) to drink and also wanted rice. Interesting. I thot rice bowls were small. We eat out of 3.5 inch dishes with a half inch high rim. I guess they really believe in portion control. Ironically we at nearby where there was a giant pizza restaurant on one side and another giant pizza place across the street. When in china, eat like the chinese. But somehow we and some new friends were not in the mood to eat pizza . . .

We walked 13000 steps today walking through the Forbidden city. Our voices are all dried up. Not sure if because of dehydration or pollution or food. I'm going to take a airborn tablet tonight. I accidently drank a ice mochal coffee. Please continually pray for good health.

Arrival in Beijing & H1N1

We made it to Beijing and met some other adopting families. The trip was tedious because we spent roughly 45 minutesgoing through the H1N1. They checked our temperatures and documented where we were going. It was a good thingthat we had a lot of documentation and be sure to not lose your travel ticket. I misplace my small stub and got in troublefor a few minutes. China is very through and check and recheck your documentation. We are planning to do two daysof visiting Beijing to aclimate to the jet lag/time zone. Currently we are unable to update the blogs directly. We think the are being blocked both ways in Beijing. So the updates will come in spurts. Beijing, feels just like SF but there is no drinkingwater. We ate at a local restaurant and there was no bottle water, drinking water, or tea.

That's it for now. Pictures will be added to the blog when I have access to it more freely

The Long flight part 2 - blog 6

We visited business class as oppose to economy class and wow, what a difference. They have seats that allow you to lie down completely!

It's roughly 6:35am into the flight. We left at 1:20am. The thrill of the cool TV has worn out and most of the people here are sound asleep as the airplane cabin is pretty much dark, aside from those now playing video games on the Lcd TV. I wanted to go to the restroom before the rush and stood in front of the bathroom for a few minutes trying to figure out how to open the door to it. It will come in handy to bring a small flashlight (which I did). The bathroom is really cool and compact. I also raided it for kleenex because my nose started running due to weird sleep habits. I'm to trying to change my sleep habits earlier to reduce my jet lag.

The ride is slowly getting more turbulent and it's tolerable. I should've spent the seven dollars for those C shape pillows. It really would've help my sleep. Hmm, it's starting to feel like a continuous mild earthquake here. I wonder why doesn't the pilot change altitude to make the ride smoother. Ahh the pilot heard my wishes and now the plane ride is really smooth again. I hope my battery lasts for all my blogs on our flight to Beijing.

We are one hour from landing in Hong Kong. From there we have a short layaway before taking off to Beijing. I guess, I need to avoid drinking fountains now. There is a older gentleman shaving right next to me two seats over. It's kinda annoying and noisy. I learned that in a flight you should keep you tylenol in your jacket/vest.

I also learned that you should finish your cup of water they give you before going to lala land. I accidently spilled a little water on by poor netbook and it hiccuped for a few hours before drying off. It seems to be fine now. My neck is sore from sleeping odd positions and Arlene was able to see 5 movies.

The pros have their own headphones with built in sound cancelling noise technology. As we prepare for landing about 20% of the people around us are wearing masks. These masks really provide very little protection. I saw one erson wearing a N95 mask soo far.

We're at the HK airport now. All security staff are wearing masks and about 30% of travelers. Well it's time to do some window shopping. Hope these airflight blogs make sense.

A long flight to HK and a long blog to top it.

We're here at the Hong Kong airport waiting for our transfer flight to Beijing. We had a lot of time to use up so I went crazy typing my observations.

Blog 5

We made it through the SF airport with no problems. It seems that everyone is asleep, unless you're flying to China. Of course, we're ready to crash a few ZZZZs but then we would probably miss our flight at 1:20am. Yawn, what are we suppose to do at an airport where most of the good price stores are closed?

This would be a great place to learn your memory verses. I can hear it now " attention please we are at threat level 1. please maintain possession of your bible at all times, and do not leave it alone and memorize Phillipians 4:13. " I can do all things through Christ who strenghtens me"

Well it's been 30 minutes sitting on this nice soft chair. It's kinda interesting here. I'm starting to see a few people wearing the earloop masks. Even the stewardesses from Cathay Pacific are wearing masks ( 2 of 12 ). Hey, the people around me are starting to fall asleep. Wake up people! Currently my throat is kinda try and I'm doing my best not to cough (a bottle of Sprite does wonders). Now that I meantioned it, there are two people walking around coughing like crazy. Maybe we should put on a mask. At the moment, you cannot buy them.

Well we made it in the airplane and we had reserved seats that gave us an extra 6 inches. It seat that is near the bulkhead which gives you a potential basinet option. It's pretty neat. Cathay Pacific served us dinner around 2:30 am. It was a very good meal. We had braised beef, salmon, fresh roll, cheese cake, milano cookies, and soda/juice.

Every seat has a 10 inch lcd panel with a personal remote control to let you watch current hot movies, favorites, HK cinema etc. They also provided a ton of Tv shows and cd music. You are basically provided a personal DVR system. The seats still are overall cramp and it will still be hard to make the time past by. There is sliding bar to raise up between seats. My but is a little sore and the air is a bit dry. Arlene is watchin Slum dogs. I watch a Bruce Lee classic. I think Arlene fell asleep a little. It's a bit weird surrounded by more people wearing mas

We asked the stewardess why they wear the masks and they told us they couldn't to be sick due to a flu. They work pretty hard. Some almost seem like they're running to serve you dinner. Well it's time to sleep for a little while. It's a 13 plus hour flight.

Something is overweight! Where is it? Every oz counts!

Aargh! Just found out that they limit your carryon luggage to 15 lbs! My backpack is 27 lbs! How is that possible? I packed it as a lean mean laptop machine. Mission Control we can have liftoff if we lose another 12 lbs. I always wonder how people gain weight. It turns out that my snacks are full of calories and they are very heavy. I had 4 lbs of snacks in my backpack! Yeow.....

Now switching over to backup systems and moving over my stuff to a humble backpack with no wheels. Turns out my heavy duty backpack (w/wheels) is roughly 10 lbs and I had lose 2 lbs of snacks! Wow. Now I have to sacrifice some butterfingers, powerbars to allow our trip to takeoff from SF.

Resuming countdown!

Mission control - Prepare for take off

I can hear the Mission Impossible theme playing in my head and visualizing a fuse burning.
Our mission/goal is to go to China to adopt a little 20 month girl and not get sick. Somewhere in all that we need to bring all her paperwork for adoption ( two copies ) , medicine, diapers, food, clothes, and even a digital camera. My cool gadgets for this mission is Buzz off clothing, and a netbook for communications, and earloop masks for disguises. Arlene is armed with cool outfits for Zhang Rui and a micro umbrella with a builtin led flashlight, tmobile GSM phone, and infared thermo scanner. So far, the van is very clean, the bags are packed (22 lbs, 35 lbs). We're ready to go. Oops, we still need to pack the carryons and my butterfinger snacks. I also need to find space for all the stuff that was in the van. So one listed that we would get homesick for US food and recommend a small jar of peanut butter/ jelly.

Our travel agent from Unique Travel was great! I discovered a mistake in our tickets and she was able to resolve it on her day off. The stated that Zhang Rui had to check in before going to Beijing. The problem was, we didn't have her yet! I met her at Bel Air to get official paper tickets to resolve the problem. She's also going to help us check in too.

All our friends give us the advice that the money we bring to China should be almost mint condition $100 bills. Yikes, I hardly carry them in normal life. We were warned that if the money isn't new and crispy that they could reject them or give us a lower exchange rate. I think I can invent a $100 bill press machine to really make it flat and crispy! I should add some starch to them. I think this week will be rough/tough on everyone. Whether it's travelling or the Calif.
budget crisis, or world politics, we need to hang in there and keep helping each other out.

Oh well, it's back to packing our carry ons and finding Loy's new credit card, which he just lost
(oh, ahem I meant misplaced...).

Sunday May 24th Still packing??

Hard to believe we're still packing and repacking everything from clothes to critical documents. I'm trying to downsize our big carryon to a much smaller carryon and it's very challenging. I learned that if you pack 8 diapers into a zip lock and then sit on it that you can literally shrink the size by 60%. Talk about zipping your stuff to pack in more.

Somehow we're being distracted by garage sales of cool kids stuff, to detailing the van, to having a gardener making our yard less savage. The highlight reward was going out to Mizu for a buffet But that took away 2-3 hours of packing time too and made us too full to productive yesterday night. . Today, I have to go to Costco for new tires for our van, so it will be safer to drive down to UCI to pick up Anthony and friends.

It's now 4:00 pm and the smaller travel broke the zipper. It was fortunate that it broke here. I purchased another travel case that was regular. $249 but was on sale for $129 then $49.99 and I also got a $20 discount Memorial weekend special (last of the big time spenders). This case is smaller than our wheeled duffle bag and bigger than the smaller 20 inch suitcase. It's just right!
We're making progress! We have our dog sitter, house sitter, and house watchers all coordinated! yea. Now..... back to packing. (sigh).

Packing for a trip to China

The joys of packing continue to be a challenge. You can find the perfect adoption checklist if you spend 6 months searching the web. The perfect list will require 4 check in bags weighing over 100 lbs each and a personal doctor who understands Chinese (jk). They can recommend packing a car seat, umbrella stroller, and a inflatable bathtub. Older checklist tell you to pack 50 rolls of film ( I'm glad we're in the digital age ), a VHS camcorder, and a fat money belt to hold a ton of crisp money and 12 changes of clothes for the child!

I'm still working on packing the first bag and I'm on my third attempt already. Almost everything is in ziplock bags and exasperated that I don't have enough space. On top of that, we have a weight limit of 44 lbs. This duffel bag is comprise of diapers, over the counter meds, gifts to the orphanage and helpers (They like gifts, not made in China! Aagh). Maybe I can pack bags of rice grown from Sacramento (NOT!). We plan to bring in 2 check in bags and 2 carry ons.
Hey!, where do I pack my camera and camcorder?

I thought of a great / cool idea of giving them new US minted Gold color one dollar coins. I later decided against it because they may think it's real gold and get upset when they become tarnish. Oh well, back to packing.