More Adoption Drama

Yesterday we were supposed to meet our guide at 2:30 pm.  So we waited, and waited... and WAITED.  At about 4:00 I asked the girl at the reception desk at the hostel if I could use her phone for a local call.  I was told I could use the phone for 5 minutes and she dialed the number for me.  Busy signal (seriously? no voice mail?).  So I hung up and we went back to the room to try to figure out what we were going to do about this predicament.

 

According to the schedule we got from the adoption agency (which I've since concluded we may as well throw out the window) we were supposed to meet SongSong/Zane at the orphanage at 10:00 AM.  So we decided if we couldn't somehow get ahold of our guide, we would just show up at the hotel the other family is staying at and wait for the guide to show up there. We had just decided this when the girl from reception knocked on our door and said we had a phone call from "our friend Susie" - ah, the guide!  She apologized and said that she had missed a train in another province (state) and would be at our hostel at 8:00 PM to go over things and give us a cell phone so we would have easier contact in the future. Okay, fine, we had a new plan.

 

In the meantime we went to Tianfu Square and saw the big statue of Mao here in Chengdu.  Then we walked to the east to find the other hotel (again just in case we needed to go there).  Went to what I can only describe as a meat market - looking for chicken feet for Seth.  Didn't find any chicken feet.  Went back to the hostel and found we were locked out of our rooms.  We had only paid for one night and needed to pay again.  So we went to the ATM and got enough to pay the hostel bill for the rest of our stay here.  Then we went to find something to eat.  We ended up eating steamed stuffed buns (one had black beans the other had beef and peppers - yummy!).  We watched War of the Worlds on TV... in Chinese and then went to our rooms and took a nap.

 

Right before 8:00 we went downstairs to wait for Susie in the commona area.  The girl at the reception desk said that Susie called again and said she would be there at 9:00 instead.  Okay... so we got something to drink and waited out on the patio.  And we waited, and we waited... and we WAITED.  At 15 'til 11:00 I told Tim that I was going to bed at 11:00 and going with 'Plan B'.  At 11:00 Susie showed up.  We found out that our meeting time had changed (we don't meet Zane at 10:00 AM, instead they pick us up at 2:45 PM to go to the orphanage) and that we need to have 1,500 yuan for the fees (from the ATM would be fine, didn't need to bring all this US currency with us).  Oh, and we have the cell phone Susie gave us.  All this being said, I don't blame Susie.  She seems to be doing the best she can.  I just seems that our main agency has a very overworked staff - and that's as much as I'm going to say for now on that.  I just wish that they would keep us in the loop a little better.

 

So now we are just hanging out here, waiting for 2:45.