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.

Arrived in Chengdu

I'm really hoping this works, so someone with my yahoo email address please email me if this posts on our blog - just so I know it worked.  We can't access facebook or our blog here so I'll be emailing all of my posts.

 

Our flights to Dallas, Seattle and Beijing were pretty uneventful.  Our flight to Beijing was about 11 hours and I was SO ready to get off that airplane by the time we landed.  Tim slept on the flight to Seattle and most of the Beijing flight.  I slept maybe 3 or 4 hours on the flight to Beijing.  Oscar didn't sleep at all.

 

Beijing was hot, humid and foggy the one night we were there and the next morning when we left.  I hope the fog leaves by the time we return there to do the touristy things in about 2 weeks.

 

Our flight to Chengdu was supposed to leave around 8:00 am Saturday morning.  We did board on time, but then sat in the airplane for about 2 hours before we took off - looked like a lot of flights were sitting out on the runways waiting to take off due to the fog.  We arrived in Chengdu at about 12:15 pm local time. This is where I did something super stupid and accidently left Oscar's and my passports on the airplane when we got off the plane.  By the time I figured out what I'd done, security wouldn't let Tim get back to the plane to get them.  Stupid.Stupid.Stupid. While we were waiting for our baggage to show up (which it eventually did) I was able to find the person picking us up at the airport and told her what happened and she was able to get the passports back to us before we left the airport for our hostel. Majorly relieved about that huge blessing. You can't do anything without your passport here (including checking into a hotel and of course getting on any airplanes).  And yup, we're staying at a hostel in Chengdu, which is an experience in and of itself. I'll just say it's very hippy/bohemian and leave it at that. The people working here and staying here are generally very friendly though and the location is central and seems to be convenient to getting places around the city.

 

It's 4:30 in the morning here and I just can't sleep.  I'm having a hard time acclimating to the time change. It was foggy in Chengdu when we landed and it has since started raining - and has rained all night. We meet our guide today (Sunday) at around 2:00 pm.  We may also get to meet the other family in Chengdu adopting with our agency.  I have emailed with the dad and they are adopting an 11 year-old boy. We now have less than 30 hours until we pick up SongSong from the CWI (orphanage). I'll try to post more later :).  Hopefully my next post will be more coherent.

 

 

 

 

Email to Blogger

I'm just testing the email to blogger function to see if it works so we can blog around the Great Firewall of China.  If you're reading this, it worked!  If you're seeing pictures, then it really worked :).  The pictures are of Diana's birthday (which we celebrated early because we'll be gone on her birthday) and pictures of the boys room with the new beds.

Making Preparations

I don't know when we got our Article 5.  However, we were informed that our travel approval came on Tuesday of this week, so obviously we got it before that - and that means we are madly preparing for travel right now.  Oscar is going with us to China and the girls are staying home with grandparents.

We got the grant from A Child Waits Foundation, which is awesome!  Just in time.  We still have to cash out some retirement, but at least it's less than it would have been.

We also have had some last minute contributions that came in after our final fundraiser.  So thankful for that financial help - including my aunt and uncle in California - thanks for contributing to our insanity ;).

Grants

We got turmed down for any grants from Gift of Adoption.  We are waiting to hear what the board at A Child Waits Foundations decides.

It Changes Again

Last night we had a very nice Skype with SongSong (aka Ned, aka Zane).  He was nervous (so were we) and the translator kept making him sit up straight in his chair :).  He has obviously been in contact with Dusty (aka Seth, aka Zhang Yun) since he already knows that we live closest to the amigo who is already state-side. He wondered about how we were going to handle school when he comes here, if he was going to be the oldest of our kids (he's not, Oscar is), where we like to go on vacation (he wants to go to the ocean, he said he's never been). I told him my sister lives near the ocean.  We learned he likes to eat potatoes, apples and ice cream.  He likes cats better than dogs (out of luck there, we have 2 dogs, 0 cats).  His favorite subject in school is Chinese, math not-so-much.  He likes to play basketball and plays on a team at school.  Sounds like he likes table tennis too, it was hard to hear sometimes - the connection wasn't great.  He wears glasses - which we didn't know before.  And like Stacey Sanders (Dusty/Seth's mom - see blog link to the right) said, he was all smiles the whole time we talked to him.  There were many long pauses while we tried to think of things to ask each other but all in all it was just good to see him animated rather than only in still pictures.

New development in the paperwork this morning.  We have our NVC letter, but no word on Article 5 - still (no Article 5 = no travel approval for several days).  I'm at a cunundrum as to what to do next.  Do we change our departure date and leave on July 19th instead of July 12th?  Or should we just go on the 12th anyway and just change our departure date (i.e. spend more time in China)?  I contacted the company that arranged our air travel and asked about what it would take to change it now.  We'll see what they say.  I also contacted our hotel in Chengdu, but I already know we can change those dates without penalty. I just wanted them to know there could be a change.

Just continuing to ride the roller-coaster that is international adoption...


**********UPDATE**********
Cunundrum solved.  We went ahead and rebooked everything a week out (now leaving on July 19th).  It seemed the only logical thing to do when we really thought about it.  Praying we receive Article 5 next week!

Been Neglecting the Blog

Again.

So here's the latest.  We're waiting for TA (travel approval).  We got our visas in the mail today. We concluded our final fundraiser (yeah, I know I was supposed to post about that too - obviously THAT didn't happen) last Saturday.  We got a lot of nice things donated for our silent auction and we thank everyone who donated, worked at the event, attended, and bid on the auction items.  We made about $2,000 - which is the best we've done so far for a single fundraising event.  Even though we still lack about half the funding we needed, I'm very happy and relieved to be finished with fundraising. We'll be raiding the retirement account to make up the shortfall, and we're okay with that.  (Still praying that some grant money magically appears though.)

Hope the rest of this post isn't too much of a downer... read at your own peril.  Consider yourself warned.

Now, we wait. For me - it's an impatient wait.  Our agency told us that we MUST leave no later than July 12.  That's 9 days away.  They also told us NOT to book anything yet.  I don't listen so good - especially when I'm feeling not-so-patient and HELPLESS in this situation.  So, I finalized our airfare reservations yesterday and booked our hotel in Chengdu today.  WE'RE LEAVING IN 9 DAYS!!!  I MAY wait until we get TA before I book our hotel in Guangzhou... MAYBE.  We're down to the wire and I'm just not feeling real patient about the waiting at this point. If need be, we'll be in China waiting for the paperwork to catch up with us - I don't care what the agency says.

Those who have been through this - I don't need to explain. Even with our last adoption, I didn't feel this kind of pressure.  If we didn't make it to Colombia for a few more days or weeks, it wasn't the end of the world.  We got there and everything was fine.

THIS time we are on a deadline.  July 27th.  After that, all the fundraising, planning, praying, expended energy, hopes, dreams, expectations - everything - was for naught if we don't make it there in time to get him before his birthday. And the worst part now is that he knows we are supposed to be coming for him.

I hate this feeling. Helplessness.  Hate it.

Sorry about the rant.  I'm usually not a nutjob - really.