Sunday, December 31, 2006

What Happens When Sherpas Don't Double-Check

Today we got up early for our flight to Guangzhou, in southern China. We had to leave the hotel at 6 a.m. to get to the airport on time, so our wake-up call was at 4:30 a.m. Charlie was not happy about being aroused from a deep sleep at such an ungodly hour, but he complied with my request to get dressed and pack up the last-minute stuff.

We had wrapped up gifts for Lily and our driver. I had managed to get a bunch of multi-purpose tools at a good price while in the U.S. You know—the things that had a wrench, three different screwdrivers, a knife, and a hammer all in one. These were nice, heavy ones, and I can feel my suitcase getting lighter every time I give one away. I started out with six. Two went to officials at Civil Affairs in Nanjing, one went to the teacher who accompanied Ms. Tang to bring Charlie to meet us, and now one to the driver. That left two of them sitting out, so I stuffed the remaining ones into a bag and handed over the wrapped one to the driver, who was supremely pleased at having been included in the gift-giving spree.

No time for breakfast today, nothing open this early. But we figured we’d have ½ hour to kill once we got to the airport and could grab some over-priced something-or-other once we got checked in and to our gate.

We got in line at the airline counter. As we were the next person up, Lily muttered that we had to get in line, she was just informed that the luggage machine in this line had stopped working.

Same thing in the next line. I think they were just funnin’ with us. I could feel our ½ hour margin shrinking.

Then we got in a line where the machine actually worked. Our paperwork was all in order, the suitcases took off on the conveyor belt, and we were ready to take our carry-ons and go through security.

Jen and Charlie made it through with no problem, but they asked me to open my carry-on bag. Sure, no problem. Opened it up, here help yourself.

The guy knew exactly where to reach—he was on a mission, ‘cause he had seen something he didn’t like on the x-ray. I must have looked like a ghost when he pulled out one of those tools and opened it up to show me the knife and shook his head no-no. Fortunately, this was not the United States. I think if I had done something that stupid going through American security, I’d have been handcuffed and hauled off for questioning. As it was, he merely said the words “check baggage” and handed me the tool. I reached for my carry-on, and he pulled it away from me, indicating that Jen could watch it until I returned from taking that to have added to my checked baggage. I finally managed to convince him that I needed to get in that bag, there were TWO of these things in there, and he had only found one. He looked a little sheepish at that, but let me get the second one, and sent me back to the counter.

Thank God that Lily, our perfect guide, never leaves the terminal until her guests are through security and she can’t see them any more. She was watching all this from a distance, knew something was wrong but couldn’t see quite what, until I got close enough. So she went back to the counter with me and helped me get them to bring one of my bags back. Fortunately mine were easy for the worker trying to find them to identify, since I had a bright yellow bungee cord around one suitcase and a bright green one around another. They brought one of them out (took them about 15 minutes, since they were already en route to the plane), let me stuff the tools in it, and then sent it back again.

I was finally allowed to go through security and rejoin Jen and Charlie. Sherpa was stewing because she felt she should have double-checked the packing. How did I end up with a sherpa with such a guilt complex??? We started the mile-long trek to our gate, and finally got there with 5 minutes to spare before boarding call. Not enough time to order any over-priced food.

They did serve a meal on the plane, which surprised us, since it was only a 2-hour flight, but none of it was to Charlie’s liking. I think he just wasn’t feeling very good. He was hot, and once we were up to altitude and the seat belt sign came off, I got him to ball up his coat and place it on my lap as a pillow. We removed the armrest between us and he leaned over and fell asleep in my lap for part of the flight.

He was a little alarmed when we hit some turbulence and looked at me to see if he
should start panicking, but from my calm “wow, isn’t this fun?” expression, he decided it wasn’t worth getting excited over.

I had explained to him before the flight started how the flaps on the wings worked when the pilot wanted to slow down the plane. He kept watching out the window periodically to see when the flaps would go up. He seemed to enjoy the landing, watching all the pieces. Jen keeps talking about what a genius Charlie is (doesn’t seem to be anything the boy can’t figure out), and she fully expected him to go fly the plane for the next flight now that he had it all down pat.

You should have seen his face, though, after we landed and were taxiing to the terminal. Remember in yesterday’s entry I mentioned that I wasn’t sure he understood exactly where we were going, just that he was getting his medical exam there and had to go on an airplane? Well, what I didn’t realize was that he thought we had just landed in America. You should have seen the confused look on his face when he read the Chinese characters for the city painted in big red letters on one of the hangars. Then he signed, “Chinese writing in America?” Oh, Lord, I just lost it. So I fished out a flight magazine from the seat in front of me, and fortunately it had a map of the whole of China in it, which I hadn’t had in the hotel room when I was trying to explain this whole scenario. I showed him where we had just spent 5 days, and where we had just flown to and repeated the highlights of why we were here, then where we were going next after this (Beijing) and some of the things we would do there, and then flew my hand off the page in the direction we’d be flying to go to America and signed “America there.” Ah, okay. Now he gets it. That explains the Chinese writing. This just wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

There was a guide to meet us and take us to the hotel (only one this time, thanks to Lily—the other agency had tried to mess this one up, too, but she caught it by coordinating with Dragon Lady and telling her to call them off). Our new guide was named Wen (pronounced more like Wun). Very nice man, but his English was very hard to understand. He didn’t quite seem to get the deal with Charlie, because he kept speaking to him. I explained that Charlie was deaf, and Wen would nod like he understood, but then talk to him some more. Okay, maybe he doesn’t understand the word deaf, not in his vocabulary. So I told him that Charlie could not hear him. He nodded sagely. He saw us signing. He asked him more questions.

Some people just don’t get it.

I let that one roll off.

We were taken to our room, but there had been a misunderstanding. The room had only 2beds and no space for a rollaway. We called and asked what was going on with the third bed, and they sent up a roll-away bed that was so small Charlie’s feet would hang off the end. And in order to set that up, they had to remove the chair for the tiny little desk. And in order to get out of bed, Charlie would have had to crawl over my bed, because there was no space to get feet on the floor—the rollaway was sandwiched in between one bed and the wall. I went down and explained that there had been a mistake somewhere, they had us in the wrong sized room, we were supposed to have one of the Executive rooms. The guy at the desk tried to tell me that all the rooms at the hotel were the same size. I’m not buying that. I called Wen back and told him we had a problem that needed working out. He merely functioned as an interpreter between me and the hotel guy, parroting that the rooms were all the same size. He obviously was not going to raise enough of a fuss to get this worked out satisfactorily.

I miss Lily.

So I told him, in front of the hotel guy, “Okay, get us a different hotel. Now.”

That seemed to work. In order to do that, he had to call Jenny in Beijing, who handles all of OCDF’s reservations. Jenny got on the phone with me and I told her if the rooms were all the same size, we wanted to be in a different hotel. She told me to leave our luggage in the small room, go on to our medical appointment, and let her deal with this. So we dug out our paperwork and were about to head off to the medical appointment with Raymond, the guide handling our paperwork in this city, when they said they had a room they would like us to see and approve before leaving and before having the luggage transferred to it.

It was beautiful. And oddly enough, it wasn’t the same size. Imagine that! It had three twin beds. And they were soft western-style beds, not plywood boxes with pads. If we hadn’t had an appointment to get to, we’d have just sunk down and taken naps on the spot.

They gave us the room keys, and we took off running for the medical appointment. It went pretty smoothly. Charlie had to have 3 shots, but he barely even grimaced. He admitted later that evening that his arms were pretty sore, though. The doctor doing his physical was impressed that he had been taught to read and write Chinese. He was asking him questions by writing them down, and the only one that befuddled Charlie was the one about whether he had been an inpatient before. He underlined the characters for inpatient and gave the doc a quizzical look. Doc looked at me as if to say “what now?” so I explained in sign language to Charlie that the doctor needed to know if he had ever gone to the hospital and stayed there overnight for any sort of surgery (and I made sure to make the sign for surgery at the abdomen, because I knew that Charlie had had an appendectomy last summer). That he understood, and he wrote out to the doctor that he had an operation on his stomach last June.

I’m loving this. My new son of only 6 days is understanding and communicating better with me in sign language than with this Chinese doctor in his native language.

Deafies: 1, Hearies: 0.

Sherpa took off during the medical appointment and went to get water so we could at least quench our thirst when we got back to the room.

When we got back to the hotel, I felt like a total fool. There was no slot in the door for the room key to be inserted. I had shown Charlie at the hotel in Nanjing how to put the card in the door slot in the direction of the arrow and then wait for the green light, but here there was no slot. Yet I still have this plastic little card that needs to go somewhere, right?

As I’m standing there staring rather stupidly at the door, Charlie grabs the key card out of my hand, holds it up to a sensor on the door handle, and I hear this little “do-do-do-doooo do-doooo” tune that you hear right before the word “Charge!” and a green light flashes.

How did he know that? The boy grew up in an orphanage. He’s never been exposed to hotels and stuff like this before! How did he know that???? And why am I too dumb to have figured it out?

His grin at having figured it out for me just split his face in two.

Raymond came back to our room and we spent the next couple of hours doing paperwork for our consulate appointment on the 4th. Turns out we don’t actually go to that appointment, we stay in the hotel room while Raymond goes and submits the paperwork and the fees, and if all goes well, he’ll call us and let us know we’re free the rest of the day.

Finally, we got to leave for dinner. We were famished, having had only an airplane breakfast and no lunch, so we hit the streets looking for dinner. We passed by a place called Cow Bridge that Jen had heard great things about, so we went in. It was busy and noisy, but the menu looked….ummm….interesting. The prices were good. We found some great looking and great sounding dishes for us. Charlie, however, was another story. He liked the looks of everything on the menu, and the dish he chose was ostrich kidney in green beans. Ostrich kidney? Well, we already know he eats dog, so how bad can it be? Charlie definitely has an adventurous palate. I hope he doesn’t expect to be fed like this at home!

He enjoyed his ostrich kidneys. We enjoyed our dishes, too. I had a chicken curry that was very spicy hot (loved it!) and Jen had a mildly spicy beef dish that was really good, too. So we all left feeling fat and happy. And we go to sleep on soft beds that night!

The internet here is no better than in Nanjing. We were hoping things would be back up by now, but Lily had informed us before we left Nanjing that she had heard a report on the news that it wouldn’t be fixed until the 9th. It’s been taking about 5 minutes to load a single e-mail, and web sites take anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes to load, if they bother to load at all before timing out. But Jen and I decided that we simply had to start up the blogs again before we forgot too much detail of these early days. So we have been writing our entries off-line in Word documents and then copying them into the blog as we can get them to load. Slow and painful, but at least we’re finally starting to get some word to the outside world. Don’t know if anyone’s really paying attention, but at least we’re getting it down.

So ended the first day in GZ. Charlie dealt amazingly well with his first plane flight and is now a seasoned traveler.

Happy New Year, everybody!



Saturday, December 30, 2006

Visiting the Master

Today we toured Nanjing. We started off with the Children’s Science Museum. It was a neat place, and Charlie had an absolute blast. We were the only people in the place, which made it kind of eerie, but it also meant we had the guides (all of them) all to ourselves. Once they understood that the deaf kid could actually figure things out and understand what they were trying to explain through me, they were falling all over themselves to show him the exhibits. He especially loved getting in the fighter jet cockpit and “flying” the plane in one of those virtual 3D simulations. We got some great photos from there.


Then we went to the biggest park in Nanjing. Our experience there was written up so wonderfully by Jen on her blog that I’m just not even going to try to do it any differently. I’m citing hers. Following is “The Tale of The Master . . .”


As I promised in my earlier post, I have to tell the story that has
become one of our favorites - we laugh every time one of us mentions
it. It may turn out to be a "had to be there" but I'm hoping that I
can do it justice in the telling.


On our first day of touring Nanjing, we went to a wonderful park in
the city that was also along one portion of the city wall. We were
able to climb some stairs leading to the top of one portion, and as
always, there was a shop at the top. Lily, our fabulous guide in
Nanjing, explained that this shop was dedicated to glass painting.
It's really very cool, an artist paints a scene into a glass ball.
Doesn't sound too complicated, until you realize that the artist is
painting the ball through a hole the size of your index finger, and
upside down to boot. As we entered the shop, two of the girls rushed
over and breathlessly explained something to Lily in Chinese with all
possible urgency. One of them turned to K and myself and said in a
quavering voice, "today you are very lucky . . . today the MASTER is
here!" the other girl nods frantically and says "yes, yes Master
here!" Now, I hope you can understand how nearly impossible it was
not to burst out laughing at this point. I wasn't sure what to expect
as they ushered us with bowed heads to "The Master". Whatever I
expected, I wasn't disappointed.



At one side of the shop was a large, ornate worktable. Seated at this
table was the most serious Chinese man I've ever seen in my life.
Really, he looked almost severe. He was dressed all in black
traditional Chinese clothing. He barely deigned to look at us as he
sat so upright that I suspect he had a pole rammed into the back of
his shirt. His lips were a perfectly straight line. Too much fanfare,
you say? Just remember - he IS The Master, after all. At this time, I
still wasn't clear on what exactly he was the master of. Maybe China?


It turns out that he is the master of painting upside down into
little glass balls. He picked up a brush - the shop girls positively
quivered. One of them explained in a hushed voice, that this brush
was not a brush, but the tail of a mouse. I'm just relieved they
didn't ask me to eat it. With a jerk of his sleeve, the master began
to paint for us. We sensed we weren't supposed to speak. Every now
and then a shop girl would nudge us and say something to the effect
of "you see, the master".


I don't know if it was the actual artistry, or the reverence of the
shop girls, but I knew at once that I must have a little glass ball
that had been painted with a mouse's tail. We started browsing
through the store, shop girl at each elbow. They dutifully pointed
out which balls had been painted by students, and which by "The
Master". When it was a ball painted by The Master, they would do a
little Price Is Right flourish with their hands around the ball. The
prices were actually extremely reasonable, and there were two balls
that I couldn't choose between. I let Charlie choose for me, and he
was very pleased about that. He chose well. I am now the proud owner
of a glass ball on a wooden stand that has really beautiful trees
painted on it. Are you ready for this? The Master then decreed that
he would sign our balls, and he even painted Charlie's name (Xiao
Tian) on his in calligraphy. I think one of the shop girls fainted.


There you have the tale of The Master. Long may he live and paint.


I bought one of the pretty crystal balls, too. Mine is a four seasons ball, Chinese style. And
Charlie got a small one made by one of the apprentices that had a rooster in it. He was very excited about this, because he was born in the Year of the Rooster in the Chinese zodiac.


After the park, Lily took us to lunch at a local restaurant. Unfortunately, the girl who had taken the reservation from her had gone off duty and left no record of the reservation. We got to see Lily throw a fit with the restaurant staff until they finally prepared a private room for us. Not sure what she threatened them with, but whatever it was, it worked.


On the schedule for the afternoon was supposed to be a museum and a mausoleum. We went through the museum, and although I interpreted for Xiao Tian and he understood things okay, he was totally bored, and we couldn’t look at just the things we wanted to look at—the museum tour guide kept skipping over things we thought were interesting and spending long periods of time on things we had no interest in. We eventually met up with Lily again in the gift shop, where the shop girls were constantly hovering, telling us the virtues of everything we so much as glanced at, hoping to make a sale. Somehow, we weren’t tempted.


After seeing Xiao Tian’s lack of interest in the museum, though, we decided to nix the mausoleum. Frankly, we’d rather do fun stuff than visit dead guys. I know that sounds irreverent, but I have to consider the mix of people here. If I had friends with kids visiting me in Maryland, a crypt would definitely NOT be on the list of activities that I’d take them to see. So Lily canceled the mausoleum for us, and we went back to the hotel to rest up for the early flight the next day. We were even too tired to go out and hunt for food, so we ordered room service, complete with ice-cream sundaes for dessert. Did you know the Chinese serve cornflakes on ice-cream sundaes? It wasn’t bad, just different. The sherpa ordered American cheese cake, which actually didn't look at all like cheese cake we would recognize. It was more like white cake with rubber icing.


Then we packed our suitcases for the flight the next day. You'd think, having gotten rid of all the orphanage stuff, our suitcases would be much emptier and much lighter. What I hadn't taken into account, though, was that I had bought an entire wardrobe for Charlie. The suitcases bulged as badly as they had on the way in. This was not a good thing, because we can't just pick up another suitcase for any overflow, since in-country flights in China limit you to one checked bag and one carry-one per person. I was able to bring in two checked bags because it was an international flight, and fortunately we picked up Charlie on the first stop, so he became the "owner" of the second bag at that point. But we still needed to pick up our souvenirs in Guangzhou (where they would be less expensive than in Beijing) and would have one more in-country flight after that to get through. Ouch. Better make sure all our souvenirs are flat ones!


Before bed, as usual, we had a chat about what would be happening the next day. He was very excited about his first airplane flight and got very animated about that, so I wasn’t entirely sure he caught where we were going or why. But it was enough for now that he understood we were taking an airplane flight that was 2 hours long. We went through our little tuck-in routine and turned out the lights.





Friday, December 29, 2006

Orphanage Visit and a Slight Change in Plans

This turned out to be a really long entry, so for those who want the condensed version, we visited the orphanage and XT's finding place and found out that our trip was being re-worked thanks to either poor planning or poor communications.


For those who want the details, grab a box a tissues and read on:


Wake-up call was 5:30 a.m. today. Lily and the driver were picking us up at 7, so we figured that would give the three of us plenty of time to get showered and dressed and breakfasted.


Wrong.


Apparently Charlie likes his leisurely shower as much as Jen and I do. And I had meant to wrap and pack up all the presents for the orphanage staff and kids last night but instead went to bed with a headache. By the time I realized this, we only had 15 minutes before Lily was due to show up. Not enough time to wrap gifts and find breakfast, even at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.


Plan B: We threw all the presents into a bag along with wrapping paper, tape, ribbon, and scissors. Too late to call Lily and ask to meet later, so we’ll just invite her and the driver to breakfast. The hotel may have had weird body parts on the menu last night, but the breakfast buffet is meant to cater to westerners’ tastes in breakfast foods, with a few Chinese dishes thrown in.


Lily accepted breakfast, driver opted to stay with the van. We started the day off well-fed. We hit the road about 7:20. Once we were all settled into the van, I pulled out the wrapping paper and other stuff to wrap the gifts, and we spent the next hour individually wrapping 20 cans of Play-Doh (what was I thinking?), a big bag of Matchbox cars (no, NOT individually—just stuffed tissue paper in that bag!), some gifts for the orphanage directors, and deodorants (no, I’m not kidding) for the nannies. (They love American deodorants in pretty bottles.) I also had a number of other bags of toys and foodstuffs to put together and stuff with pretty tissue paper. These items were sent to me prior to my trip by people who had already adopted from this orphanage and who wanted to send gifts and messages about how well their children had settled into their new families. I would have considered myself as traveling light had it not been for all the orphanage gifts (mine and other people’s) that I brought here, so I was glad to be able to turn that all over to them on the first stop on our itinerary!


Once I started wrapping the Play-Doh, of course Charlie had to get in the act and show me that he had a better idea. Yesterday I found out my son was a mechanical genius and a card shark; today I found out he is an artist. I was wrapping them as cylinders and tying the ribbon after gathering the tissue paper at the top of each can. He decided that wasn’t artistic enough. He took the scissors and started cutting into the flowered-out paper above the ribbon so it looked like petals. Very pleased with himself. Fine, that’s your job now. I wrapped, he cut. Jen was in the back seat and was relegated to stacking them up once he finished. She did get a few pictures of him doing the artsy-craftsy thing.


We finally got to the orphanage around 12:30-ish. The countryside leading up to Xuzhou was very desolate, with tiny pockets of housing that looked like cement cubes stuck together every few miles, surrounded by rice paddies. I saw no power lines, and from the few homes close enough to the road to see details, it looked like they had no electricity or heat. Everybody was outside doing some sort of work. They probably had to just to stay warm. It was really freezing out there.


Don’t know what I was thinking, but I assumed the orphanage would be warmer. Wrong again. The main foyer we were ushered into was freezing cold, no heat whatsoever. They ushered us into a room that had been closed off and had a space heater running, so that one room was warm. Ms. Tang joined us there to accept the gifts on behalf of the nannies and the children (we were not allowed to take them around and give them out) and offered us a tour. We asked if we could take pictures, and were told we could photograph only the outside, not in the children’s centers. I was really disappointed because I was hoping to get pictures in particular of one little boy that was about to be adopted soon, because his mom wanted me to try to get a general idea of how tall he was so she could bring some clothing when she came over to get him. When Lily translated that to Ms. Tang, she asked for the name of the child, and once she realized who it was, she agreed that we could take pictures of just that one child. Other than that, no children, just the rooms that Xiao Tian had been in—his bedroom, his “classroom.” (He was not really schooled there, more on that later.)


We first went to the toddler’s room where this little boy was. Jen had a big bag of Dum-Dum lollipops, and she gave each of the children in the room a lolly. They brought to us the little boy who was about to be adopted, and we got some pictures and were able to measure him. I had packed a tape measure, just in case, and had actually remembered to stick it in my coat pocket—so proud of myself for remembering that! What I didn’t remember, however, was paper and pencil with which to record the measurements. Duh. Lily to the rescue. She is just the quintessential guide, prepared for anything. She whips out paper and pen and stands there writing down the measurements as I dictate. Aimee, I’ll get those measurements and pictures of your sweet little boy to you once I find them in my luggage again.


Another boy we saw there really tugged at my heart. He was a beautiful little boy of about 4 or 5 with albinism, the victim of a recent disrupted adoption. Apparently the couple that was going to adopt him got there and then decided that his special need was more than they could handle. He had an extreme grief reaction and screamed all night after they got him. That just tore at my heart, seeing him still there when he should have been home with his family by then, because disruptions pretty much end a child’s chance for being chosen again. China wants the child to be identified before being re-listed if there’s been a disruption because they don’t want to “waste” a registry slot on a child that seems to be unadoptable. But if the child isn’t listed, the child can’t be identified because no one gets to see him. It’s a huge Catch-22, so usually the child is doomed to stay in the system until aging out and having to leave the orphanage. It strikes terror in my heart to think how close my own sweet Charlie was to that point—they age out of the adoption registry at 14, so this coming July would have ended his chances of finding a family, and they age out of the orphanage at 16 and are out on their own at that point. To my knowledge, Charlie was receiving only general education, no skills training of any sort, so I have no clue how on earth he would have been expected to support himself once out of the orphanage, especially in a society where deafness is considered a mental disorder and many deaf are committed. Wonder what will happen to the little boy with albinism? He’s not deaf, but he is very, very different from what the average Chinese considers “normal” so he probably doesn’t stand a chance at domestic adoption, either.


The toddler room had a space heater, but it was still very, very cold in there, so all the children were bundled up in five layers of clothing.


The next room we saw (but couldn’t take pictures of) was the baby room. There were 18 cribs in quads of 4 with huge puffy rolls of blankets. It wasn’t until I stopped and looked closer that I realized these weren’t just beds made and ready, there were baby heads peeking out from under those huge rolls of blanket!


Next we entered the older kids’ special needs group room. This is the group Xiao Tian was in when he was at the orphanage. I should explain here that Xiao Tian didn’t spend most of his time at the orphanage. Because they somehow miraculously realized he was a really smart kid and was capable of learning, they sent him to a residential school for the deaf nearby. He only came “home” to the orphanage for long weekends, holidays, and summer break when school was closed. He has spent the last few months at the orphanage, since they found out in October that the adoption was imminent and pulled him out of school.


This room, like the others, had a space heater but was still very cold. The kids were all wearing coats. They were watching some television program when we entered the room, but we were immediately the center of attention, as they all clamored for Xiao Tian’s attention, asking if that was his mama. He was obviously the big brother figure to all these kids. He asked Jen if he could pass out the lollies in this room, so she handed over the bag. Was he content with giving each kid a lolly like Jen had in the toddler room? Heck no! He dumped a whole fistful on each child’s desk. A spat broke out at the front of the room when a little boy and a little girl got to arguing over their lollies. No teacher intervened; it was Xiao Tian who settled it. He rebuked them both sternly, and they obediently went back to getting along with each other. Jen started wandering around the room, looking at the individual children, and one of them made prolonged eye contact with her. That’s when Xiao Tian informed me that that particular child was deaf and 7 years old, and Ms. Tang confirmed it. Uh-oh. That’s the age range that Jen is interested in, and she’s been talking about maybe adopting a deaf child. And he made eye contact, and is obviously tugging at her heartstrings…..Coincidence? I think not. We had already talked about how cool it would be if she met her future child on this trip. Oh, Jen… You should have seen the look on her face when she broke eye contact with him and then heard he was deaf. Madonna and child, you just lost your place at the Louvre. She got a golden aura that looked positively halo-ish around her head and the most beatific look on her face.


Some teen-age girls started following us at about that time. I recognized one of them from some pictures I had of Xiao Tian—it was his good friend Zhang Di. Another girl, whose name I can’t even begin to spell, was with her, and she was introduced as his good friend, too. Gotta get him to write me out that name in pinyin. We got pictures of him with his friends.


I find it interesting that he is a big brother to all the boys in his class, but that his true friends are all girls.


The next room we went to was his bedroom. Again, 18 beds arranged in quads, just like the baby room had 18 cribs. He proudly showed me which bed was his, and we sat on it and posed for a picture. Funny, that bed was just as hard as the beds at our hotel. More colorful, though.


When we arrived back out in the lobby, I met one of the most special people in the world. I am still protecting this person’s identity, so I won’t name names, but it was the person who was my intermediary with Xiao Tian, passing e-mail between us these many long months. I had a very special gift waiting for this person, and we shared hugs and tears. It was obvious that there was a very special bond with Xiao Tian, too. Angels don’t always show their wings, but they can’t hide the halos. It was there, no doubt about it. I’ll be keeping in touch.


At that point, the orphanage directress informed us that we were to be their guests at lunch. We found out that her driver had a friend who was the owner of a hotel in Xuzhou and would like to show us his hospitality. We were quite honored. They intended to serve us some regional specialties.


We have since learned that regional specialties means dishes you won’t find anywhere else in the world, especially not where you are from. The food was beautifully prepared, served on a huge round glass lazy susan that took up most of the table with the plates placed around it. There were, fortunately, some dishes that agreed with the western palate more, and my sherpa stuck to those because she didn’t want any repeat episodes of the Satan’s Daggers of Pain incident. I was somewhat more adventurous and tried some of the local dishes as long as I knew what was in them. Some, however, I just couldn’t get my brain around. We were proudly offered pickled cow hooves, duck tongue, fish heads (where was the rest of the fish?) and fish balls (okay, don’t even go there…). We did enjoy the potato mud. That is smashed potatoes with sweet whipped cream. Noodles were good. There were other dishes that we were able to fill up on. And they poured wine for everyone, even Xiao Tian, although he didn’t want it.


One dish in particular they seemed very proud of, because there were two big, cleaned-off bones tied together with a big red ribbon as garnish for the plate. God bless Lily, she leaned over and surreptitiously muttered, “You might not want this one, it is the dog.”


Blech. If I didn’t know what it was, I might have managed if it were red meat like beef, but the meat was actually gray. That one definitely wasn’t going down.


Xiao Tian, however, was not as squeamish. He helped himself to a rather large portion. I asked him if he understood that was dog meat, and he looked at me like I was nuts. Of course he did. Down it went. I explained to him very carefully that my greyhounds at home were off-limits to him.


I glanced over at my sherpa, who had already finished her original glass of the wine and accepted a refill. Having heard Lily's warning, she was now busy bargaining with Xiao Tian in sign language for his glass of wine.


Jen later told me that it was at this point, when Xiao Tian and I were signing so much, that she noted something interesting. Prior to this, the hotelier, who was the friend of Ms. Tang’s driver, had come in and joined us all. We had a nice little crowd going around this table. But Jen had noted that the driver had earlier displayed an attitude about this crazy woman who is adopting this deaf kid. (Remember, this is a society where the deaf are viewed mostly as retarded.) At the point where our signing got animated about the dogs, and Xiao Tian started laughing at what I was saying, the driver realized that XT was actually understanding everything I said, and Jen noticed that there was a subtle shift in attitude. When the hotelier joined us, the driver started telling his friend (moving his hands around to illustrate) that I was actually communicating with the deaf kid and he was understanding me. She said at that point, they both got a rather respectful look on their faces when they looked at the two of us. I thought that was pretty cool, although I didn’t pick up on any of this at the time, since I was too busy making sure that Xiao Tian understood perfectly that I was never to see chopsticks in his hands if my greyhounds were in the same room.


After lunch, we piled back into the van, and Ms. Tang got in with us and told us, through Lily of course, that she would accompany us to Xiao Tian’s finding place.


I had no clue what that visit would do to me emotionally, or I would have brought a couple of boxes of Kleenex.


The van turned into the entrance to the park around Yunlong Lake. About a half mile in, it suddenly swerved to the side of the road, and we were told to get out, this is it. It was just a grassy spot beside the road at the bottom of a small hill, nothing visibly unusual about it. But it was painful to be there, walking around, knowing that 11 years ago, my then 2-year-old son was walking around that same spot alone, wondering where his mama was. It was almost like that place held the pain, waiting for me to come take it on and hold it for him.


Ms. Tang explained that many years ago, there was a police station, a small building, only 20 meters from where Xiao Tian was found. It was generally agreed that his parents picked that spot deliberately so that he would be found quickly.


I spoke with him about what that place was, and he understood the significance of it. He wandered around a while, thinking it over, and then came over to me to get a picture of us there together, I guess to show that he’d finally found his mama after all this time. I’m just so sorry it took us so very long to find each other.


He was very stoic about it all, but I was a mess. Funny how the one day I figured I’d be a blubbering mess of tears (gotcha day) was completely dry, but how this day that I expected to be somewhat like touring an historical site totally blindsided me with emotions that were wholly unexpected: imagining the fears and tension his 2-year-old self felt when he couldn’t find his family and when strangers came and picked him up, the tears he reportedly cried for 3 days, the despair I believe his parents must have felt at leaving him. I honestly believe, because he showed such good evidence of attachment, that he was the much-loved son, but perhaps of poor people, perhaps in one of those unheated, unelectrified homes in the rice paddies, and that once his parents discovered his deafness they must have realized what kind of life was in store for him if he stayed with them. In a society where deafness is regarded as a mental illness, poor people would not be able to provide any sort of education or life opportunities. That’s the only reason I can imagine that someone would abandon a perfectly healthy (otherwise) boy in this society, since healthy boys are treasured. If he were the second son and abandoned for that reason, they wouldn’t have waited until he were two years old. I wish there were a note so that someday he would have some degree of assurance about his circumstances, but that doesn’t exist, so the best I can do is tell him that what I believe is just a guess and my reasons for thinking what I do.


I think my little waterfall of tears affected the others, because the van took us back to the orphanage to drop off Ms. Tang, and when I promised that he would always be loved and would never know that kind of pain again and thanked her for loving him and giving him such wonderful character, she replied very humbly that she was just doing her job but I saw a sheen of held-back tears as she hugged me goodbye. Then she and Xiao Tian hugged fiercely, and he got into the van. As the driver prepared to head out, I looked back around at her, and she was standing there with the back of her hand pressed tightly to her face to try to hold back the tears. Small woman, big heart. Just doing her job, indeed…


The mood in the van was rather somber for quite a while on the way back. It had been a very emotionally challenging day, much moreso than I had expected.


Then Lily’s cell phone rang. It was Dragon Lady. And she had BIG news. She had Xiao Tian’s passport already, had dropped it at the hotel for me (what the hay? That’s supposed to be delivered into my hands!), and we had to change our plans and fly to Guanzhou one day early, because the American Consulate was going to close down for three days for the New Year's holiday and was requesting all the medical appointments to be done prior to the shutdown. Ours was scheduled for during the shutdown, so it had to be changed. This meant leaving Nanjing on the 31st instead of the 1st.


Lily got on the phone to the powers-that-be at OCDF, and most of the arrangements were set by the time we got back to the hotel. Lily is so wonderful. Nothing seems to faze her too much.


The passport was waiting for us in our room, which meant XT could freely move about within China. He is official now.


What we later found odd was that other people’s agencies knew about this shutdown ahead of time and had scheduled them appropriately. Our agency (the one handling the paperwork) was clueless. Hmmmm…I really am glad I switched to OCDF for the tours and transportation. Shame I couldn't have used them for the paperwork, too.


By the time we got back to the hotel in the unheated van, Jen could barely move to get out of the van. She said she had turned into a Sherp-sickle.


Tomorrow we’re going to do some touring in Nanjing, and now it looks like we’ll be leaving bright and early the next morning, since they say we must be in Guangzhou by mid-day in order to get the physical done by day’s end.




Thursday, December 28, 2006

Too Dangerous to be Left in China Alone

At some strange hour of the night when I had no business being awake, I heard a small gasp of pain. It came from the sherpa’s bed. (She had told me I was violating the rules by allowing her to sleep in the room—sherpas [sherpi? sherpae?] are supposed to sleep outside, and really good sherpa owners even provide tents.


I thought at first she had just gotten bruised, as had I, from the beds. This was a wonderful hotel, but the beds were so hard that they leave bruises if you aren’t well padded. I’m well padded, just not everywhere I needed it to sleep on these beds! The beds were literally plywood boxes on top of which a pad had been placed for cushioning. It doesn’t work. You’re still sleeping on a plywood box. No mattress.


But it wasn’t that. Sherpa had stomach cramps. Really bad ones. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong, since we’d both been very careful not to drink water, not to eat any foods that had been washed in water, etc. It was only later that we figured out from the way her stomach was burning that it must have been the peppers in the beef dish, which Jen has now started referring to as Satan’s Daggers of Pain. They never affected me, but she really had a major disagreement with them. She was miserable for several hours and hence awake most of the night. She was so upset about feeling bad, and I was just feeling bad that she was so upset. A couple of hours before daybreak she finally fell into a deep sleep, and was feeling better, albeit weak, by the time morning came. I made the executive decision that she would stay at the hotel and get some more rest and regain her strength while I spent the morning finalizing the adoption. A taxi on a busy street in China is not the place you want to be when stomach cramps hit, and the Civil Affairs office, as we already knew, was bone cold. Simply no reason on earth to expose her to that. She had a fit, saying she felt guilty at not being there to take photos, but I had to put my foot down on that one—it’s just a couple of boring hours of paperwork, and if there were any photo opps, I could get the folks from the orphanage or the guide to hold the camera. Having already been through an international adoption herself, she knew I was right, so she acquiesced and sank back into bed. (Was that relief I saw on her face?)


So Charlie and I packed a tote bag with the camera, some juice, and his ASL dictionary (I asked if he wanted his Harry Potter book, but he’d rather study) and we headed off to the Civil Affairs office with Dragon Lady. She was rather nice today, actually. We got through all the paperwork without a hitch, handed over the gifts, and got in another cab to head back to the hotel. We dropped Dragon Lady off at the notarial office in town, and she gave the cab driver instructions to take us back to the hotel, which he did.


As best as we can figure it in hindsight, having ruled out every other possibility, I must have left that bag, which was black, on the black vinyl flooring in the back seat of the cab where Charlie and I were sitting. Our real guide, Lily, spent a lot of time helping us try to track it down. She called the cab company and tracked the cab (the receipt the cabbie gives you shows the time you were in the cab, the car number, and how much you were charged). The cabbie said when we got out of the cab, the porter at the hotel who opened the door for us even put his head inside the cab to make sure we had everything and didn’t see anything left behind. But a black bag on a black floor just wouldn’t have shown up that well. It wasn’t at the Civil Affairs office, because Lily took us back there to check. The office we were in had been locked since we left, and I checked where the bag had been sitting while we were there. So it had to have been in the cab. I suspect that the next customer in the cab saw a bag with a nice camera in it, and simply picked it up when leaving the cab as though it were his/her own.


I was just sick. There went my camera along with all my gotcha day and adoption day pictures. And there went the ASL dictionary that Charlie had already written a lot of Chinese words into.


But at that point, there was nothing more I could do. I explained to Charlie that I would get him another dictionary once we got to the US, and I kissed the camera goodbye. The folks from the orphanage had taken a couple of pictures, too, so hopefully they can send me copies of what they took so I’ll at least have those. And Jen still has the videocam film, so I’m hoping that we can figure out how to pull those clips onto the computer, because she actually got film of Charlie saying Mama to me for the first time. So it wasn’t a total loss. Maybe I can even figure out how to pull stills off of the video film? Don’t know.


Sherpa, of course, had an absolute fit. Full-blown guilt trip, moaning and wailing and rending clothes, claiming that if sherpa had been on duty, this wouldn't have happened. Oh, for heaven's sake. Now I've got to calm down a guilt-stricken sherpa, too, and convince her it was my own damned fault for being so scatter-brained. I'm just not safe to be allowed out on my own. Which was her point exactly.


The stroke of luck was that I had bought Charlie an inexpensive digital camera before I left the states. So I explained to him that for the rest of the trip, Mama needed to use his camera, but that he could take some pictures, too. We picked up a memory card for the camera, and we were ready to go again.


Highlight of the day was Charlie playing with the remote control cars. I had a huge bag of Matchbox cars for the kids at the orphanage, and he dug out a bunch of those and set up an obstacle course and tried to maneuver the remote control cars around them without crashing into them. Actually, either he didn’t do a very good job, or he wanted them to crash, because he kept knocking them over. His laughter is simply priceless. I love the sound of deaf children laughing (I hear a lot of that at the summer camp that I’m a counselor for.) Because they can’t hear their own voices, their laughter is loud and uninhibited. They just haven’t learned to tone it down to a civilized level. He just had a blast.


Another highlight today was teaching him to play Connect Four and Uno. On the Connect Four, he got the hang of it real quick. After I beat him once in each direction, he made sure not to let that particular strategy happen again. Then I hit him with a double setup, where no matter which way he moved, I had him. I never won another game after that. The little brat started setting me up. I can’t wait to let him take on Rick. I finally gave up and let him whip Jen’s butt for a while. More laughter. Uno was fun, too. He was pretty focused on just the color for a while (we were using it as a tool to learn signs for different colors and numbers) and it took him a few shifts to catch on that the numbers could change the color, but once he got it, he turned into a card shark before my very eyes. Thank God I don’t know how to play poker. I’d probably lose my shirt. I’ll let Rick teach him that.


We did some shopping at Wal-Mart that afternoon, since sherpa was fully recovered by then. We picked up sodas and bottled water and got Charlie stuff like hat and gloves, pajamas, long johns, etc. It was cold enough here in Nanjing, and it looked like Beijing was about 10 or 20 degrees colder, so we wanted to be ready.


Lily placed our wake-up call so that we would get up in time in the morning to be ready to leave for the orphanage. It would be a 5-hour drive, so we had to leave really early.


We had dinner at the hotel that night just for convenience sake, since I had a really bad headache by then. That turned out not to help much, though, because the restaurant was very smoky and the stuff on the menu was mostly things that we westerners don’t like to think about eating. But at least there were no Satan’s Daggers of Pain on the menu. We ended up just ordering noodles and a few dumplings and fried rice, and then saw someone with a plate of watermelon, which wasn’t on the menu, so we ordered that for dessert. Compared to the meal Lily had gotten for us the night before, it was Spartan, and it cost more. Tip: Don’t eat in hotel. We decided we weren’t doing much of that any more.


Jen and I were jet-lagged, and Charlie had had his introspective moments, so we decided an early night was in order. I went over the plans for the next day with him again right before bed, reminding him that we were visiting the orphanage, but that he would be giving out presents and saying goodbye to his friends and coming back with us. He got it. We also talked some about the airplane flight coming up in a few days. He was excited that he would be flying in an airplane soon.


We went through our tucking in for the night routine, the I-Love-You hands and the kisses and then we all went to bed, exhausted.



A Letter from Kimberly in China

Hello, everyone. My name is Betty, and I am Kimberly's mother.

Kimberly telephoned from China today and asked that I update her blog because an earthquake that occurred in Taiwan has disrupted all Internet communications within China. Kimberly has been trying to send emails and get on the Internet for two days without success, and this is driving her crazy. However, I am sure she will cope with this (comparatively) minor frustration.

The great news is that the adoption is finalized, and she is just waiting for her new son's passport so they can continue their travels. They will be visiting the orphanage today (which apparently is tomorrow already in China), so she will be able to distribute the gifts that were intended for children and staff there.

From a list of suggested names that Kimberly provided, Xiaotian has chosen the American name Charles, which means "manly." If you recall one of his letters to Kimberly, when they were discussing some sightseeing, Xiaotian mentioned a saying in China that "one is not a man until he has climbed the Great Wall." So apparently manliness is important to him. He will henceforth be known as Charlie.

Kimberly and Charlie will arrive back in the U.S. on January 11, and I am sure she will provide full details about her trip then. Thank you all for your interest and support of her adoption process.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Help! We've Been Kidnapped (AKA how we got to Civil Affairs)

After landing in Beijing, we went through customs before going to wait for our flight to Nanjing. I have been on the lookout for funny signs, and we just saw our first one. It was delineating the duties of the customs employees, and the last bullet point stated that the employees shall be supervised by passengers. Hmmmm…


Some nice young Chinese man was waiting with a luggage trolley next to the carousel, and he very kindly put our bags on the trolley and helped us find where we were to go next to get checked in for our connecting flight to Nanjing. When I tried to tip him a couple of dollars, he tried to hold us up for $20!!!! I managed to bargain down to $10, and I got the sneaking suspicion he was laughing at having managed to get $10 from the stoopid Americans.


When we got to Nanjing, we ignored all the nice young men and found a crippled luggage trolley with one flat wheel that we could push by ourselves without paying the nice young men. We made our way through the security checkpoint going clatter, clatter THUMP, clatter, clatter THUMP the whole way. Just on the other side, there was a nice-looking lady holding a sign with our names on it, so we claimed her and she took us and our luggage trolley (clatter, clatter, THUMP) out to the parking lot and loaded the luggage in the back of a van that a very nice man was driving.


She said the hotel is about 40 minutes away, so we settled in for the ride. It was nice to be out of the airplane sardine seats. She started talking about the fact that we are not waiting until 3 p.m. to go get Xiao Tian after all, because the Civil Affairs Bureau said they wanted us there as soon as possible. We would be leaving the hotel at 1 o’clock so as to be there when they finished their lunch break.


Yikes! Not much time to freshen up and make myself look like June Cleaver instead of Cruella deVille.


But then I started thinking…how did this guide know all this? OCDF, the company I had hired to meet us at the airport and handle our tours, was not doing the adoption paperwork. WACAP’s agency was supposed to be doing the adoption paperwork, which would include coordinating the appointments with Civil Affairs Bureau. I got this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I asked this nice lady if she was from OCDF. She was very confused. She was working for WACAP, and had been told to meet us at the airport and handle all of our arrangements.


Okay, keep in mind that I have by now been flying for over 24 hours and I’m not firing on all cylinders. I said, “Oh, no, that means there is another guide at the airport waiting for us somewhere—you aren’t supposed to pick us up!” and I explained about getting a separate agency. She immediately went from nice tour guide to dragon lady, ordering the driver in a stern voice to pull over while she straightened this out. I gave her the phone number for the woman in Beijing with OCDF who was planning the other part of our trip, and she called her. Chinese, to someone like me who only knows one sentence of it really well, sounds like an argument, whether it is or not. Jen looked at me rather fearfully at that point, because we were both convinced the dragon lady was going to drop us off on the side of the road for the other guide to fetch and finish the trip. Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut? She finally hung up the phone after having talked to 3 different people. They got word to our other guide that we’d been kidnapped by accident, so she could go back and meet up with us later that night; dragon lady and the driver would take us to the hotel since we were halfway there, and then we would continue on to Civil Affairs as planned. The only hitch was that since dragon lady was no longer handling our arrangements, we lost the driver, and we would have to get cabs and pay for them. Fine with me—if we kept the driver, they’d charge us something like $400 for him. Cabs cost the equivalent of about $1 each way.


Of course, this meant that there were duplicate plans for touring and duplicate hotel reservations. She discovered that the fault was her boss at the travel agency that WACAP works with—the boss basically shrugged and said that she had just been too busy to call and let her know the plans had changed. Nice boss. I felt sorry for her, ‘cause she had planned her next 5 days around us, but only for a little while.


We dumped our stuff at the hotel and ran a quick washcloth over our faces. Sorry, kid, no June Cleaver for you. Jumped in a taxi and headed for Civil Affairs. It was freezing in that building.


They showed us into a somewhat warmer room (but not by much) and I dug out my paperwork for this round of tree-killing.


Within about five minutes, they brought him in. I had really thought I’d be a tearful mess at that first meeting, but believe it or not, it was so hectic that there were no tears. Not one. He headed for me and spoke the word “Mama” (what a sweet sound!) and we hugged. He was very shy with me, but we sat down and ignored the rest of the world for a couple of minutes while I went through the list of names with him. I had thought we’d have until the next day to decide on his American name, but we actually needed it that day so they could apply for his passport. So I signed to him all the meanings of all the names (there were about 20 to choose from). Meanwhile, dragon lady is haranguing me, telling me that we have too much business to get through and don’t have time for this, I’m the parent, and I should just pick the name for him. I turned my face away from her and shut my ears, and kept signing with my son, and within about five minutes he had chosen the name Charles, which means "manly." He is now Charlie Fisher.


Little did I know that from her post on the other side of the room, my sherpa was giving dragon lady the hairy eyeball in between getting those all-important photos. Like I said earlier, you just don’t piss off the sherpa. When Dragon Lady couldn’t stare the sherpa down, she gave up haranguing me and went over to the Chinese officials (who didn’t seem to care that we were taking these few minutes) and started mocking how we were using sign language. I didn’t actually see this, but Jen told me about it later. Said she nearly came over the table at her but decided that getting the pictures and video was more important.


I could mention here that Jen has a sherpa specialty certificate in photography. She can hold a video camera in one hand filming, and take still shots with a digital in the other hand. Most impressive.


At any rate, the name having been chosen, we spent the next hour doing paperwork, and Dragon Lady informed me that my request to visit the orphanage had been approved, but that our other guide would have to make the trip. (That was the original plan anyway.) Then we got a couple of shots with the folks from the orphanage who brought him out to Nanjing. (Ms. Tang, director, and Mr. Zhang, who I think was one of his group’s teachers.) After the picture-taking was over, Ms. Tang had her arm around Xiao Tian while I was waving good-bye to her, and he thought I was waving good-bye to him, too, so he waved bye-bye back at me. You should have seen the look of surprise on his face when I looked at him incredulously, took his hand, pulled him towards me, and then told him to wave bye-bye to HER. He just couldn’t believe he was leaving with me. I don’t think they quite explained the process to him very well. They don’t sign, so it’s not entirely surprising that he wasn’t quite prepared for the schedule of events.


We made another stop or two to drop off notary stuff on the way back to the hotel, and Dragon Lady left us there after making sure our other guide had shown up. We apologized profusely to our OCDF guide, Lily, for allowing ourselves to be kidnapped like that, and she was very gracious about it. She took us for a walk through the pedestrian market area around our hotel to get us oriented, helped us shop for some clothes for Charlie (so hard to call him that after using his Chinese name for so long), and then took us to dinner.


Charlie’s first shopping expedition was interesting. He tolerated well being measured and trying things on, but he had very definite opinions on what he liked and didn’t like and was not shy about letting me know what he didn’t want. I got the jeans without much input because the choices were limited and he needed them regardless, but for sweaters and shirts, things that I thought he would like he’d just shake his head and wave his hand. Very definite thumbs-down.


One of the choices for the beef dish for dinner was with onions or with peppers, and we chose the peppers, thinking green bell peppers like the Chinese food at home has. Big mistake. They looked like snow peas, but they were hot little spikes of pure Tabasco. I enjoyed them. Charlie did not and left them alone. Jen ate a couple of them and decided they just burned too much and she wanted nothing more to do with them. We all enjoyed the beef with them, though, and the peanut chicken dish and the sauteed leek dish were fabulous.


Then we went back to the hotel and spent the night unwrapping his clothes, cutting off tags, deciding which suitcase he would use, wrapping some presents for the guides and Civil Affairs officials, and trying to play with his remote control cars. For some reason, the cars didn’t want to work.


Did I mention that my new son is a mechanical genius? Give him something that’s broken or that you can’t figure out how to use, and he will fix it. Took him half an hour, but those cars were working when he got done, and I still have no clue what was even wrong with them, because I tried everything. But he had fun playing with them until bedtime. He dressed for bed and brushed his teeth without any fuss, and once he was under the covers, I explained what activities would be happening over the next two days (Civil Affairs office again and then orphanage visit) so he wouldn’t be caught off guard by any of it and think he was going back to the orphanage to stay, that we were only going to be visiting and taking gifts to the other children. Then I tucked him in for the night. He seems to like being fussed over just a little bit as long as it’s in private. We each held up opposite hands with the sign language “I Love You” sign that everyone recognizes, and joined them together, and he got the most angelic smile on his face. It reminded me so much of the smile my older son, Rick, had when we put him on a carousel horse the first time, like this is just too good to really be happening. That was when I felt the first tears stinging. I kissed him good-night, got ready for bed, and turned out the lights after thanking God for adding yet another wonderful child to my family. I’ve always considered myself blessed with Rick, because in so many ways he has matured into such a fine young man, and I wondered if I was tempting fate by taking on another child, especially at an older age like this, where a lot of his molding and shaping has already been completed outside of my influence. But as I was drifting off to sleep, I felt a sense of peace that it was all working out exactly as He intended it to. He has plans for this boy, and I’m just a tool He is using to accomplish them, just as with Rick. All is going according to plan.


Good-night.
K

Monday, December 25, 2006

Leaving on a Jet Plane (with a leaky toilet)

Christmas day was quiet. My son Rick and I went over to my parents’ house for coffee and gab, and then after the last-minute packing, he dropped me off at the airport. I was through security and sitting at my gate within 45 minutes, leaving me a couple of hours to cool my heels. I spent the first part of it trying to send my mom an e-mail with my return flight info, not knowing that airport internet is no longer free. It didn’t work, needless to say.


Then came an announcement that my flight would be departing from a different gate. So I packed up the laptop, piled up all my stuff, and headed off to the new gate. When I got there, there were no seats because there were two flights waiting in the same area. Then I noticed a couple of Deafs standing around looking confused. It was a middle-aged man and his teenage daughter, and they were waiting for the Denver flight which had just started to board. He wasn’t even supposed to have been allowed this far (through security) since she was over 16, but there was no interpreter available at the airport, and he just made enough of a pain of himself that they finally let him through with her. But when they started boarding the flight and she got in line, they threw her back out of line and they couldn’t understand why. Turns out that airline was boarding in groups according to a number on the ticket, and so far they had only called group 1. She was group 4, so they weren’t about to let her on. I stuck around and kept an ear out and let them know when her group was called. She boarded, and he left.


That’s when the trouble started. An employee got on the mike and announced that our flight would be delayed because while they were housecleaning the flight, they discovered a leaky toilet and needed to fix it. They expected the delay to be about ½ hour.


Not bad. I had a 3-hour layover at LAX ahead of me, so I’d still make it in plenty of time.


Then a while later, another employee comes on and announces that not only was there one leaky toilet, and they could make the six-hour flight with only one toilet operating correctly if they absolutely had to, but also another toilet seemed to have a missing spring, which was considered a fire hazard, and they could not fly with that. They were scouring the airport for a similar plane to find another spring, since BWI was not a maintenance hub that kept parts on hand. Some of us were sitting around wondering out loud why on earth they didn’t just take the spring off the leaky one, but I guess that was just too easy. They did say that if they couldn’t find the part, another plane would be landing around 8:15 p.m. and they could divert that to LAX once it had emptied out and been housecleaned and restocked. In that scenario, we would be about 3 hours late. Oh, and the employee who was making the announcements and keeping us well-informed was leaving because her shift was over, and Merry Christmas, folks.


Okay, I only have a 3-hour layover to start with, and the international departure terminal at LAX is in a completely different terminal than the domestic arrivals, and you have to get there by bus. There’s no way I’m gonna make that flight.


There are times you can do nothing but hit your knees. I had four other women praying with me when they found out that one deaf kid’s adoption would be derailed if I didn’t make that connection, because there’s only one flight out to China per day, and I have to take custody of him 3 hours after we land in order for the timing to stay on track. This whole thing was about to come unglued because of a leaky toilet. Unbelievable.


Can’t tell me prayer doesn’t work. Less than half an hour later, someone got on the mike and said that our plane was fixed and they were going to start boarding immediately. They attributed it to heroic efforts by the mechanics. I know who to attribute it to.


We arrived at LAX only an hour late, and Jen’s smiling face was waiting for me when I got off the plane. We jumped the bus and got to the other terminal in plenty of time.


At this point, I need to interject that you will frequently see me refer to Jen as a sherpa. That’s not at all derogatory; she came up with the phrase herself and uses it repeatedly, and makes jokes on it. Sometimes they’re too funny not to share.


The plane was completely full, which meant we had a seatmate. Jen was window, I was middle, and this guy was aisle. He slept most of the way, didn’t even wake up for meals. I had planned to stay awake for a good portion of the flight myself, to cut down on the jet lag, and sleep the last few hours right before landing and going to get Xiao Tian, but Air China had other ideas. They served a meal pretty much as soon as we got up to altitude, and then they shut the lights out on us. So much for staying up.


Shortly after we crossed the international date line, near the end of the flight, the guy next to me decided to get chatty. Turns out he is a CEO of some billion-dollar real estate development company that is building a number of billion-dollar projects in China, one of which is a new Disney in Wuhan. Now you must understand Wuhan is not exactly a tourist hub. It’s a rather poor province with lots and lots and lots of industrial worker type Chinese people. Turns out what they’re doing is buying up tons of land through the government, moving all these people out and paying their rent during the construction, and then moving them back into apartment buildings, with enough apartments left over to sell at $300K each and make a couple of billion dollars. (Notice how that word billion keeps popping up?) He pointed out one area in the photos he was showing us and mentioned that it was the oldest marketplace in China. I asked if they were planning to preserve that part of the culture, and he replied that there was no culture there, just poverty.


Then he started in with the generalities. He asked if we were going to China. (Hello, we’re on an Air China flight that lands in Beijing…..) Once he had ascertained that we were indeed China bound, he said we’d love it, that ALL Chinese are very nice. Oh, and they all had generations of money, because they never spend any of what they inherit, they just keep adding to it. And all Chinese people must be intelligent, because they managed to learn their own language, and it's HARD. Then he found out that Jen had already adopted from China. Did you know that ALL adopted Chinese children are fun and energetic? (Yeah, our American kids are all boring and lethargic.)


Ever seen a sherpa get pissed off? Don’t go there, man. I was proud of her, though. Even though I could tell she was seething, she merely told him that all of her children were fun and energetic, not just the Chinese one. Then she turned her face to the window and ignored him the rest of the trip.


Which left me to deal with him. He then started in, upon finding out that the child I was adopting was deaf, on how all sign language should be universal. Told him that just wasn’t possible, since each language had a culture of its own that its Deaf population wished to preserve. He kept trying to convince me that they should consolidate, so I finally asked him if he had ever bothered to learn Esperanto. Huh? You know, Esperanto, the language that had no exceptions to the rules. There was a big push on years ago to make that universal, and he should learn it so he would be ready to trade in his English.


That shut the clod up for pretty much the rest of the trip.


I will get even with Jen for leaving me to deal with him alone like that.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Starting From Square One

No, not with the adoption. Everything's on track. But the travel agency that my adoption agency books through was really jerking me around price-wise. They were charging me more than double what all the other adoptive parents who have recently returned have paid, and they're only doing two out of the three cities we were going to be in--I was getting a customized itinerary from another agency for Beijing so I could hire a Chinese Sign Language interpreter for Xiao Tian. Excuse me? Twice as much for only 2/3 the work? My math isn't the greatest, but that didn't add up.


When I told my adoption agency that I felt like I was being jacked up, they said there is an option for just getting a guide for $600 to get us through the paperwork and the many appointments both in province and in Guangzhou at the consulate. Now THAT I consider a reasonable fee! So I told them to go with that, which meant I now needed to find my own hotels, in-country flights, drivers, tour guides, etc.


And this is Friday night. I'm leaving Monday.


Then I started wondering if the agency doing my Beijing tour handled adoption trips as well. Hit the web site, found out they did, and started making phone calls to China.


I don't want to see next month's phone bill. But OCDF (Our Chinese Daughter's Foundation) is walking in and picking up the pieces for me--cheerfully. When I told them what this other place was planning to charge me, the woman simply gasped in astonishment. She never said a word. She didn't have to. That gasp said it all.


Gave her the information I had and what needed to be done last night right before bed, which was first thing in the morning on Saturday for them. (They're 13 hours ahead of us.) By the time I woke up this morning, she was nearly done, and it's going to cost less than half of what the other place was charging.


Unbelievable.


If anyone wants the name of a travel agency to stay away from, e-mail me off-line. If anyone wants the name of an absolutely FABULOUS agency who can work miracles at the last minute, visit
www.ocdf.org. Their travel planner is named Jenny, and she's simply wonderful.
So I'm in a very grateful mood this morning as I'm putting up with all the last-minute aggravations that always happen before a big trip, and trying to squeeze everything in that must be done. I have just survived my entire trip falling apart and being put back together. I have a roof over my head when I land in China.


And now, as someone on one of the chat boards so aptly said, "As long as they hand over the kid, nobody gets hurt."

Friday, December 22, 2006

Letter #12 - Wanna Do Kung Fu

To tell the truth, I was getting a little worried that I hadn't heard from him since I sent the note saying I would be there to get him on the 27th. Wondered if he was getting anxious or scared. Not to worry, though--I got a letter from our intermediary today saying that now that the adoption is so close, the SWI won't let him outside much. Did manage to smuggle out one last letter from him, though. Resourceful, aren't they?


The intermediary tells me that he has figured out how to cross-reference the two dictionaries I sent him (ASL-English and Chinese-English) to figure out new words, but he is complaining because he can't always understand the pictures in the ASL dictionary--they aren't clear enough for him to tell exactly how to make the sign. Everybody's a critic. I just can't believe he's still trying to teach himself!

Oh, and great, just what I need....the kid wants to take karate. It's not enough that he has to hit the ground running and learn TWO new languages simultaneously (ASL and English)? And how the heck am I going to interpret karate instructions?? I knew I should have scrubbed the KungFu performance by the Shaolin Monks off of the Beijing itinerary....

Okay, deep breath, calm down....cross that bridge when we get there.

Here's the latest (and probably last!) letter:

Dear Mama,

Nihao! I knew you will come to pick me up on 27th, I am so happy about that! Thank you for sending so many candies to the children. I can look up the dictionary by myself, I study hard. I know mama will teach me the pictures I don't know, thank you. Mama was a martial artist, I want to learn it when I am in US.

Wish mama and gege have a joyous Christmas!

Your son
Xiaotian

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Travel Itinerary

Well, we have an itinerary now!


12/25: Leave Maryland
12/27: Land in Nanjing at 11:10 a.m. and meet XiaoTian at 3:00 p.m. Staying at the Mandarin Garden Hotel.
12/28: Adoption registration, notary, and passport processing.
12/31: Pick up XiaoTian's passport.
01/01: Fly to Guangzhou. Staying at the Victory Hotel.
01/03: Medical exam.
01/04: Visa interview.
01/05: American consulate to take oath and get XiaoTian's American visa. Fly to Beijing. Staying at the Peace Novotel. Doing all kinds of cool stuff here!
01/10: Leave Beijing to fly home (arrive 01/11 at 6:33 a.m.)

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Letter #11 - I Am A Fisherman (tissue alert)

For those of you who have been telling me you won't read this blog without a box of tissues nearby, I'm warning you--this one has a serious tissue alert attached. Don't even think of reading this most recent note if your tissue box is running low!This note is in response to the last one I sent him. He doesn't know about the TA arriving yet, I just last night sent the e-mail, so it wouldn't have been given to him before he sent this. The part in parentheses about English is a comment from our go-between. XT usually writes his notes in Chinese and someone translates them to send to me, but apparently he is wanting to show how well he is doing in his English lessons by writing a few words here and there in English. He sure is motivated, isn't he?


Dear mother and brother, (this is what he wrote on his letter, English!!)


How are you! I think I will like the things in the package. You told me we have a sewing machine at home, I am happy about that! I will make something when I get back home. The christmas tree at Yifei's home of hope has already been decorated, it is sooo beautiful! I can see it from my building, colorful lights and bulbs are very pretty! I really hope I can have Christmas with mama and gege. Please say hi to gege, mama can you send some pictures about christmas tree to me?


I drew another picture, which has a lot of beautiful fish, I am one of them, gege is in it also, mama is a fisherman, you got gege first, I am the next, then you take us home, and love us with all your heart, God is looking at us, bless us! We have a happy life!


Mama please teach me how to use the dictionary.


Merry Christmas! (xiaotian put English here also!!)


Wish mama and gege happy everyday!
Your son,
Xiaotian



I'm crying too hard to think of a response just now. I think I'll just sit on this one a while, hold it close, savor it, until the travel plans are all firmed up, and send him a note when I have more to report.

TA at Last!

Shock of my life--my agency called with TA tonight, and I hadn't even checked on whether any birds were coming out of Beijing since earlier this week, because I didn't think anything would arrive until next week!


The tentative plans are to fly out late on Christmas, meet him on the 27th shortly after landing, consulate appointment on the 4th of January, a couple of days in Beijing so he can climb The Wall, and head home on the 8th of January. This itinerary is contingent on there being a consulate appointment available on the 4th. The entire timetable hinges around that.


It looks like the amount that Jen raised during her two-week frenzy will cover her international ticket, which is fabulous news. I have tentative flights on hold for $1199 each, plus tax and fuel surcharge, which can run $200-$300. Xiao Tian's ticket (one way) will be $995 plus taxes.


That's all the news that I have at the moment, until that appointment is confirmed. I'll update if/when I get anything interesting.

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Letter #8 - A Real Man

Had my little crying jag last night and got it out of my system. This morning, a letter from China was waiting for me. It had been a couple of weeks since the last one, so I was a little worried that our go-between source had been found out and silenced, but I am reassured that is not the case. What a great letter!

Dear mama and gege,

How are you doing? I am still waiting for you to come to pick me up. I thought about I want an American name, but I want to keep xiaotian in the name also, I hope mama and gege will like that. I've never been to Beijing, hope I can go with mama. There is one sentence in chinese: You won't be a real man unless you climb the Great Wall. I hope mama and I can climb it together.

Miss Tang in fuliyuan gave the album mama sent to me. I will keep it well. I saw the house, it is sooo beautiful! The living room, bedroom, kitchen, two dogs, one cat, TV, computer, fireplace, mama's car and gege's car, also gege's girlfriend is pretty. I really wish once I woke up, I were lying in the American home!

I can write 26 letters now. I drew a picture also, where has a tree full of heart shape leaves, which is my love for mama and gege. Hope this year mama gege and I can have the Christmas in American home together!

May mama and gege good health!Your son: xiaotian



Of course, I had to write back and explain that now it looked like it might not happen until January, but I promised him that we would keep the tree up and have Christmas with him whenever he arrived, so he would not miss it. Here's my reply:

Dear Xiao Tian,


Gege and I are healthy and looking forward to having you home with us. We are still waiting for the CCAA to give us the travel notice that will allow me to come to China to get you. It must go through two more offices before they can send it to the U.S. It may happen in December, but my agency has told me that since the CCAA is moving so slowly, it might not happen until January.


I cannot believe it is taking this long for this paperwork, and I am very sorry that you are not in school during this long wait. I am glad you are using this waiting time to learn some English and learn to write the 26 letters. Here is a challenge for you: Each of the 26 letters you learned to write has a handshape in ASL so that you can spell words. Those handshapes are shown in the back of the ASL book I sent you--there is a page that shows a picture of each letter. Can you memorize which hand shape goes with each letter?


This week on Thursday we have an American holiday called Thanksgiving. Have you heard of this holiday? It started when some people called Pilgrims came to America and built houses and worked the fields. Life was very hard, and many of them died, and their Indian neighbors taught them a lot about growing crops and hunting for food. So at the end of the autumn, after the harvest, they had a big feast with lots of food, and they invited the Indians to join them, and they gave thanks to God for helping them to survive and have enough food to save for the winter. So Thursday, on Thanksgiving, we have a big feast and invite all of our family and some friends to share it. You will see this feast next year. You will be surprised how much food there is!


My heart is breaking that you might not be home with us in time for Christmas, but I make you this promise: If you are not here in time for Christmas, our Christmas tree will stay up until you come home to us, and we will have our Christmas celebration just for you whenever you get here. So please do not worry about missing Christmas, okay? You will still have your Christmas with mama and gege.


I have made plans for us to go to Beijing together, and we shall climb the Great Wall so that you can be a real man. I am also hiring a Chinese sign language interpreter during the time we tour some of the historical places in Beijing, because I know you won't know enough ASL yet to truly understand the history around you, and I want you to enjoy it fully and understand some of your heritage and culture. So the interpreter will be there, but only for Beijing. Until Beijing, you will be learning ASL with me so we can learn to communicate better.


I have a friend who is coming on the trip with me. Her name is Jen, and she and her husband adopted a little girl from China about a year ago. She is very excited to meet you and to help us on our adoption trip. She does not know any ASL yet, so we will teach her some together, you and I. Would you like to try to teach her some ASL since you have learned many signs already?


Since you have decided to take an American name, I will be sure to bring a list with me. I will show you in sign language what each name means, so that you can choose a name that you thinks fits your character. But we will keep Xiao Tian in your name. So your name after you are adopted will be ________ XiaoTian Fisher.

I love hearing of the tree with the heart-shaped leaves. Even though I cannot see it yet, it is very precious to me, because it is a symbol of your love and trust for me. Will you please save this picture for me and bring it to me when me meet? After you come home, I want to help you make a special book called a Life Book, which has information about your life in China, and I think this picture should be part of this book, because it is the first picture you made for your new mama. Have you also in the past made pictures for your first mama, to show your love for her and your thanks that she gave you life? If you have made such pictures for her, those should also be in this book.


Again, I am sorry it is taking so long to get permission to come pick you up. Just know that you have a mama who loves you very much, and I will be there as soon as they give me permission, and I am still thinking of you all the time and blowing you kisses in the wind every night.

Love, Mama

Monday, December 4, 2006

Letter #10 - More ASL, Mom!

Dear mama,

Nihao! I remembered all the letters and ASL in the book you sent to me, so I am ready for another book, please give me more ASL books. Mama and gege, I thought about what I am going to do in the future. I like sports at school, riding a bike, swimming, computer and drawing, also I like do some sewing. Dear mama I can sew some little toy and blanket.

Everynight I can receive your kiss from my dream. I keep that picture well till you come to get me. I hope mama can bring some local food of our city, thank you mama. I love you dear mama and gege!

xiaotian



Dear XiaoTian,

I have sent you a package and you should receive it very soon. I mailed it on Thursday night, and they said it will take 4-10 days to be delivered, so you might possibly get it this week. I hope you like what is in it.

I have decided that now that you know your 26 letters in English and many ASL, it would be too easy for you if I ask David to write the Chinese words in the ASL book I am sending for you, and it would take David a long time, because what I sent is an ASL-English dictionary with many, many, many ASL signs. So I also sent a Chinese-English dictionary. Here is what you must do: Look first in the ASL dictionary and look at the picture of the sign. Next to it in dark typing is the English word for that sign. Then go to the Chinese-English dictionary, and look for that word in the English side. You can find it because the first letter the word starts with is in the book in the order that you learned the letters, so first are all words beginning with A, then all words beginning with B, etc. When you find that English word, you can see the Chinese word next to it, and then you can write the Chinese word in your ASL dictionary next to the sign.

Since you are so smart, I think this will keep you busy for a little while, yes? You will probably still be working on it when I come to get you! I am very proud that you have worked so hard to learn all the ASL I sent you and English with your teacher at SWI. Please tell your teacher that I said thank you for taking the time to teach my son English--that is very, very kind of her.

I also put in a sweatshirt from Gallaudet University for the Deaf. I am not sure of your size, so I hope that it fits you okay. If it does not fit you, then you may give it to a smaller child and I will buy you a bigger one when we get home to the U.S.

There are also many candies in the box. You must promise to share them with your friends and teachers, yes? Do not try to eat so much candy by yourself, it will make you sick if you eat too much. But there is plenty to share. And be sure to brush your teeth after eating candy!

Do you sew with a needle and thread? I have a sewing machine here at home that you may learn to use if you wish. I also understand that you taught yourself to knit. I can knit a little bit, but I am not very good. I have knitting needles and crochet hooks if you wish to use them to make something.

I am trying to put up our Christmas tree this week. It is a big artificial tree, so it takes a long time (about 7 hours) and I cannot do it all at one time. So I will try to stand it up and put it together tonight, and then perhaps tomorrow night put on the lights, and then the next night decorate it with all the little balls. It is a lot of work, but it is very pretty when it is finished. Once I get it all decorated, would you like me to send you a picture, or do you want the sight of it to be a surprise when you arrive in the U.S.?

I love you, XiaoTian, be safe and happy until I can see you.

Love,
Mama