You Can Dress 'Em Up

Except for the too-long sleeves poking out, I think Charlie cleaned up pretty good, huh? This was taken at mom's house after church the Sunday before Christmas. My church is very informal, so Charlie usually doesn't dress like this, but he went with me to a cantata that I was interpreting at another church, so I made him dress up. My mother didn't recognize him when he walked in the door with me!

Nerves

Sorry it took me so long to get back to blogging! The picture from exam night tells the story. He got the yellow belt. I think (and his instructor agrees) he would have had a red, but the one thing we didn't have him practice was how to recover from a mistake. I don't know if he was nervous or what, but during one form he made a turn backwards and he stopped, trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

You just don't stop. You keep going and make it look like you MEANT to do it that way. He had never flubbed up in class, so we never had to pound that into him.

But he was a good, strong yellow performance. Rick and I were so proud of him, and he looked so happy as he went down the line of instuctors with the other students who had been promoted, accepting handshakes and hugs from them all.

Then they all sat down, and the two students (one child, one adult) were chosen for the Outstanding Achievement trophy. Since Charlie is over 13, he counts as an adult. You should have seen the look of SHOCK on his face after the head instructor presented the child's trophy to some kid and then Charlie's teacher was asked to come up and present him his trophy. He just doesn't seem to understand how remarkable it was that he tested a full cycle early and still turned in a strong performance.

What's funny is that he never told anyone at school. When I went to his IEP meeting a couple of weeks later, I said something about the trophy to his teacher, and she got a look of shock on her face. "Trophy? What trophy? He didn't tell ME about any trophy! Can he bring it to school???" For some reason, he refused to take it to school and show it off. Modesty? Dunno.

Great job--We love ya, Charlie Chan!

King of the Hula Hoopers

We just found out from one of Charlie's v-phone buddies that Charlie is on YouTube! Apparently there was some sort of contest this summer while Charlie was at Lions Camp to see who could hula hoop the longest....this clip is the last two or three contestants.

Check it out here.

Charlie Chan

Well, Charlie apparently wasn't kidding back in Letter #12 when he said he wanted to learn martial arts. He started in mid-September. He has a professional interpreter, and on the nights the interpreter can't make it, I interpret for him. I prefer to sit and watch him, though.

The way it works in our association (where I used to teach) is that the kids stay at the white belt (beginner) level for the entire first 13-week course, and then if they sign up for the second course and have learned everything they need to know, they take their first "belt exam" a couple of weeks into the second course to get their yellow belt.

At least, that's how it works with normal kids. I'm learning very quickly not to be so surprised when I find out that Charlie is not normal.

Charlie walks in and makes it very clear he means business. He is very focused, and learns really fast. He practices at home and it is obvious when he goes to class each week that he has been working on what he learned the week before. We normally don't start teaching forms until they've practiced kicks and punches and basic motion for a month; Charlie started his first form the first night. He learned the second and third forms on his second lesson. Took him two weeks to get the third form down; it's a little tougher.

I mentioned something about needing to buy a gi (the white uniform they wear) to the head instructor (who knows me from my teaching days), and he said, "Oh, don't worry, he won't need that until he tests, which won't be until the February session." I snickered. The female black belt who was working with Charlie said something about me needing to get Charlie a gi, and I told her what the head instructor had said. She said, "I'll just have a little word with him." She came back later that night and said that he was going to work with Charlie the following week so that he could evaluate him and decide whether he was ready for the test or not.

Sure enough, last night the head instructor informs me that I need to buy a gi. Charlie is going to take the test on November 14.

Mr. Charlie Chan is feeling very pleased with himself.

Normally a white belt will get a yellow belt on the first test. But now that we all know Charlie is not normal, would anyone care to take bets on whether he will skip a belt, too? If the student isn't quite good enough for the yellow, he gets orange (which is a half-belt). If he does a really outstanding job on the test, better than any of the other students, he gets promoted straight to red. That's what he's aiming for (mainly, I think, because he found out that's what I did, and he has a very competitive streak in him).

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Imperfect Understanding

It's been a while since we've had a truly funny misunderstanding, since Charlie's sign is getting so good. The tables are usually turned these days--it's me who doesn't always understand what he's saying.

But tonight was a good one. I was grilling some chicken on my Big Green Egg (if you don't know what that is, check out www.biggreenegg.com) and my parents had stopped by, not to eat but to sit and gab a while before they left on a trip and watch us eat. I told Charlie to find some veggies in the ref (refrigerator) and cook 'em up to go with the chicken since the chicken was almost done. He said okay and disappeared into the house.

A couple of conversations later, the chicken was done, so I went into the house to see how the veggies were coming along. Kitchen is empty. No Charlie, no veggies.

Checked the videophone. Nope, he's not chatting on that.

There's a light on in the basement. I flashed the lights from our level to get his attention, and he comes to the bottom of the stairs where he can see me. "I thought I told you to find and cook some veggies?" He got this stricken look on his face and signs "sorry" and runs into the utility room to get a bag of veggies out of the freezer. Told him too late, we were going to eat just chicken. So he gets his plate and we load up on chicken and start eating, when he confesses, "I thought you said 'get some fruit or veggies to go with the chicken' so I got some strawberries and took them downstairs to eat them while I was waiting for my chicken."

My mother just about choked on her glass of wine at that one.

So Dependent on Technology (AKA Bad Dog!)

I've corrupted the boy, no doubt about it. He was living a nice, simple, uncomplicated life in China, and I had to go and bring him to the high-tech West where machines throw our lives into turmoil.

I came home from school late last night to find Charlie still up (no biggie, it's summer) and frantic to show me the remote to our videophone. It looked like it had been used for target practice or something--little pieces of it were gathered up and stuffed into a ziplock baggie. Closer examination revealed bite marks. Charlie caught one of the dogs chewing it up. Greyhound jaws can bite at 55 pounds per square inch. It looked sad. And when I looked at the TV that displays the videophone, there is a message bouncing across the screen that says "2 missed calls." Charlie, with a look of extreme concern on his face, is pushing buttons on what is left of the remote, showing me that it won't answer the videophone or bring up the menu.

A lot of machines have buttons on them and can be worked manually if you lose the remote. Not so the videophone. It is a very simple and sleek-looking machine, and the only button I can find is on/off. No remote, no videophone. It's that simple.

This would just ruin Charlie's day, not to be able to use the VP. It's amazing how quickly he has become accustomed to our high-tech world. He spends a lot of time chatting with his friends on the phone, and now he is tutoring someone by phone, so he really is dependent on it for communication.

After sending him to bed and saying a quick prayer, I decided to go to the company's website and see what I could find. Nowhere did I see anything about replacement remotes, but they did have a tech support team. Thank goodness they had e-mail support, because the primary way to reach them is by videophone. (Okay, follow me here--if you need tech support for your videophone, how do you contact them by videophone?) I dashed off an e-mail to tech support.

Then I started thinking--I have the e-mail address for the man who came out and installed the VP and taught us to use it. Maybe he would have spares he could sell? So I dashed him off an e-mail, too.

Turns out, both got back to me. (What a great customer service company!) Tech support is mailing me one, but the guy from training says he has tons of 'em, they're free, and since he works near my house, he will drop one off to Charlie on his lunch break.

Now that's service!

If only I could videophone Charlie and tell him the news....

Bad dog!

A Happy Camper

Well, Charlie and I just returned from West River deaf camp. We were at opposite ends of the spectrum. He got Camper of the Week, and I got kicked out. Yup, you heard me right.....

He had an absolute blast there, and everybody loved him. One counselor even asked (seriously) if he could hire Charlie to tutor him in ASL by videophone! Whatever. They've been at it every day since we got home. All I heard all week was how unbelievable he was, what a good kid, how incredible that his sign was so fluent already, blah, blah, blah.

Well, that's what I heard when I wasn't hearing them yelling at me, anyway. I was co-director of the high school deaf camp, and we just couldn't seem to do anything right this week. We started off by busting a drug-dealing effort and sending home a roomful of 4 boys. This tainted the image of the entire high school camp in the eyes of all the other groups and their directors, so they carried a rather dim view of me and my co-director to start with. (No, we weren't considered heroes for busting the druggies--no good deed goes unpunished.) Then our kids got into a food fight.....

They were making gingerbread houses from a kit in teams. My co-director became much-beloved by standing up and telling them, "The rules are--NO RULES!" As those of you with older kids know, you just don't say that to a bunch of teen-agers (46 of them, to be exact, minus the 4 we sent home) without expecting dire consequences. It starts with one person who has sticky icing all over his hands touching another person on the nose, whereupon this person smears a line across the first guy's forehead, and the next thing you know you've got kids chasing kids, kids chasing counselors, counselors chasing kids, etc.

The counselors were up with the kids until 2 in the morning cleaning the dining hall.

Co-director and I got hauled on the carpet the next morning.

Then the girls and some counselors entered the boys' cabin while the boys were gone and turned all the furniture upside-down, stacked up the cushions, took some of it outside on the lawn....all a harmless prank, except for the fact that that camp manager had come to the cabin to deliver a message and was standing in the middle of the cabin looking around in amazement and glaring at me as I'm looking about in dazed confusion, having just awakened from a one-hour nap which came nowhere near to catching me up on my 16-hour sleep deficit. (I had been averaging just 2-3 hours per night since we'd gotten there.)

He says to me in a sing-songy voice, "Don't let it get out of haa-aand...." and walked out.

We had a counselor conference.

I got to bed at 11:30, determined to get some sleep this night. At midnight, co-director bursts into my room, giggling and shrieking, "We are SO gonna get kicked outta here...."

I turned my back on her and went back to sleep, knowing that whatever it was, we were going to be hauled on the carpet again in the morning.

Indeed. Seems a group of girls were talking about sneaking out and jumping off the pier for a swim at midnight, and a counselor "oversaw" them and convinced them if they were going to do it to at least take some counselors with them. So our girls and 4 counselors (one of whom was a certified lifeguard) went and jumped off the pier. Problem is, another camp director (someone who didn't care for me and my co-director to start with) saw them and blew the whistle on them, proceeded to have a loud argument with co-director, and then burst into the boys' cabin to awaken a sleeping male counselor and demand a head check, when the boys weren't even involved. (Can you believe this is a church camp? What a Peyton Place it turned out to be!)

Anyway, we did get berated for all of this the next day. They made it pretty clear we weren't welcome back.

Can't keep us down for too long, though. We're planning to start a new camp next year. It'll be for deaf people (maybe not just kids) with concomitant disabilities, both physical and mental. We figure this population is a lot less likely to sneak out in the middle of the night and jump off the pier. And the great part is that a number of our loyal counselors have said if we start something new, they want in, so we're already partially staffed.

How does Charlie fit into this? Not exactly sure yet. He doesn't have any other disability to go with his deafness, so he can't be one of the campers. He isn't old enough to be a CIT (counselor-in-training). I'm wondering if he can maybe be one of the one-on-one helpers. He is so patient that I think he'd be great at that, helping someone with a major disability to do crafts and activities that they normally wouldn't get a chance to do.

Happy Birthday Baptism

Charlie's birthday fell on a weekend day, which was fortunate, because he has been at one camp or another pretty much all summer (which is why I've been so bad about updating anything--he just hasn't been here to provide his usual antics!). The celebration was fairly quiet, just Charlie and Rick and me, Rick's dad, my parents, and Charlie's godfather's family. He got the Lord of the Rings set in Chinese from me, and Eragon and a book on transportation in Chinese from my parents. Rick gave him a set of cross earrings. His godfather and family gave him some money, a coffee mug that says "Got Jesus?" and a Hero T-shirt (which Charlie later told me was a total hit with the kids at camp). The best brownie points, though, go to Rick's dad, who gave him a silver/blue/black softball bat to go with the glove and ball I got from someone in my freecycle group. We got to see one of those split-your-face-in-half grins flash across his face at that. Ted had written Charlie's name on it in both English and Chinese in metal glitter paint. Very cool.

The other thing Charlie got from me was a cross necklace. He'd been bugging me for one, since both Rick and I wear a cross, and I had told him he could have one when he'd learned enough to know what that cross really meant--it wasn't just a fashion statement. So he's been studying once a week with our pastor (who is a deaf Korean--I think the fellow deaf Asian bond makes Charlie feel very comfortable with him) and his baptism was planned for the day after his birthday. He was really tickled to be getting his cross necklace.

Funny episode during the baptism, though. Rev. Joo Kang did not rehearse ahead of time with Charlie the exact questions he would ask and the answers expected of him. Keep in mind, Charlie's only been here 6 months. His ASL is really good now, but not totally perfect. So when Rev. Kang asked him if he renounced the sins of his past, Charlie grinned and signed, "No." Not once, not twice, but three times. I heard Charlie's godfather (who is a pastor himself), standing next to me, draw in a sharp breath and whisper sotto voce, "re-word it, re-word it...." There were a few giggles out in the congregation, too. Rev. Kang eventually re-worded it so that Charlie gave the right answer, and the rest of the baptism went on without further incident.

The minute the baptism was over, Charlie and I jumped in the car to head for yet another week of camp.

Just a cute picture

Just a cute picture I got of him while walking around a nearby lake one night. Is it my imagination, or have his facial features matured dramatically over the past 4 months?

The Future of Deaf Orphans in China

I can't say whether this article speaks for all or even most of China, but someone once asked me what kind of future Charlie would have had if he had stayed. In China, unadopted children age out of the international program at 14, which means they can only be adopted domestically at that point. They age out of the orphanage entirely at 16, out the gate and on their own to survive with whatever skills they've gleaned to that point. Charlie was well taken care of in the orphanage, but they can only protect them for so long.

I think this person was a little shocked when I answered that deaf orphans in China have pretty much two future paths: begging or crime. And my own personal feeling is that Charlie is too smart to beg. So I think, even despite his strong sense of ethics at this point in his life, he would have ended up a criminal. With his charm, probably a con man of some sort, but a criminal nonetheless.

Okay, so maybe that statement was a little harsh? But then today I got the text of an article that was published through Reuters News Service. I decided to copy that in here, just so y'all know I'm not blowing smoke here.

Enjoy, if you can.


Deaf-Mute Children Sold to China Pickpocket Ring **
Principal of School for Deaf Charged With Selling Kids

Chinese police have detained the vice-principal of a
school for deaf-mutes and other special needs children
for selling 10 students to a ring that trained them to
become pickpockets, the Guizhou Metropolitan Daily
reported.

Police rescued the victims, the youngest of whom was
12, in Jiangxi and Henan provinces this month, the
online edition of the newspaper said.

They went missing from their school in Liupanshui city,
Guizhou, last month, the newspaper said, adding that
the ring trained and required each person to steal and
turn in 500 yuan ($65) per day.

Zhu Xiangyu, 52, vice-principal of the school and
vice-president of Liupanshui's Deaf-Mute Association,
and four other suspects had been taken into police
custody.

Hundreds of deaf-mute students had gone missing since
2005, the newspaper said.

China has about 1.8 million deaf-mutes aged 18 or
younger, many of whom are unable to obtain an education
or steady work.

Police vowed this month to crack down on gangs that
exploit deaf-mute youths, highlighting the hardship
of disabled people in a society that gives them little
state support, especially in poor rural areas.

Earlier this month, the Legal Daily reported that
police in Hunan province broke up a gang of
gun-wielding deaf-mute robbers who police said were
behind hundreds of armed robberies across the country.

SOURCE: Reuters News Service (Published 5.24.2007)
Credited to a publisher for contributing to this story
from Beijing, China.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

We were heading home from some running around this evening, and as we pulled into our housing area, it started to rain. On the other side of the car, though, the sun was shining right in our faces, so brightly it nearly blinded us.

Charlie, our budding scientist, remembered that if you see both sunshine AND rain, there's gotta be a rainbow SOMEWHERE. Of course, I didn't see that running through his mind. There was a cool song on the radio, and I was in the zone. Suddenly I hear a shout, and Charlie starts babbling and jumping around in his seat like he'd been stung by a bee or something. I look over at him (nearly running off the road in the process), and he's got his neck craned halfway around, pointing and dancing and babbling. He found a rainbow. He's definitely his mama's boy--I love rainbows, too.

I have never seen him so outwardly excited. He had his hand on the door handle, and I thought he was going to jump out while the car was still in motion. He starts gathering up the stuff that he has to take into the house, and puts his hand on the door, ready to open it the second I stop the car, babbling away the whole time.

I barely got pulled into the driveway when he launched himself out the door, had his keys out, got in the house. As I walked in, he barrels into me, on his way back out again, camera in hand.

It's pretty hard to get a rainbow to show up well on film, but I think he did okay.

A Pain in the....Ear

05/15/07 - A pain in the.....ear
Charlie decided he wanted an ear piercing. He asked me which one. My suggestion, since I find him sleeping on his left side every morning, was that he pierce the right one so the earring wouldn't bother him when he sleeps.

My mother, God bless her, advised that I check with my older son, Rick, to make sure that was socially acceptable because she happened to know (which I didn't) that one ear or the other had a meaning that Charlie might not intend. (Have I been hiding under a rock all my life or what, that I didn't know that???)

According to Rick, the easy way to remember which ear to pierce (for a straight guy, anyway) is "Left is right and right is wrong." So I had to convince Charlie that mama was wrong, and he should pierce the left ear instead.

This was about a week ago, and we kind of dropped the subject after that. I have no clue where to get ears pierced. My mother took me to a doctor when I was 13, and when I asked Charlie's doctor about it, I got a rather funny look, so I didn't push the issue.

Tonight we had some running around to do (another whole story for later) and on the way home we passed through downtown Odenton, which is the little boomtown neighboring the local military base. What does one find in the vicinity of all military bases? TATOO PARLORS!!! And there was a sign outside of one that said Tattoos/Piercings. Aha! I asked Charlie if he still wanted to pierce his ear, and he got a big grin on his face, so we turned around and went back. It was nice and clean inside. They were currently working on someone's tattoo, so I got to see their set-up and that they kept things neat and clean in the work area. They said they sterilize their instruments. So I signed the forms and Charlie sat in the chair.

When the doctor pierced my ears eons ago, he used a little gun thingie that loaded the earring stud and put it in all in one fell swoop. It hurt, but not for long.

This looked brutal in comparison. They used what looked like a railroad spike....I'm not going into any more detail than that. Charlie sat stock still, but the look of pain on his face pierced my heart. And when the piercing was done, they still had to insert the earring. Eeek.

He sat through that fine, too, and seemed okay until we were ready to stand up. Then the sweat beaded up on his brow and his eyes rolled a little, and the dry heaves started.

Thank God we hadn't had dinner yet.

They gave him a popsicle and a wet paper towel on the back of his neck, and that straightened him out after a few minutes. We finally left.

Over dinner, I asked him what was next: Eyebrow? Lip? Nose? Belly button? Shook his head violently, and signed, "NO, NO, NO!!!"

His earring does look pretty cool--he wears it well. He's not planning to tell the other kids about heaving afterwards.

Squirrel (in a) Stew

I still can't believe it. When I got home from work today, Charlie had a big box sitting over his contraption with a weight on top of the box. Told me to get my camera. Then he took off the weight, took off the box and revealed his catch. The picture says it all, folks.

That poor squirrel was so upset that he had peed all over what little bit of flooring was under him while he waited. Charlie said when the basket first came down on top of him, he was in such a tizz that he kept running around like a hamster in a ball, spinning all over the deck inside of this basket. Charlie got pictures of the whole thing, from the time the squirrel starting nosing around the basket until it trapped him.

After I got the pictures, I told him to let it loose, so he picked up the flower basket. His big mistake was to be in between the flower basket and the side of the deck that faces the woods. That squirrel damn near knocked him over trying to get away. When he hit the edge of the deck, he didn't even bother climbing down the support posts like he usually does (our deck is one story off the ground). No, he just jumped. Flew across the walking path and didn't hit terra firma until a tree got in the way.

Now I know why they call them flying squirrels.

Bee Stalker

This kid is kinda scary sometimes.

First day of really nice weather we got here on the East Coast, I opened all the windows and screen doors. I'm sitting in my office working, when I hear a shout from outside--Charlie's voice.

Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash....only to find my son on a guerilla mission.

Charlie had commandeered Rick's super-soaker (think squirt gun, bazooka-sized), and was patrolling the grounds around the house, stalking BEES.

This child was waiting until a bee or wasp would land on the porch or the bushes or the wishing well, then squirting it with the super-soaker until it fell on the ground, and then yelling and stomping it out of existence.

He's going to make a great sniper someday, I just know it.

Of Mice and Men (or squirrels and boys)

Charlie has picked up quickly that squirrels are not my favorite creatures. I have a number of bird feeders hanging off my deck, and I spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to keep squirrels out of the bird food. I think a squirrel can eat something like 283 times his own body weight, or something like that. Anyway, Rick told Charlie the story about the day I was home with the flu, and the squirrel was looking me in the eye while he hung from the top of the bird feeder, digging seed out of the hole with his greedy little paws. Since I was feverish to start with, I was probably hallucinating the glee I saw on his face as he started cleaning it out, but it ticked me off so bad that I flew out the door onto the snow-covered deck, barefoot and in my bathrobe, scooping up snow by the handful and throwing snowballs and screaming at the squirrel, which is frantically jumping from bird feeder to deck railing to tree branch, trying to escape this maniacal, obviously sick woman.

Charlie was laughing hysterically while Rick told him this story, so it comes as no great surprise that Charlie is now plotting how to defeat the squirrels and do a better job of it than mom did.

The picture above is what I found when I came home from work tonight. Charlie spent the day devising a squirrel trap. So in the picture above, we see a box of sunflower seeds to attract the squirrel, an overturned wire flower basket to act as a cage, propped up on a candle with a string around it. The string extends to the kitchen, where Charlie has been sitting all evening, waiting for the squirrel to show up, so he can pull the candle out and make the basket fall on the squirrel, trapping him under the basket.

I haven't seen the kid sit this still since he got here. He can be incredibly focused when he wants to be.

I would say there's no way in hades he's gonna catch a squirrel with this thing, but this is Charlie we're talking about. I guess if he does catch one, we'll have to get pictures and post them here in an update, 'cause no one will believe me without proof when I say my 13-year-old from China caught a squirrel without a gun, using only a flower pot, a candle, and a string.

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Gotta Be a Better Way

Shortly after I started my study of Chinese cooking, I discovered that one of Charlie's favorite dishes in the world is Jiaozi, a Chinese dumpling that is filled with pork, napa cabbage, chives, and various spices. I also discovered that Jiaozi is very time-intensive to make. Making the dough and rolling out those thin dumpling skins takes forever! Jiaozi ended up being a half-day project, and by the time we were done, I had pretty much decided that this was going to be a special occasion treat, not an everyday dish. I was afraid to try to make the stuffing ahead and freeze it, because the cabbage would get all slimy, but I was wondering if I could make a mountain of those dumpling skins and freeze them so I didn't have to go through all that very often.

Fast forward a week or two, and Charlie and I are shopping for fruit and veggies in the local SuperFresh store. I'm looking at the napa cabbages, and Charlie starts "talking." He doesn't use his voice in public much unless he is really, really excited about something, so I hurried over to where he was looking, and he is pointing at a package of round, thin, slices of dough. Dumpling skins. Ready-made.

It says you can freeze them. I bought 5 packages of them--there's 100 in each package. I figure that's going to keep us going for a while.

We had dumplings again tonight, and it took less than an hour. Goes so much faster when you don't have to start from flour and water.

Is that cheating? Don't know, don't care.

Cast Away

Charlie's cast came off this afternoon, and not a minute too soon. He was doing great with it for the past 3 weeks or thereabouts, never complained. Then on Sunday, we were sitting in Sunday school gabbing with some other folks before the leader started the lesson, and a lady whom we'll call Cindy ('cause it's her real name!) asked him if it itched. He signed back, "Just a little bit." She leans forward like she's about to tell him a secret, and signed, "You know why it itches, right? That's because there's little bugs in there crawling around...."

His eyes got big, but only for a second. He KNEW she was puttin' him on. Nonetheless, the power of suggestion had taken hold. That cast started driving him nuts. Poor kid was miserable for the next 3 days, and he was so happy when Wednesday rolled around. They took that cast off and he immediately started rubbing his arm. Of course, this raised little bits of skin, so he gets his face down there real close to inspect, then looks up at me, signs "BUGS!" with his good hand, and flies outta the room to a deep sink he saw in the hallway where he can wash off his arm, leaving the doc sitting there with his jaw on the floor.

Gimme a Break!

Well, Charlie has only been home 2-1/2 months and is on the injured list already. I got an e-mail from his teacher one afternoon that he had hurt his wrist slamming into a wall during a game of 4-square. The health center nurse said he could move the wrist, so she ice-bagged it and let him go.

When I got home and took a look, it seemed he had a lot more pain than simple bruising would cause--it was extremely painful to touch in two specific areas--so we went to one of those evening emergency clinics. They advertised x-ray capability, but it turned out they only had a mini-C-arm machine, so the pictures weren't good enough quality to pick up fine fractures. Since there was some doubt, they splinted him and told us to follow up with the orthopedist the next day.

I think the building where the orthopedist's office is must have looked like the hospital in China where they took him for an appendectomy, because as we pulled into the parking lot, he looked at the building, got very big eyes and a worried look on his face, and signed, "Surgery? Cut wrist?" I explained that it was just a doctor's office, not a hospital, and that they would only be taking pictures and might put a cast on it. Somewhat mollified, he agreed to go inside.

The orthopedist got better pictures and STILL isn't completely sure if it's broken. He suspects from the location of the pain Charlie is having that there is a little crack in one of the wrist bones called the scaphoid, and he decided to cast it just in case, because if it is cracked, it will never heal if he keeps twisting his wrist with normal use.

Charlie now has a bright green cast for the next 3 weeks. Doc warned him to keep it clean and dry. I explained that he would have to cover it with a plastic bag and a rubber band to shower.

At least it's on his non-dominant hand, so it doesn't much affect his ability to sign/communicate. Doesn't affect his ability to eat ice cream, either--we detoured out to Baskin Robbins on the way home.

We got home and showed off the new cast to big brother, Rick, who immediately tries to explain about the custom of signing casts and pulls out a black Sharpie magic marker. Charlie pulls back, screaming, "No, no, doctor said clean, dry!" (Guess I interpreted that part right, huh?)

We explained the difference between clean and "clean" and told him that the kids at school will all be wanting to sign his cast once they see it.

They made a liar outta me. He got home from school yesterday, and there wasn't a single signature on that cast except Rick's and mine. Don't kids sign casts any more???

He's dealing with it like a champ, not complaining, and only admitting that it aches a little if I happen to ask about it, but he's no longer asking for the ibuprofen we were using to help with the pain. Guess he's going to live through this one.

He got a nice pick-me-up yesterday evening, though. We stopped at the mailbox, and the first four fabric squares and wishes were waiting there. I let him open the envelopes and explained the custom of the 100 good wishes quilt and showed him pictures on the web of what I'd like his to look like. Now he's interested in checking the mailbox to see if any more show up. (For those who don't know what I'm talking about yet, look here.) He really enjoys getting mail. I think I'm going to subscribe him to a couple of magazines so he gets some mail of his own occasionally. Getting those envelopes was just what he needed to put a smile on his face. I even got some pictures of the big grin. Once I get them transferred to the computer, I'll add one to this post.

Chinese Cooking

Okay, you can't tell ME this kid can't read English yet. I think he's just not lettin' on....

I took him to Borders bookshop tonight to get him some picture dictionaries and flash cards to help with vocabulary building. We had a great time looking at all the kid's books.

Then on the way out, I took a detour through the cookbook section. The selection of Chinese cookbooks at my local library was somewhat limited, and I didn't particularly care for what I had found. I'm rather particular about my cookbooks--I like to have a picture of nearly every dish in it.

Once I found the right section, Charlie realized very quickly what I was up to, and he started at the far end of the Chinese section from where I started, looking through every cookbook to see if his favorite recipes were in there.

He finally found the one he thought I should get and hands it to me open to a recipe that he was particularly excited about. I didn't particularly care for it, because it had nearly no pictures, and I shut it to stuff it under my arm so I could talk with my hands. As I started to explain to him, I realized that the color combination on the front of the book was very distinctive, and I looked down at it again.

No one understood why I was doubled over laughing in the middle of the cooking aisle at Borders.

I guess this is Charlie's way of protesting my cooking skills.

First Day of School

Charlie started at the Maryland School for the Deaf today. I followed him to the bus stop and got a picture of him getting on his school bus, and then got a photo of him in his classroom at school. He looked delighted to be surrounded by other deaf children. I'm planning to send the photo to the directress of his orphanage so she can see him happily ensconced in an American school. This is what he's wanted his whole life--to go to school so he can own his own business. He's convinced he's going to college. So am I.

There was a tear in my eye as I headed back out to the car, but I am convinced (and you can't persuade me otherwise) that it was there because it was 9 degrees outside with a wind chill factor of -4. That was enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes, right?

I got an e-mail from his teacher later in the afternoon with an update that he had had a great first day at school, and that he had eaten all of his lunch (hamburger, veg soup, apple, and milk) even though he told her he didn't like it.

Good thing I got that note.

We went to Pizza Hut this evening to celebrate the first day of school, and he spent most of dinner trying to convince me that he had had only one bite of the hamburger and that the apple had been drawn and quartered and rationed out so that he only got a thin sliver of it. He admitted eating the veg soup. Then he tried to convince me that she told him it was okay if his mom wanted to cook noodles and rice and let him bring them to school with him for lunch so he didn't have to eat what they gave him.

Uh-huh. I knew orphanage behavior would start showing up at some point. Let the fibbing begin....

They did send home some number flash cards and a color worksheet and some math homework. We did the math first and got that outta the way. He managed to learn the words and fingerspelling for the numbers 1-6 while we were waiting for our pizza. I decided that was far enough, when he starting mixing up the spellings for four and five. Tomorrow is another day, and I think he's had enough excitement for one day.

Okay, I have to put in a plug here for a really sweet guy. My ex-husband, Ted, is starting the free sign language class tomorrow night that is offered at Charlie's school because he is over at my house often with my older son, Rick, and wants to be able to communicate with Charlie while there. Is that cool, or what? Seems like Charlie is just inspiring all kinds of people to enter the Deaf scene--Jen is thinking about adopting a deaf child, Rick is now in the sign language interpreter training program, Ted is taking sign classes, and I have even caught my parents trying to sign a few things to him. The kid can't help being lovable.

Cream

Well, we've had our first hilarious language misunderstanding. Shortly after dinner one night Charlie came to me with his dictionary open to the entry "cream." All the way through our China trip, he had been happiest drinking those drinkable yogurt drinks. They're very creamy. So I told him I didn't have any, but would buy some on our next trip to the store.

We went to the store a day or so later. I picked up some strawberry flavored drinkable yogurts for him. He liked them, especially since he has decided he doesn't like milk. He's been happily drinking them. Hey, as long as he's getting some dairy, I don't care if it's milk or yogurt, right?

Last night he came to me with sign dictionary open again. Same word--cream. I figured he was asking to have another one, since I'd only been putting them out at breakfast. I told him they were in the refrigerator and he could have one now, too, if he wanted. He got a startled look on his face, and kept pointing to the word in the sign dictionary. I went to the refrigerator and took one out to show him. He shook his head and pointed to the word again.

Hmmmm.....

Took the dictionary, and looked at the words clustered around that one. They were words like "perfume" and "bath oil."

Poor kid. His skin was dry and he wanted some cream or lotion to rub into his face.

No wonder he was startled. Here, have a strawberry yogurt.

Revenge of the Sherpa

My sherpa, a faithful reader of this blog, will get much satisfaction from this post. I have gotten even with Charlie on her behalf.


Remember how people in China kept trying to feed us things described as "local delicacies" which cause most westerners to lose their appetites instantly? Remember how my sherpa kept turning green and either skipping a meal completely while pushing food around her plate with her chopsticks to politely look like she was eating, or begging at the next table over if it had something more appetizing-looking than ours?


And the whole time this was going on, Charlie was having a grand old time, eating things like dog meat and ostrich kidneys and duck innards of varying sorts, and laughing his head off at the colors our faces turned at the thought of touching what he was wolfing down.


Today was payback time. You're in America now, boy. For lunch I threw some Gorton's fish fillets in the oven and made a pot of macaroni and cheese.


He likes noodles. I don't know what his problem is. But the minute I set that plate down in front of him, he morphed into a picky teenager. Turned up his flat little nose and waved his hand in the Chinese sign for "no." Turned a funny color, too.


Revenge...how sweet it is.

We're baaaack.....

Okay, today is 1/12/07 (I think) and we got in yesterday morning (our time) which was the day before yesterday (their time) and.....oh, good grief. We're just back.


I've still got to blog the Beijing portion. I will try to get that done in the next day or so. But once that's done, it will officially bring to a close our adoption journey.


Now that we're back, I won't be blogging as often, but I promise to put up an occasional update, especially since things are already pretty hilarious at times. Yes, we're having some frustrations, but on the whole things are going pretty well. So, check back once in a while and see what's new at the funny farm.


Now begins the journey of becoming a family.

Beijing

We arrived late because our plane had been delayed due to ice in Beijing. They had apparently had a nasty snowstorm a couple of days prior to our arrival and were still recovering the runways. We saw a little bit of snow laying around still, but not much. After running around without coats in Guangzhou for nearly a week, it was a shock to walk into the Beijing cold.

Our guide, Tony, got us checked in at the hotel, and we arranged a time to meet in the morning. He's a very snappy dresser. Jen at one point commented that Tony was better dressed than most women she knew. He showed up most days in pinstripe slacks with a business shirt and sunglasses, very metro-ish.

We headed up to our rooms. For Beijing, I had arranged for two 2-person rooms, since Rick would be with us, and I figured we’d put Rick and Charlie in one and Jen and me in the other. Rick was already checked in and on the way to being asleep.

But Charlie didn’t know any of this. We had kept it a secret that Rick would be joining us. We walked into our room, and there were only two beds, of course. Charlie turned and looked at me with an “oh, no, not again….” look on his face, remembering the scene in Guangzhou when we were given a room the size of a small closet without a third bed or even a rollaway. So I crooked a finger at him to say “come here” and headed out into the hallway. I knocked on the door next to ours, and while waiting for Rick to open it, I told Charlie that I had a big surprise for him; since there were only two beds in my room, he was going to sleep in this room—with Rick. He got a very confused look on his face, as if to say no, no, I couldn’t have understood this right; then he looked up at me and signed, “Rick? Here???” When I grinned and nodded just as the door opened, Charlie’s face just split in half in the biggest grin I have seen from him yet. He truly just lit up.

Rick had a nasty cold. We could hear him all night coughing from our room. Thank goodness Charlie is deaf.

The next day we started out bright and early for the Sacred Path of the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. We stopped and picked up Hans, our Chinese sign language interpreter, from the subway station. He was a really sweet postgrad student at Beijing University who volunteers in their sign language association. I don’t think anyone in China actually works as an interpreter for the deaf—it sounds like they’re all just volunteers. Before we arrived in Beijing, I had given thought to actually canceling the interpreter because Charlie was doing so well in sign, but it was too late to cancel by that point, so we let it stand and Tony said we’d see how it worked out the first day or so. I’m glad we stuck with it, after all. He definitely added a new dimension to the trip, and Charlie really enjoyed being with someone who was fluent in Chinese sign. Hans did confirm that Charlie said he was picking up about half of what Rick signed and something more than half of what I signed but was not always letting on if he didn’t get it. So we started to get suspicious about every nod of the head, wondering if he really was getting it. But the signs started coming back to us more and more all the time, so I think he understands quite a bit, just not getting every single word but still getting the ideas.

We got some neat photos on the Sacred Path. We only got a couple of the statues in our photos, but if you want to see some really great shots, go to http://www.micktravels.com/china/sacredway.html and check out theirs. It was awesome! Then we went to a smoky little restaurant on the way to the Great Wall. Our guide here in Beijing, Tony, got a pretty quick understanding of our likes and dislikes, and most of the things he ordered were considered edible even by the Sherpa. Good thing, ‘cause we wanted to do some Great Wall climbing, and Jen was gonna need some calories for energy on that.

I was afraid that it would be just a walk in the park, since we were planning to take a cable car up and the sled down (since the cable car and sled were doing all the work, what more was there???). Not to worry. We got a workout, and we had the added excitement of almost getting killed, too.

Tony found out that we couldn’t take the cable car up if we wanted to sled down, because the cable car went to a tower in a completely different area a long way from the entrance to the sled/toboggan thingie. If you want to toboggan down, you have to take a ski lift up. Sherpa started whining. Claimed I had promised her an enclosed cable car (I never once used the word enclosed!) and that we would fall off this open ski-lift-chair-on-a-wire thing and be killed. I shushed the Sherpa, and up we went. It was c-c-c-cold going up on that thing! She got some footage with the videocam, but I think she had trouble turning it off because her fingers just froze to it. Just when we thought we were at the end, the crest of the mountain was coming up, it went through a junction pole and started up even further. The view was absolutely spectacular, by the way. Once we all got up to the very top, two by two, we realized this wasn’t gonna be a walk in the park. We were in one of the guard towers on the Wall, and the real work wasn’t in getting here, it was in getting from one tower to another. See the pictures on the photo section of the blog—it was really cool. In between each tower, there would be a combination of steps and steep ramps. The steps were not of uniform height, as they were all hand-made, so you really had to watch where you were going or you’d fall. Tony explained that the Wall was not just for guarding against invasion—it was a communications device. The dip in between towers was so that a clear line of sight from tower to tower could be maintained no matter what was going on at the top of the wall itself. If an impending invasion were sighted, the guards in each tower would light a torch made of wolf scat (wolf pu-PU, as Tony put it) and hold it up to signal the guards at the next tower. Each tower would then light the torch until the message got all the way to Beijing to the Emperor to warn of an invasion.

The Wall was just awesome. We climbed up to the roof of one of the towers for a survey. Rick was just standing there with his jaw dropped, and I swear he had tears glistening in his eyes (maybe it was just the cold, biting wind?) when he thanked me for inviting him along on this part of the trip.

Jen and Tony hung back after walking just one tower—Jen’s knee had been giving her trouble, and Tony has done this guide thing a million times, so he is no longer impressed. Rick, Charlie, Hans, and I walked about 4-5 towers. We wanted to go all the way to the top, but we ran out of steam and Rick’s coughing was getting really bad, so we headed back. When we came to the entrance to the toboggans, the Sherpa started whining again. She didn’t like the looks of them. Can’t we pleeeeeeeze just take the scary chair thingie back down again? Nope, the guide has already paid for the toboggan tickets, not the chair lift tickets. She’d have to climb down there to change her tickets. Rick led off and was out of sight in an instant. I thought I heard a faint “yahoo” about 5 minutes later, but I’m not sure, he was gone that fast. Then Charlie went. Charlie didn’t quite get the hang of the balance to get the thing going well, so he was going very slowly, not fully releasing the brakes. Hans went behind him and kind of pushed him along as best he could. Then Jen took off. I was behind her, and Tony brought up the rear. I waited a good while before heading off, since I knew they were all crawling behind Charlie, but I still caught up with them rather quickly, and Tony a minute later, and we all crawled down the mountain.

That’s when we nearly got killed. Despite signs every 100 meters telling people to beware of blind curves and to stay within a speed limit, an American idiot and his 4-year-old idiot apprentice come barreling down the mountain on a 2-person toboggan and never slowed down coming around the blind curve. They slammed into Tony’s toboggan, pushing the nose up. Tony was at least moving when they hit, so the impact on him wasn’t that great.

I, however, made a very bad decision in that split-second after hearing it coming. I stopped, figuring that it would end with my toboggan instead of causing a chain reaction all the way down through Jen, Hans, and Charlie. Bad move. Tony’s toboggan hit me square in the shoulders and flipped me up in the air, and I came back down hitting my tailbone on my toboggan, which folded in half and flew up, hitting Jen in the small of her back.

Jen was pretty bruised up. I couldn’t move at all for a minute, and when I could, all I could do was roll myself over the edge of the metal tubing the toboggans were in and drop off the side into the snow—I was afraid another speeding jerk might be behind the first one.

The guy never even apologized or asked if we were hurt. He just had a rather annoyed look on his face that were were still in the way and he had to wait until we took off again. Eventually I found my feet again, and got back on the toboggan and we made our slow, painful way down the rest of the mountain. As we were exiting the toboggans, we heard the staff who help you out of them and then remove them from the track yelling and screaming. Guess who they were yelling at? Jerk-O hadn’t even slowed down at the end, just came in full speed. Man, I feel sorry for his kid, growing up with an example like that.

All the remainder of that day and the next, I thought I had done serious damage to the sciatic nerve because I had severe shooting pains down the left back and leg when I tried to walk or even turn over in bed. But on the third day it started getting better, and I figure it must have just bruised the nerve really bad. It sure bruised me—I had huge bruises on my tailbone and down the backs of my legs, and it felt like there was a bruise between my shoulder blades, although it didn’t show one.

Of course, it didn’t take the Sherpa long to start in with the “I told you so” routine. I knew I’d never hear the end of this one.

After dinner, we went to see the Shaolin Monks do a Kung Fu exhibition. Jen described it well when she called it more of a ballet with Kung Fu moves. It was a story about a little boy’s journey to become a monk and master his Kung Fu. At one point, he fell from grace due to an illusion of a woman (why do they always blame women?) and the subtitles in English above the stage said his Kung Fu was damaged. That’s when Sherpa leans over and hisses, “That’s what wrong with us—our Kung Fu was damaged!” Got some dirty looks trying not to choke in a quiet theatre.

The next day, we went to the Confucius Temple and Lama Temple. The Confucius was inactive and under heavy renovation, but interesting anyway. Lama Temple was an active Buddhist Temple with monks all over the place and people burning incense and praying. It was fascinating, but the incense smell was overpowering, since they don’t just burn a stick at a time, each person burns an entire bundle. The Buddha statue in the main building was 26 meters high. (Think 3 stories high.)

The highlight of the day was the ice skating. I definitely had to sit this one out because I was still in extreme pain from being attacked by a toboggan the day before, and since I was just going to sit on the sidelines anyway, Jen (who was originally planning to sit on sidelines and take pictures of me falling on my keester) decided to stay at the hotel and try the internet connections again and let me do my own picture-taking for a change.

Charlie learned pretty quickly. I’d like to say he was doing triple lutzes and spins by the end of the session, but I’ll settle for the fact that he wasn’t wiping out too many times and no bones were broken. It was heart-warming to see Rick playing the role of big brother, helping teach Charlie to skate, holding his hand until he felt more sure of himself, helping him up when he wiped out. He was positively tender with him, and though I wouldn’t admit it to him, it made me cry. He’s wanted a brother for so long.

Back at the hotel, I was trying to wrap presents and asked Charlie for the tape. He signed that it was broken. Whaddaya mean, broken? How do you break Scotch tape, for cryin’ out loud? He brought it to me, and showed me the plastic container had snapped in half, no doubt the victim of rough luggage handling by the airlines. Then Charlie got a glint in his eye. I have already come to recognize that “I have an idea” look. A few minutes later, Charlie came back, having fixed the tape dispenser—he had seen Rick’s roll of duct tape in his luggage, and had duct taped the whole thing back together. (See picture in Beijing album.) Rick all of a sudden started chortling with glee, and yelling, “Now he’s REALLY my brother!!!” Rick fixes everything he breaks with duct tape, including his car. He has a Saturn. They don’t just dent, since they’re not made of metal, so when he had his first accident, he ended up with some holes in it, which he covered over with duct tape. He then got a bumper magnet that says “Silence is golden, but duct tape is SILVER” and since it wouldn’t stick (again, Saturns are not metal), he duct taped the magnet to the bumper. Rick and Charlie are now truly brothers, but the bond is not blood—it’s duct tape.

The next day we went to the Summer Palace. I think this was my favorite place on the Beijing part of the trip. It is easy to imagine being the empress and wandering through the outdoor arches and pine-arbored walkways. So ornate, very beautiful. I got some pictures, but they don’t really do it justice.

We did a “drive-by” (that’s what our itinerary called it) of the two stadiums that will hold the 2008 Olympics. Again, see the pictures. One is called the Bird’s Nest, and the other is called the Bubble Box. Two very interesting-looking edifices. Olympic village is still under construction, building huge buildings that will house all the athletes and all the workers it will take to put this gig on.

The Olympics is a big deal, and souvenirs are already on sale. At every major site, not just around the Olympics arenas area, vendors have Olympic babies for sale in some form or other, and they come after you shouting “Are you a baby?” Tony finally clued me in—the Chinese word for Olympic sounds like “are you a,” so they’re running after us asking “Olympic baby? Olympic baby?”

That is one thing I won’t miss. It is impossible to window shop in China without being accosted by someone trying to sell something. Vendors will bump into you deliberately on the street, strike up a conversation and beg and plead with you to come visit their shops. At places like the Great Wall, you literally get mobbed by vendors hawking their wares. They smell money the second they see our round eyes. And if you get a good deal, it’s “just for you.”

One great example: As we left the Summer Palace, an old lady started in on Rick. She had a dark red dragon in a box. Rick is a dragon collector, and he really wanted a dragon from China, anyway, so he asked her how much. She told him 126 (yuan). Having been warned that you should never pay what they ask for, he bargained her down to 70, and was feeling mighty proud of himself—until, having given her the money and taken possession of his dragon and turned to leave, another old lady starts chasing after him, yelling, “Just for you—30 yuan!” He turned to look, and this old lady was holding out the same EXACT dragon he had just paid 70 yuan for, and the first old lady was sitting back and grinning.

Just to rub it in, I bargain the second old lady down to 20 yuan, and bought her dragon myself. Gave it to him later so he could have a pair of bookends. Good reminder. He hates me.

In the afternoon, we visited a Hutong, which is an ancient neighborhood. Talk about a sense of community—you ride through by pedicab, and the first thing the Hutong guide does is take you to the public lavatories. Trust me, you just don’t wanna go there. Literally. Especially when it’s cold enough out to freeze your @$$ off. We had a nice visit with a local family who are considered wealthy by Hutong standards, since they are the only family in the neighborhood to have their own bathroom and shower. Their “house” was 3 rooms. It was worth $500,000 US dollars. Really! They heat with coal florets, one stove in the whole joint. Their kitchen has a propane bottle stove that they have to buy a new propane bottle for once a month. All what we here would consider rather primitive living conditions, but they have some beautiful and very valuable furniture. They are retired, so they are not allowed to drive. In China, they limit the age at which you can drive, and the elderly must get around by bicycle.

A tour like that certainly gives you cause to reflect on our level of creature comfort.

We then climbed the Bell Tower and had a tea pouring ceremony in the teahouse in the base of the tower. At one point, while we were shopping around in there, Tony asked Jen to put on his sunglasses. She thought maybe there was some optical illusion or something he was trying to get her to see, so she put them on and then looked up, and down, and sideways. Nothing. So she looked at Tony and asked why she was wearing his sunglasses. He replied because she looked so beautiful and mysterious, he just had to see how she looked in them. She took them off, trying hard not to laugh. When she mentioned it later that night, she was astounded that he would be making a pass at her. I don’t see why she should be so shocked, because she is really beautiful, inside and out. But it was funny to see Tony acting like a schoolboy over her. (Reminder: married woman, 3 kids….)

The next day we went to Tiananmen Square. Jen stayed behind, since she’d been there and done that already and wanted some computer time. Tony was distraught.

While at Tiananmen, we visited the Great Hall of the People. Rick did not realize this was considered a government building, not just a tourist hotspot, which was unfortunate, because they had a security check at the front door. For those of you who do not know what I mean when I say it was deja vu all over again, please go to the archive on the left of your screen, and find an older entry from early 2006 titled "What NOT to take to a federal building."

That evening we went to a Hotpot dinner. Can’t even begin to describe it, you’d have to see the picture to get an idea. Tony had done pretty good at that point, choosing meals that Jen could eat, but this one blew his winning streak. Jen just did her pushing food around game throughout the meal and drank a lot of beer.

I actually enjoyed the hotpot meal, but I drank a bit of the beer anyway since the food was so spicy. After we left the restaurant, we hiked to the subway station to head for the evening’s entertainment, and since it was so cold, Jen and I were arm-in-arm, cutting up like high-schoolers, just giggling and having fun. Okay, maybe a little tiny bit buzzed. But we were harmless.

That night we saw the Peking Acrobats. Awesome. Those kids simply have no bones in their bodies. Bodies are not meant to bend that way.

The next day was our flight home. We had a morning free of sight-seeing, so we slept in for a change and had a leisurely brunch before packing and checking out. Headed out to the airport at 2 p.m. Jen was a little worried that Tony would try to plant one on her and she’d be forced to smack him, but he behaved himself and settled for a quick hug when we said goodbye.

We saw Rick off on his flight, then settled in for a long wait until our flight was up. The flight back was fairly smooth, and Charlie slept through most of it. We had sent a note to the Captain asking if Charlie could visit the cockpit after we landed, and he sent word back agreeing. But what that meant, since Jen had such a tight connection, is that Charlie and I stayed behind on the plane while she literally ran to catch her next flight, so we never really had time for the emotional good-bye that we were both dreading.

The cockpit was nice. The pilot actually let Charlie sit in his seat and man the plane, which was cool. I showed Charlie the “steering wheel” and showed him that if you pulled it the nose of the plane would go up, if you push it the nose would go down. He just nodded sagely and then showed me the altimeter display and showed how the plane would tilt from side to side. Okay, I give up. How an orphanage kid knows some of the stuff he knows is beyond me. I’m beginning to think he has some other life experiences. Either that or they lied to me about his origins.

I miss Jen. It is uncanny how two total strangers can turn out to be so compatible. After we’d been together for a week, I asked her which of my habits drove her totally bats (because I was thinking it was so funny that she didn’t have any traits that drove me bats), and she laughed, because she had just been thinking the same thing in reverse. It’s so neat to spend time with someone who sees things through pretty much the same eyes you do, has the same sense of humor you do, and thinks the same thoughts you do and can finish your sentences in the same breath. We turned out to have so much in common it was uncanny.

It was amazing that this trip went so well, considering all that could have gone wrong. There were hold-ups here and there: The leaky plane toilet that almost kept me from getting to China, the camera going missing after adoption day, being attacked by one of my own countrymen on a wheeled device, but none of it was insurmountable, and we always managed to find that the blessings outweighed the problems.

Now if they’d only find Jen’s suitcase….it figures, they lost it on the last leg of the trip, between LA and Denver.

If you smell something burning, look at the Sherpa. She’s breathing fire…

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Guangzhou

The next several days in Guangzhou were fun, but I’m going to condense them into one post. On 01/01/07, we met up with the Hales family. Heidi and her husband, Que, and four of their children (they have two others who are grown) are here to adopt their new son, Yue. The reason Heidi and I wanted so much to meet up is that one of Heidi’s current four, Nicholas, is a deaf child she adopted from China years ago (he’s 10 now), and he was very excited to hear that someone else was adopting an older deaf child and wanted to meet Charlie. Heidi’s whole family signs, so we figured it would be easy to meet up. We were even staying at the same hotel. So we gave them a ring once we heard they’d checked in, and Heidi came up to our room to chat for a while. She is a certified sign language interpreter, so it was fascinating for Charlie to see a whole conversation going on in ASL between us.


We all went shopping after her kids woke up from a nap. One of the coolest things we ran across was an art called finger-painting. The artist has a bowl of black ink that he dips his palm or fingernails in and then paints pictures. He was making the most amazing pictures of rocks, waterfalls, and trees. The lady standing next to him, who spoke good English, was extolling his virtues, but explained that he was the student, not the Master (so hard not to laugh recalling Jen’s description of the Master of the Crystal Balls in Nanjing). After looking through works done by the student versus the absent Master, we decided we liked the student’s style better, and we all bought a bunch of his stuff. He looked very pleased.


We were told the McDonald’s was just over the pedestrian bridge over the Pearl River and on the corner. (The area of Guangzhou where everyone stays during adoption work is called Shamian Island, and it’s separated from the rest of the city by a footbridge.) So we crossed over into the city, where nearly no one speaks English, and looked for a Mickey D’s on a corner. No can find. We started looking at 3 p.m. We finally found it at 5 p.m. And boy, did we get some stares while we were wandering around. Heidi’s family consists of two Caucasian teen-agers, a Chinese child, and a Haitian child, and I’ve got a Chinese child, and the two Chinese children between us and most of the rest of us as well were signing. We were a crew like nothing this island has ever seen before.


Later that night, Heidi’s deaf son, Nicholas, came up and played remote control cars with Charlie. The hotel room wasn’t quite big enough for races, so we took them out in the hallway, and Heidi, Jen, Shannon (Heidi’s teen-age daughter) and I all sat in the hallway chatting while the boys crashed cars into the walls and doors. Thank God most all the rooms were empty! Heidi has some absolutely fascinating and horrific stories about her former adoptions, and I have an enormous amount of respect for this woman. When she realizes that a child is meant to be with her, she is tenacious in bringing that child home and I don’t think anything can stand in her way for long. These stories belong in a book, and soon!


On the second day, we had some touring in GZ. We nixed another dead guy from the itinerary. We went to the Chen Family Temple, which was fabulous. Who should we happen to run into there? The whole Hales family! They had a separate guide. We agreed we should have coordinated this better and all shared one guide to save on some $. When we first arrived, our guide told us there were many executions going on there that day, so we wouldn’t be able to see everything. Well, gosh, if there were executions going on, I’m sure we wouldn’t WANT to see it all…it took a while to realize he meant excavations. There were a number of rooms that were closed to the public because workers were excavating things from them and renovating woodwork, etc. Whew! That was a close call.


Our guide then took us to lunch at a local dimsen restaurant, and we were seated in a semi-private room. It had two large round tables in it. The other was empty. They started serving our meal, which had a lot of shrimp stuff (apparently that’s another local delicacy), so sherpa was doing her push-the-food-around-the-plate-and-act-like-I’m-really-eating act, when the Hales family walks in and sits down at the other table. Their food started coming, and although they had a lot of the same stuff we did, their dimsen did not contain shrimp, and they had some other dishes without crustaceans of any kind, so the next thing I know, my sherpa is begging for food. Well, not begging exactly—more like bargaining, offering some shrimp dishes in return for anything, anything at all, that looked like noodles or rice.


After lunch, we went to a beautiful building we had seen from the road and inquired about earlier in the day. It turned out to be a music hall that was erected as a monument to Dr. Sun-Yat Sen, the first president of China. It was a gorgeous building, and the gardens around it were lovely. Very conducive to letting lunch settle while on a leisurely stroll. Then Wen took us to Yuexiu Park, which was simply huge. We had a great time there, rented a paddle boat (bike boat, as the Chinese call them) for an hour and paddled around the lake. Charlie had immense fun at this.


On Jan 3, we had a free day with no plans, which was a good thing, because breakfast ended up being a long, drawn-out affair. We went into a hotel that promised in English on the outside marquee that it had good food in three styles. The problem, we found after we were seated, was that the menu was not in English, nor did any of the staff speak English. We were the only Caucasian faces in the joint, and I do believe we may have been their first American customers ever, despite the English on the outside.


Did I mention that sherpa and I are brave? Rather than trying to pantomime eggs and bacon and pancakes (ever tried THAT?), we actually gave the Chinese menu to Charlie and let him order. You do remember that in earlier posts, we caught Charlie eating things like dog meat and ostrich kidneys, right? I handed him the menu, told him to order, and told him severely, “NO DOG!” That sent him into gales of giggles. He ordered three dishes, and we held our breath and waited for the results.


The first dish to come out looked like cubes of fried potatoes. I took his dictionary and asked him if it was potato, and he shook his head no and started digging on the Chinese side of the dictionary to find the word. Couldn’t find it. I tentatively tried it—not bad, so I had some more. Jen even tried it, and didn’t gag on it. Then Charlie finally found the word. Radish. Jen carefully set her chopsticks aside.


The next dish out was congee. This, for the uninitiated, is rice that has been cooked in water until it turns to mush, with whatever the cook decides to throw in for flavor or color. The cook in this case had thrown in cilantro and meat. Charlie hastened to sign “cow.” Hey, I’m all over this one. It’s basically beef soup with rice.


Turns out sherpa hates cilantro. She did her little pushing-food-around-the-plate routine again.


The next dish out was noodles with baby squid. Ain’t no way sherpa is touching that. Strike three, Charlie.


Charlie and I left full, but I heard a large growl from sherpa’s stomach on the way out the door. Fortunately, the guide had shown me an internet café on the way past the day before, so I knew where to take her. We headed down to a place called Blenz, where I planned to caffeinate my sherpa well. What did we see when we walked in the door? Cheesecake! Honest-to-God cheesecake, not white cake with rubber icing. We were both drooling at the sight, and they had three different flavors, forcing us to choose. We almost ordered all three.


The rest of the day we just wandered around the island, shopping, getting laundry done, etc. Nothing majorly exciting.


The following day was the consulate appointment, which meant we had to sit in our hotel while our guide was at the consulate getting Charlie’s visa processed. Our room felt like a sauna, and we couldn’t get the heat down any, so we were getting crabby by the time our guide was supposed to call. Eleven-thirty came and went, no guide. He finally rang the doorbell, looking harried. Apparently one form he had filled out still needed a signature (he had originally told me that section didn’t apply to me due to the category visa my son was getting, but it did), and he had to re-do the form and get it back to the consulate, which was 45 minutes away, within an hour. He said we could leave at that point, but me being the paranoid person I am, I made him promise to call us once all was clear, and THEN we would go. So we had another hour of sitting in the sauna before we heard word back that everything was good to go.


It was so nice outside that day. We didn’t even need sweaters. We went out to Friendship Park with a hackey-sack (those things are harder to use than I ever believed) and Charlie’s remote-control cars. We raced cars for a while, and even got a couple of the local kids interested. Then Charlie wanted to play at a little bit of karate, so I showed him a couple of stances and how to punch. Then I realized that a couple of guys were staring at us from the sidelines. Here’s a crazy western woman showing this kid karate moves and waving her hands about like crazy. They just kept on staring and staring. That’s when my sherpa found a secret weapon. She trained the video camera on them very conspicuously. I don’t know if it was even running or not, but it made them nervous. They immediately started smiling and waving and backing up. Eventually they backed their way out of sight.

Charlie is really starting to blossom. There are times when communications are tough, so we have our misunderstandings, but most of the time he seems to understand things pretty well, and he is starting to give me back more signs now and not just take them in. Not what I'd call full-blown conversations, but if I tell a funny story or I'm interpreting something funny that Jen has just said, he laughs at the appropriate time or asks just enough of a question that I know he got the basic gist of it. He is mostly happy, but on occasion introspective, which is totally to be expected, since he's been transplanted from everything and everyone familiar to him. I find it amazing that he's as good-natured and happy as he is, really. But I see him opening up a little more each day. He's a very sweet child, and it's easy to see why he's everybody's favorite.


The following day was oath day, when we go to the consulate, take an oath, and get the child’s visa. We checked out of the hotel, and since we were supposed to meet the paperwork guide at the consulate at 3:30 for our 4:00 appointment, we had time for a trip to the zoo, which our touring guide kept referring to as the ZOOM.


This ZOOM was one of the saddest places I have been in my life, and keep in mind, I’ve been to my son’s orphanage. We saw a monkey who had such a bad case of mange that he couldn’t decide where to scratch next, trying to scratch everywhere at once. The tiger was in a cage that only gave him enough space to pace for four strides before turning around. One of the lions was so near death that he had no fur left and you could see every vein popping up through his thin skin, just a bag of bones. Their national treasure, the panda, looked dirty and unkempt instead of white and fat and happy. He had a huge cage, but it was all concrete. It was just a sad, depressing little place, and I was happy to leave it.


Wen got us to the consulate where we were to meet the paperwork guide. (Wen was not licensed to enter the consulate and process adoption paperwork.) However, our paperwork guide was not there. We can’t get in, because the guide has to procure an entry appointment ticket. When it became obvious that our guide wasn’t going to show up, Wen had a stroke of genius. Another adoption group from another hotel was about to come through, and their guide had a group entry ticket. Wen suggested we just tag onto their group to get in and go from there.


Sure enough, we snuck into the consulate with this other group. Got through security and another family who had been through this before gave us advice on what lines to get in, what to do, what to say, what to look for. We took our oath, and this family “lent” us their guide to check over the visa and make sure everything was in order. Then we were outta there and on our way to the airport.


Sherpa could tell I wasn’t capable of coherent speech right then, and she had Wen try to get this other guide on the phone for us. When she got him, all he would say was that he was stuck in traffic.


My initial inclination was to contact WACAP and tell them what a disaster every contact we’ve had with this agency has been (first dragon lady making fun of my son’s signing, and now this no-show guide) and insist that they try to get back the $600 I had paid for this agency to process my paperwork. But I needed to calm down first, so I set the issue aside for a few days so I could settle a bit.


Later, in Beijing, by the time I was actually ready to write, I found out what really happened. I had sent a note to Heidi, telling her about this and to watch out if she got this guide when she returned to Guangzhou with her new son, and it turned out he was assigned to her. She discussed the situation with him to make sure the same would not happen to them, and he admitted to her that his mother had died that morning, and he had been stuck in traffic trying to get back to the consulate. Why didn’t he call me and tell me there was a problem and he would need to send a replacement? Because he was afraid for his job—in China, you do your job, it is your duty. There is no replacement to send, no one to cover your responsibilities. Even as much as parents are revered, apparently their deaths still do not interfere with your duties. He felt shamed because he had failed us, and he had tears welling up when he talked to Heidi about it.


I’m certainly not going to add to that man’s troubles at this point. I feel like a heel for being steamed up over him not showing up. It’s so sad that he felt like he had to try to rush to get there even at a time when he needed to be with his family, and failing to make it to that appointment just added one more thing to go wrong on what had to be the worst day of his life. I sent him my condolences through Heidi and prayed that God would give me a little more patience in the future when it feels like there must be more to the story.


The important thing was that we got the visa (since I didn’t have my guide with my paperwork, I won’t know if everything is perfectly in order until I get to Los Angeles) and we got to the airport on time for our flight to Beijing.


The flight was delayed, not sure over what, so we all had plenty of time to sit around the airport and eat potato chips. I couldn’t wait to get to Beijing, because I knew Rick was waiting there for us.


Charlie had some trouble on this flight, too. He did okay with the take-off, but we hit some more serious turbulence on this flight—my stomach even dropped a little—and it really unnerved him. And he felt sick the whole time we were descending for the landing. He spent the whole 20 minutes or so before landing with his head forward in his lap cradled in his hands. We had taught him on the last flight how to clear his ears when they hurt, but this seemed to be either a headache or some upset. He was better once we got on the ground.


Our guide met us once we got out of baggage claim. His name was Tony, and his English was fantastic. He informed me that Rick had landed okay and was at the hotel waiting for us, so we headed for the hotel. More on Beijing in the next post.

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