Getting ready to meet Lai Lai (Zachary). Gord meeting Lai Lai and giving him Trix.

Zachary's first meal- dumplings! Zachary's first smile caught on film!
Gord and Zachary are great together. Zachary smiles a lot for his Daddy!

Monday morning, Oct 8, at 6:53 am Nanjing time

As I start typing this, we are about 2 hours from leaving to go meet our new son, Zachary Eli. We mostly are very excited about this, but a little bit nervous as well. I'm sure it will be an emotional time. Even as I type this my palms are a little sweaty.

Yesterday, our guide Jin (pronounced like "Jean" - the adoption agency gives her the name Jane, but we're using her Chinese name) filled us in on a lot of info. She's been an adoption guide for 11 years now and has a wealth of knowledge about this process. She's very impressive - totally on the ball, takes care of every detail, and speaks fluent English.

Jin mentioned that normally the first 24 hours can be tough and rocky for an adoption of a boy like Zachary Eli. Sometimes that can be only 2 hours, sometimes that can go on for days or even longer. We of course hope and pray for a smooth transition. We asked whether Stacie may help in the transition, and Jin thought she would be a big help.

Jin also mentioned that boys in orphanages typically won't be interested in teddy bears but rather other boyish toys. Fortunately, we have a car and other stuff for him.

Yesterday was more relaxing than the other days. We didn't start touring until 2:30 pm and then ended up at about 7 pm (with take out KFC, which was good but more spicy than in the US). Sue and Stacie took a nap, and I went out walking around, looking for some black, low cut athletic socks. None of the stores had any my size (XL), but I think I created quite a stir walking around given my height.

In terms of the sightseeing, we went to the Purple Mountain yesterday, which is about 30 minutes away. At the bottom of the Purple Mountain there is a mausoleum for Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, who is considered the father of the Republic of China during the early 1900s. Dr. Sun was a democratic revolutionary and is revered here.

We walked up 392 steps to get to the mausoleum. This represents the population of China, which was 392 million which represents the population of China at the time of Dr. Sun's death in 1925. (Wow) The first picture above is the 3 of us on the steps.

We also visited the Old Town area of Nanjing. Nanjing is a very old city - 2,000 years old and even during parts of the 20th century was the capital of China. Some of the buildings in the Old Town are 400 years old, and some of Old Town hasn't changed in 1,600 years. Amazing. The second picture above is of the Old Town area - mostly a shopping area now with the historic buildings.

One of the things I did yesterday was surf the internet and found out that there were some big upsets in college football - USC losing to Stanford (cool) and Illinois beating Wisconsin (sorry Bob Skilton). I didn't shed a tear for the Sparties, who lost in OT to Northwestern. On the other hand, Michigan is obviously not a very good team this year - just struggling to beat Eastern Michigan. (I also see from the internet this morning that the Lions lost big-time. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I thought perhaps things would be different this year . . . )

Back to the adoption . . .

I think that the best way for me to close this is to simply type up Sue's journal from yesterday at 10:25 pm. She gave me permission to do this, and I will quote it in its entirety since it is better than I could do and I share the same feelings. Here it is:

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Sue's journal: Sunday evening at 10:25 pm

"I have so much yet to journal about the past few days but I first have to write about what is about to happen in 11 hours.

Yi Lai [Gord's note: pronounced "Eli" in Chinese] will have his mommy, daddy, Stacie, Sarah, Ryan and Stephanie!

My sweet little boy. I haven't met you but through pictures and some video. You are in my heart and I know that God has placed you in our family for a very special reason. We already love you and will promsie to take good care of you. Please know that I know it will be difficult to trust me and open up to me because you have been taken away from the only life you know. My dear Yi Lai there is so much more. I pray that you will feel the love and warmth of having a family, to not ever be alone in the night or when you are scared or hurt. Please know that we will always be here for you.

I pray that you will once again open your heart and learn to trust and allow yourself to feel love and share your love. But most importantly that you will come to know and love Jesus and to trust in what he came for too. That my son is the biggest act of love that can ever be displayed.

Rest now as tomorrow morning very early you will travel here to meet us. We are excited and anxious and yes, nervous about our finally meeting. I am so ready to begin our lives together my dear son - I love you."

That about sums it up. We love you, Yi Lai.

Gord

The picture in the upper left is in front of the Pearl Tower in Shanghai (we took the elevator up to approximately 800 feet). The picture above is Sue and Stacie in Lotus, which is a modern grocery store in China. The picture on the left is of our hotel room, including the crib for Stacie and the bed for Zachary Eli.

Only 24 Hours Away!

Tomorrow morning at 9 am China time we leave to receive Zachary Eli Toering! Today we are going to visit the Purple Mountain and also another garden. It is a more relaxing day for us as we rest up for the big adventure tomorrow. Right now Stacie is watching her Chinese DVD of Dora that we bought yesterday at the shopping market in Shanghai. I am so glad that we bought two different Dora DVDs because they are so cute. They are mainly in Chinese (Mandarin) and also have some English words that Dora is trying to teach the kids. Stacie is so facinated with the DVD and is answering some of the questions that Dora is asking in Chinese. : ) (Maybe there is some recall of her native language after all.) I am sure that Zachary will enjoy the DVD too. I am trying to have familiar things around him so that he won't be void of his language. Gord and I are really trying to learn key words and phrases so that we can communicate.

I asked Stacie if she likes it her in China and she said "yes!" I asked her if it was because everyone looks like her and she again said "oh yes!" She seems so very happy here and we only have had one "meltdown".

The Lakeview hotel is very luxurious and our room is beautiful. We upgraded our room so we have a queen - almost king bed, room for Stacie's little crib and most exciting is the twin bed that is also here for Zachary! The breakfast today was very good and the view from the 20th floor is wonderful. The restaurant is a revolving restaurant and had a great breakfast buffet.

Yesterday we went up the Pearl Tower in Shanghai. The view was great (from~800 feet) and it was a wonderful place to visit. In the plaza entering the Pearl Tower was fun American music playing and there was a water fountain and the atmosphere was very happy. Many people were there and because we were tourists we were escorted to the front of the line. I felt kinda weird doing that. Seeing the nationals waiting while we got special treatment.

When we took the High speed train (150 mph) we had another good experience with a policeman/guard being very kind and friendly to us. He said "welcome". : ) I personally think that the PR is really trying to ramp up here in China because of the Olympics next summer. The price for the train was about $13 to go from Shanghai to Nanjing, which is about 180 miles I think. Although the price was so cheap the headache of getting all of our luggage onto the train is another story. In other words...if you have more than one piece of luggage per person I wouldn't recommend taking the train. Our guides were fantastic and we would probably be still at the train station without them.

The other thing we really notice a lot is how 8 out of 10 people stare at us. Once I smile at them most seem to smile back. I am sure that it looks crazy seeing two blonde/brown hair white people with an asian child. Even some have started talking with Stacie in Chinese and Stacie just giggles as she tells me that they are talking to her. (She is such a hoot on this trip!)

Our guide in Nanjing seems to be very good and I am looking forward to getting to know her. Julie, our guide in Shanghai was a sweetheart and she was very kind to us and helpful too.

Our hotel is near a park and a lake, which is nice. Right now Stacie is napping. Stacie decided to wake up at 4 am so she needs some rest. We also have been waking up early as well. Hopefully we can get our sleep schedules straightened out.

Sue (once again in Nanjing we can't see our blog because it is blocked but I hope you receive this and it makes sense to you!) : )

The Bund area in Shanghai.

Old Town in Shanghai.

At the Ford International airport before taking off for China!

Yesterday, as Gord mentioned, was a very busy day sightseeing. Stacie was such a trooper! We started our day visiting with Stephanie, Sarah and Ryan on the webcam. It made me feel so much better seeing them and talking with them through our computers. : ) When we landed in Shanghai I was so very tired and was sad because I missed my kids so much. The familiar pang of saddness came over me just like it did two years ago when we first came to China. I don't know if it is because of the very long trip, jet lag, the feeling of oppression in this country, or emotions, but it reared its ugly head again. Thank goodness that after sleeping the first night and talking with the kids my outlook became very bright and we were able to enjoy the day.

Back to what we did yesterday.... We met our guide, Julie, in the lobby and after exchanging some money we were off to see Shanghai. I out that Shanghai is pronounced like Shonghai.

Our first stop was the Shanghai museum. It was amazing to see pottery that was 7000 years old. There were a lot of very old, ancient items at the museum. Stacie was very intereded in the bronze artifacts and noticed certain details that I had overlooked. By the way, traveling with a three year old is a lot of fun because you see things in a very different way. After the museum we toured Old Town and the Yu Garden. Old town is how China was 100 years ago and the Garden next to Old Town is 400 years old. There were so many people because of the holiday this week that it was hard to even move on the streets of Old Town. It was weird to see the building of OT have Starbucks and DQ.

We learned a lot about Chinese tradition and culture when touring the Garden. It was very peaceful place and Stacie slept through most of the garden tour that Julie gave.

Then it was off to Nanjing Road (a pedestrian shopping area) and then to the Bund - which is an area by the Huangpu River. We enjoyed walking along the water - and we had fun seeing many people look at Stacie and then look at us in curiosity. We received a lot of smiles and Stacie seemed to charm many people with her bright personality. She was so very happy during the day. Gord had a lot of boys looking at him because of his height - they were wo kind.

We had dinner at a wonderful Chinese restaurant overlooking the river and then we took an evening cruise down the river.

Stacie keeps talking about her brother and wants to know when we are getting him. When we landed in China I told Stacie that we were in China and she looked up at me with excitement and said "Oh thank you mommy, thank you!! Now can we get Eli?"

Today we are going up the Pearl Tower and then we will take the train to Nanjing. Even though we are so very far away I feel your prayers and please continue do so for us.

Sue

Friday, October 5 at 9 am Shanghai time

Hi!

We made it to Shanghai! Unfortunately, we only have 30 minutes to meet our guide, and so this has got to be short. I won't have time to post any pictures.

By the way, if there's a formatting problem, I apologize for that. When we logged into the website (blogger.com) to add this post, the website shows up in Chinese and so we can't exactly see what we're doing.

We just got done with breakfast. Chinese breakfasts - at least in nice hotels - are awesome. The buffet is the best that I have had at any hotel located anywhere. It was great.

After breakfast, we talked with our kids and my (Gord's) parents by webcam. It was great seeing them because we miss having them here!

The trip here was uneventful, fortunately. We left Grand Rapids at 12 noon and arrived in Detroit. We then traveled from Detroit to Tokyo (about 12 hours). Fortunately, we had a row of seats to ourselves - 4 seats for the 3 of us. That was huge because it gave us some space - especially for a guy as tall as I am. It also allowed Stacie to stretch out and sleep some of the time. Sue was able to sleep somewhat, and I slept very little.

The only glitch on the way to Tokyo was that one of the lens in my glasses happened to fall out. Fortunately, one of the flight attendants was able to use her hair clip as a screwdriver to tighten the screw. I know that Northwest gets a lot of bad press, but this flight attendant was very helpful. Not having a lens in my glasses for my left eye would have been a pain to deal with, especially when we were only 1/2 of the way there.

After arriving in Tokyo, we had a layover for about 2 hours. That allowed us to stretch out a bit. We then had a full flight from Tokyo to Shanghai. That flight was about 3.25 hours or so, and everything went smoothly.

After clearing customs and immigration, we got our bags and met our guide Julie and the driver Mr. Lee. Our hotel (Holiday Inn) is in downtown Shanghai, and that's about a 45 minute drive from the airport. So Mr. Lee drove Julie and us to the hotel last night in a minivan and dropped us off. We got into the hotel at 10 pm or so Shanghai time. (By the way, Shanghai time is 12 hours ahead of Michigan time.)

The Holiday Inn is quite nice - especially the lobby. The rooms are more or less an average hotel room - nothing special, but still pretty good. The area around the Holiday Inn seems quite busy - lots of Americanized stuff, like a KFC and McDonald's - and we will explore that later on.
We've also got to go to the local supermarket and get some stuff like water. It's very hard to remember not to using water from the faucet when you're brushing your teeth - you just get used to rinsing your mouth with faucet water and that's a hard habit to break. Fortunately I remembered to use the bottled water this morning and hopefully that will continue. Two years ago I forgot to use the bottled water and then later on got a little sick, probably from doing that.

Today's a big day for sightseeing. We're hitting the main highlights with Julie and Mr. Lee, and won't be back until after dinner. We'll fill you in on that next time.

Okay, I've got to run. Sorry about the lack of pictures but we'll try to post some next time.

Gord