Blogs from China, Asia
We got Qing Ling! I'm excited that we just got Qing Ling yesterday . C-: Next were getting her photo taken for a registration. It's easy to make her laugh so I made her laugh alot. She's offically part of our family. ( : My parents love to see her smile . They just hug her and squeeze her. She doesn't know any english. So I'm looking foward for a teacher to teach her english. P.S. No I'm not gonna by souveniers for my classmates!... read more
Registration Day
Today is/was the day we went to the Registration office to complete (I use that term loosely since ever time I think we're done with paperwork along comes something else) Qing Ling's adoption. We now have the official document that says she's our daughter! We had to have a picture taken with the 3 of us for this document. Jasmine wasn't really happen that she couldn't be in the picture but I tried to explain about how she had already done this and told her I would show her the document when we get back home. This sure went a lot faster then it did when we came for Jasmine but there wasn't anywhere as many people there this time. Another plus, it wasn't hot this time, in fact first time no AC and it was ... read more
This is love
Ever meet someone who can't have a conversation in person? Not socially akward, but literally can't make eye contact and form a sentence without aid from some form of digital technolgoy. There is a name for this, IAD: Internet Addiction Distorder. In 2008 China became the first country in the world to declare IAD as a public health crisis. It exists in all cultures, though China is unique. Here people don't associate technology with communication, but with escape. China's fist internet cafe opened in Beijing in the mid-1990's. This was a brand new challenge for censors. Today internet cafe's require ID for it's guests. In late 80's supporters of the pro-democracy movement communicated with url=http://www.sinomania.com/CH... read more
Ma Ma & Rose
Couldn't sleep so thought I get a chance to post a bit more about yesterday. That and get the pictures off the camera while Qing Ling is asleep. Seems she's quite fascinated with taken pictures and like most photographers she wants to be behind the camera not in front of it. She gets all shy and such. She had a case of home sick yesterday right before we went to have her picture taken (found out it was a passport picture, which she had already taken but this one was for the registration office's files.) She asked to go and talk to Evelyn (CCAI representative that's helping take care of us this week. I can't even begin to say enough good things about her!) even though she wasn't speaking English we knew what she was asking. ... read more
Welcome to Beijing
Didn't have a chance to update the blog last night, since we didn't get to our hotel until about 8:00 PM and have to get up, check out and be waiting in the lobby by 5:30 AM this morning. Early flight to Nanchang so no time to worry about jet lag. Don't think getting up is going to be a problem since it's a little after 2 AM right now and we're already up. A little more about the ride over here. Beijing looks pretty much like any big city at night, lot's of traffic, lots of buildings, would love to see it in the day time but not this trip. We did drive down this one street that had the most amazing lights on all of the trees. If you've ever seen the movie Advatar ... read more
Room with a view
We arrived here about 10:30 AM and man is it foggy! I'm actually surprised the plane was allowed to land, talk about a nail bitter landing. Jenny kept looking out the window for a glimpse of land, which we didn't see until it was just about to touch down. My hats off to that pilot! So we met up with the other 2 couples that make up the other 2/3rd's of our group. The other couples that came to Beijing this trip are going to other cities so we didn't get a chance to meet any of them. We were the only early morning group that had to leave before the chickens got up. One couple is from Maryland, the other couple are from Minnesota, both are getting younger children, 1 year old and one a ... read more
Birthday Girl
Photos: http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite …..a few of us walk out of the Dong Fang Hong, (Oriental Red), restaurant, on the east side of the school straight into a fireworks display Sunday evening, set up & already fired up by the time, this being China, we just walk past what turns out to be a spectacular & deafening display which goes on for the best part of 15 minutes. We foreigners have to admit that, where we come from, the USA, Canada, the UK or Australia, only a display set up on a special occasion for a whole city would compare with this. The kids are all watching from more than 100m away but we still feel a shower of ash & embers, just before a wall of grey smoke adds another level of uninhaleableness to China's already dodgy ... read more
Gotcha Day
I'm please to announce Qing Ling has now joined our family! I'm writing this Monday morning at 2:45 AM sorry I didn't get a chance to post yesterday, to much going on to get on the computer but here's how Gotcha day went. Our group, 3 couples, meet with Evelyn our Representative from CCAI at 3:00 PM to go over what to expect, the itinerary, Q&A time. The kids where scheduled to be here at 4:30 PM but they are coming from 3 different SWI's (that's short for Social Welfare Institute, orphanages) and depending on traffic they may not get here on time. Qing Ling has to travel 2 hours by train to get here. The first child showed up about 4:10 PM, a little girl. She seemed to take to her new parents just fine, ... read more
West Lake 14
A friend and I decided to go on a day trip to visit Hangzhou, a very pretty town on a very large lake (West Lake) about an hour by bullet train outside of Shanghai. While it was overall a good trip, there were definitely a few "bumps in the road" that we faced. The “Bumpy” Ride Nori and I arrived at the train station bright and early to catch the 8 a.m. bullet train. As we headed to the train, we were feeling very proud of ourselves and our team work. We had successfully purchased the tickets through a combination of Nori's Mandarin (not much, but enough) and my iPhone. We were also proud of successfully navigating the train station through my ability to match the Chinese characters on our tickets to the information boards. We ... read more
Lingyun town
80km north of Baise is Lingyun, where the region surrounded by karst landform. the town is nicely set in within all those pop up hilltops. I quite like it in Lingyun, small enough and with many trails I could hike up for a good view in different karst hills. The nice little town build along the Sishui river with couple of bridges linking up both sides, the oldest should be the Taipingqiao bridge right outside the rebuild Confucious Temple said could date back 300 years ago. At night the river would lited up colourfully almost created the Lijiang sensation only without the tourists! The main economic is mineral especailly gold mine, but the unique Baihao tea became more known to outside about Lingyun. It is one of the rare kind that can produced into 6 different ... read more
