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Published: September 22nd 2010
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Greetings All!
Sorry we missed a day of posting our progress in the process of traveling to Guangzhou (Gwang-JOE) in the South of China. (Additionally, I have re-edited this post as the server was down in the past 24 hours.) Our flight here from Zhengzhou on Tuesday night went just fine. Guangzhou is located just northwest of Hong Kong at a latitude equivalent to Havanna, Cuba so it resides in a warm wet tropical clime.
We had to stock up on a few baby items before we left Zhengzhou so we made another trip to Walmart there and marveled again at the fascinating differences between the American and Chinese experience of stores and food. Chinese folks are definitely more in touch with where their meat comes from than are Americans. See attached photos.
We are staying at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou located on the intimate and historically European district of Shamian Island. This small district is quaint, quiet, picturesque, and safe. Not a bad place to spend the last 8 days of our busy trip here in China.
As for the hotel itself, Emma and Joshua have been enamored with 2 items since our first
moment here: The neat hotel Swimming Pool and the Waterfall/Pond with large Koi fish in the lobby.
I have to admit both are impressive. See attached photos of these as well.
The White Swan really is an amazing hotel. For me personally though, the most striking part of our first day in this hotel occurred during the simple act of being led by our waitress through the breakfast buffet crowd this morning.
Since Guangzhou is the only U.S. consulate city in China to certify U.S. citizenship for newly adopted Chinese babies and the only one to then issue a visa for travel to the U.S, all the American families in China come though Guangzhou and most of them traditionally stay in this one hotel.
This all means that when I walk through the large hotel restaurant during the busy breakfast buffet, I am wading through a literal ocean of families that look just like mine. In fact, it’s a bit difficult to find a family that does
not have an adopted child sitting at their table. It’s got to be the only spot in the whole world in which the overwhelming majority of families are Americans with
at least one child adopted child from China.
On the business end of today, I spent several hours filling out more forms for the powers that be in the U.S. Federal Government to scrutinize our Visa application for Julia to return home with us. They are very interested in whether she has any terrorist or seditious ambitions against the U.S. Government. At breakfast this morning, Julia and I had a long talk about this with particular attention to the question of whether she plans on “overthrowing the government of the United States” but she played coy, returning a quiet wide smile and holding her cards close to her egg-covered bib. She seemed to be invoking her presumably imminent 5th amendment rights, silently and confidently allowing my critical line of probing questions to go unanswered. In the end, our conversation turned out to be cheerfully reassuring if not a bit verbally one-sided. Hopefully, the Department of Homeland Security and the collective U.S. immigration braintrust will agree.
Apart from issues of Homeland security, we came back to the hotel room to find it cleaned and with a brand new boxed Barbie Doll sitting on one of the beds. Not just
any Barbie Doll either. We had heard from other families that the White Swan hotel gives adoptive families a Barbie doll that comes with a small adopted Asian baby doll and this in fact was the one waiting for us in our room. It was a nice gesture despite the thorny issue of caricaturing what is an intricate multi-racial process through an iconic but anorexic plastic doll. But come to think of it, if the American Barbie doll with her impossible biometrics were a real person, I'm sure her doctor would encourage her to pursue motherhood through the adoptive route for health reasons alone. We've maintained a relatively Barbie-Doll Free Home until now but this one may be retained for its oddness and peculiarity alone.
On a more meaningful note, Julia continues to blossom day by day and even hour by hour, with progress in emotional developmental, gross motor skills, and nutritional status. Her little body is still tiny, historically undernourished, and developmentally delayed as anticipated but it seems like she is now in
developmental hyperdrive!
In the past 24 hours she has learned to prop herself up on her arms while lying belly down in the supine
position. Her independent sitting skills are stronger today than they’ve ever been. Her buccal fat pads (cute little chubby cheeks) are now starting to really form up and she even popped out her first tooth overnight! She seems to be moving developmentally at the speed of light. As a pediatrician, it’s like watching a child’s developmental narrative play out on double fast forward! But in this case, I remind myself that this is all necessary catch-up to make up for lost time. In any case, it’s certainly good to see!
More to come...
JC
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Kerry Z
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What an honor it is to be allowed to share this awesome experience with you! I can't believe how emotional it is just reading the blog and viewing the great pictures. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us!