eating breakfast at the hotel buffet

the job of a big sister is never done!

Sara says check out my new shoes!

view from the hotel window in Changsha PRC

Everyone loves McDonald's french fries

We bought some french fries from McD's - they tasted the same as home!

The three big girls of the trip - not all babies here

Here is a photo of Lily and Paige and Rachel. Lily and Rachel are the big sisters of the group. Paige is 4yrs old and is Rachel's new sister. Both Lily and Rachel are working hard at being the best big sisters - and both are doing a GREAT JOB!

Tues night dinner - Happy Forever

We had a group dinner Tuesday night - the facilitator had a cake for all the girls since we all missed the babies' first birthdays. We sat at four tables for dinner. I still don't feel like I've talked with all the families here in our group. 16 families is a big group. All the families are great, it's just hard with a big group. Our two facilitators are doing great with such a big group of families!

I'm walking!

Here is Sara walking. They told us that she was walking but she would not walk when we got her on Monday. But by Tuesday she is a walking baby!

official adoption day

Tuesday morning

We spent the morning at the gov't office - this was our day to do all the official Chinese gov't paperwork - we are a large group of 16 families and 17 babies or children - there were other groups there at the same time from the USA and other western non-English speaking countries - a busy place yesterday - this is the first week they have been open since CNY.

Now we will need to wait the rest of the week for the Chinese gov't to finish the paperwork - it will be ready on Friday.

Here is a photo of us with the assistant orphanage director. The lady on the end is one of the facilitators with CCAI.

The difficulties of being a big sister

Lily wants to be the big sister, but Sara just wants to watch Lily. Lily is sad because she wants Sara to sit on her lap and to walk with her. But on a good note, Sara will let Lily feed her.

Gotcha Day!

We got Sara today! She is fine. A bit shell shocked. Has a cold just like all the girls. The doctor saw all the girls today, which was wonderful for all the families. Today they want us to hang out and bond in the room. So Lily and Sara are napping!

Here are photos. I can send a Shutterfly link out with all the photos later.

Kath

The two big sisters

This is Lily's friend Rachel - both Lily and Rachel will become a big sister today!

HK to PR China - Sunday

Our flight was hours delayed from HK to PR China - but it was ok as there was no pressing appts or connecting flights - we arrived at the hotel in one piece - Lily kept asking if Sara was coming today and was disappointed that we were stillllllllllll waiting. There are 16 families between our two groups and they are treating us as one big group. I don't know most of the other families yet. So different from our other trip where all the families knew each other by now. Here is a photo from the flight.

Thanks for the emails,

Kath

more photos of Hong Kong fishermans' village

Saturday, tour Hong Kong

We were on time for our outing today. It was a nice day and while there were 89 people the group did not seem that busy. We went to a few tourist places - the same ones that we went to 3yrs ago when we traveled for Lily.

I am posting photos of the apartment buildings in Hong Kong. They are amazingly tall. They are very densely populated here – the guide said that there are 6,400 people per km in Hong Kong compared to our 600 people per km in the USA. They do not have a one child policy in Hong Kong even though they are under Chinese rule. Hong Kong is very different than PR China.

We went out on a boat tour of a fisherman’s village. Each boat is a family’s home. Complete with kitchen, bathroom and TV. Many of the boats have dogs living on them.

Laundry – I see laundry out drying everywhere – on the house boats and the apartment buildings. I fit right in as I have laundry drying here in the hotel room. There are no laundry mats around – just laundry services (which are not self service, meaning more expensive) – I am doing fine washing daily by hand.

Lily is doing well traveling. The hardest part was the long flight here to Hong Kong. She also does not understand why we have not yet picked up her sister. And she seems to think that we’ve moved to Hong Kong – she is calling it her new home. We bought her a big balloon yesterday that I did not even think how we are going to get it on the plane tomorrow. And I started last night to prepare Lily last night that she might not be able to take it when we fly into PR China. Her reply was that’s ok we can leave it here and it will be here waiting for us when we get back from China.

Friday afternoon, settling in

Many of the families were arriving today in Hong Kong. There are 5 different travel groups at this hotel and we are all to go touring together tomorrow. Should be fun as there are 89 people that are due to go on two buses touring. Yikes. We have to be ready to go at the early hour of 8am. That means breakfast early – I think we’ll aim for breakfast at 630am. Being that I am always running late I need to make sure there in enough time.

We had a free day today. Lily woke up fine and was good most of the day. She fell asleep on the bus at 530pm and is still sleeping now – it’s almost 7pm so I need to wake her soon or she won’t sleep tonight. I need to get her in the bathtub too. We planned on staying in for dinner tonight and I bought some cup noodles earlier in the day to use for dinner. Not a great dinner but Lily had a good breakfast and lunch – so it all evens out I figure.

Friday morning

Our power adaptors that we brought with us don’t work in Hong Kong. It worked out ok last night as the hotel brought us an adaptor to use. So I was able to charge the computer and the DVD. The laptop was turned on in Manchester airport security and some security test was run. But then I did not realize that it had not been powered down, and so when I took it out in Chicago I found that I had 7% of the battery left. So now all is back to normal with an overnight charge here at the hotel.

Once Lily fell asleep she stayed asleep for the night without a problem. The speakers we borrowed from Parker and Nancy Jo for the walkman worked perfect. Lily liked having her own music to play at bedtime, it was just a matter of her calming down to get to sleep.

My cell phone alarm clock does not work here. So I’ll need to pick up a travel alarm clock or maybe will have the hotel do a wake up call for tomorrow. Tomorrow is a group tour with our travel group. We’ve not meet any other families yet. Though, last night on the shuttle over from the hotel we meet another family. They are also here to pick up a second daughter and are traveling with their first daughter. They are with the same adoption agency as we are but their baby is from a different orphanage and so they will be in a different travel group.

Ok, I need to hit the shower, wake up Jon and get downstairs for breakfast. And then figure out what we will do today. So far Lily seems to be adjusting well to the time change.

The internet here in the room is wireless. I paid for 3hrs of access last night and thought that I could use an hour each night, but then this morning when I went to sign on it looked like I was going to need to pay for another 3hr block. Hmm. So I will have to check into that and will not sign on this morning. I will save this note to post with tonight’s update. Thanks for the emails, I did not take the time to reply last night as I was falling asleep trying to post on the blog with an update and with photos. Take care, I will write tonight.

here we come Hong Kong and arrived in Hong Kong 1.5days later

Well, we arrived in one piece in Hong Kong. The flight from Manchester to Chicago was nothing - just about 2.5hrs. The flight from Chicago to Hong Kong was 15.5hrs! Ugh - that was long! Lily napped for a short45min nap after we had been on the plane for a few hours. Then she was awake and not sitting still in her seat calmly at all. It was quite hard as I really wanted to sleep after getting to bed late a few nights in a row - including only 2.5hrs of sleep on Tuesday night. But while she was not a bad kid she was not into sitting still. She kept saying I am done with this plane ride lets go home. They served Lily her vegetarian meals but did not have me down for veggie meals - it was ok because the veggie meals they served Lily were adult proportions - and also were more adult fare - so Lily ate what she could and I ate the rest. Lily did end up sleeping for 3-4hrs toward the end of the flight during the time that would have been over night in NH. Right now it is after 11pm in Hong Kong and she is still awake! Not good! She should fall asleep soon - she is just so excited. Though she does not understand why we are here when her sister is in China. She also does not understand why her sister is not here waiting for us. Well, here a few photos - I am quite tired and will write more tomorrow.

never ending thoughts of packing

Well it is after midnight and I am starting to see the light at the end of this packing - I'll just review my lists and the bring the bags out to the van - and then to get a few hours sleep!