Our last post

A picture for Samuel and Micah of eels for sale - and this wasn't a pet store!

Here's a picture of all of the families that traveled with us.

This is the famous red couch photo everyone takes at the White Swan hotel before they leave China. Our group is Kaylin, Abby, Zach, Faith, Lily, Meghan, Sydney and Sarah.

We leave China early tomorrow, so this will be our last post. We had a great trip, thanks for all your prayers, Abby is doing so well. We can't wait to get home and introduce her to Micah and Samuel.

We're in Guangzhou

Abby's first plane ride.

Abby's medical check up, where she passed with flying colors but didn't enjoy herself!

Completing final visa applications.

This is an entire mall that just sells pearls. Guangzhou is the pearl capitol of the world.

This girl is making pearl necklaces.

Abby is doing well

Zach, Abby, Meghan and their families with our Nanchang guide, Guilan.

Abby likes her bath! This was the first one she thought was kinda fun.

This is our waitress at the New Orient Restaurant showing us samples of what we could order.

Zach's parents went with us to McDonald's!

Teng Wang Pavilion

We climbed to the 6th floor of this 9 story pavilion. It has been destroyed (floods, earthquakes, fires, wars) 28 times but they keep rebuilding it.

This is the theatre inside. We saw chinese singing dancing and music but we couldn't take pictures during the show.

This boy's mom paid to have him dress up as a little emperor and sit for a picture.

This is the pavilion from outside.

More Pictures around Nanchang

This is a typical Nanchang neighborhood. Everyone lives in high rises.

This man is getting his food ready for the market.

This is the oldest house in Nanchang. The couple lives upstairs and runs an oldtime blacksmith shop downstairs.

Here are some of his wares.

We're having trouble blogging from China

Some kids doing Chinese calligraphy practice at an outdoor mall in Nanchang.

Above is the hotel buffet at our hotel in Nanchang.

At the hotel funland Abby was sad, because she bumped her lip. Poor baby!

We are all doing great but we are really busy and having alot of trouble signing on to blogger. If we can get back on today, we'll put more pictures up.

Nantang Hotel

The Hotel in Nanchang had a playroom for babies called Funland so we took Abby there and put her in the walker. She liked it but then she bumped her lip so this is her reaction.

This is the Hotel Buffet where they serve such delicacies as octopus, boiled rice flavored with pig blood, and lots of vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower for breakfast. They also serve western style food.

This little boy is practicing calligraphy at the outdoor mall.

We finalized the local paperwork and saw her hometown!

We just finalized paperwork with the orphanage director! Now we wait for our visa so we can leave the province and finalize the national level paperwork. Abby is adopted.

It was great to get out of the city and go to Yingtan. On the way, we saw farmers gathering the first rice crops (they grow 3 in one year). Under the guardrail is a farmer with his water buffalo!

This is on the drive to Yingtan. It is mountainous and they mine bronze, copper, and tungsten and they quarry this red rock.

This is the area our daughter was found in. Probably over by the red sign above Joe's head. It is a hotel. We didn't get to meet the man that found her but maybe when we come back sometime.

This was the table at the restaurant in Yingtan. There's a couple from the same orphanage to Julie's left who got a boy. The blond girl with the baby in the sling and her husband brought there parents and that's her mom next to her. We didn't know if we would get to go here. We had to make sure the babies were adjusting well. So our guide only had a few hours to plan our trip and didn't book a place to eat. Our driver found this place. Our guide apoligized for not being able to have a private room but this was the first time we ate outside the hotel & it was great food. It was very noising. There was a wedding banquet with alot of drinking games that almost inturrupted into a brawl. There was also a celebration in honor of a one month old. (Instead of baby showers, when the baby is one month, the whole family has a feast and the father gives out red eggs.

This is my (Julie) lunch plate. They have great greens here but they don't give specific names to their vegetables. So if I find one I like it's hard to order it again because when I ask what kind of vegetable it is, they look at me funny (it's a green one dummy!). The food at the bottom of the plate is a Yingtan local dish - some kind of beef with the fat and skin on. The beef was good, I left the other part because - you know - in Asia it's polite to leave some food on your plate and I always try to be polite. :) The other thing was a spicy flattened beef, I didn't show you the whole spread including the fried fish with head & tail & skin. Our guide insisted we all try some because it was fresh from the river in town so I had a small bite & it was good - somekind of whitefish with really strange bones (no Samuel I didn't eat the fish eye).

This is a cemetery between Yingtan & Nanchang. The one closer to Nanchang looked like a room dug out of a hill with a traditional Chinese door built into the mound so they can go in and worship their ancestors. The ones closer to Yingtan were built of rock and looked like tiny pyramids. Both of those were smaller than this, maybe they were for individual families.

This is a real pearl farm. These are bottles floating at the top tied to mark the spot below where the pearl is growing.

Abby really likes to ride in the stroller at the hotel. We go up & down our hallway listening to the same "American" soundtrack. It has about 13 instrumental songs I guess they think all Americans will know & like. There's the cajun song, the Irish song, something by Wham, etc. We have a great view of the Gan river from our floor.

We have Abby!

This is a sideways view of the Chinese potty at the airport. It's not to difficult to use but it is a cultural experience! We have found some western ones. By the way mom, there are lots of things that remind me of home here: the day we went to the Great Wall, I ate some really good green stuff that tasted just like mustard greens, we drove past a statue of General Li who apparently conquered Beijing, it's 97 degrees today and the hotel towels smell just like the Stockyards so I haven't been homesick one bit!

This is our guide for Nanchang, Guilan in the lobby of our hotel.

This is the note her orphanage brought to show us. Her birthmother wrote it (it's sideways). All it says is her birth date time and the Chinese name her birthmother gave her. It means quiet one but we just found this out today so we'll have to decide if we want to try to incorporate it as a second middle name somehow.

We went to the civil affairs office around 3pm and met Abby! It took a minute for her to agree to let us hold her and she was pretty unsure of the weird way we talk! She kept looking at any Chinese people that walked by like don't you notice something funny about these people! She didn't really like the bus ride back to the hotel either, but I think it's because she had just done a three hour ride from her orphanage to the province capital of Nanchang. I found out she has been in the orphanage since January. She also had a fever a week ago that was so bad she had an IV which they put in her head :(. That's why she hasa patch shaved out of the side of her hair.

Abby had a steamed egg, rice congee (think oatmeal), and a few bites of rice noodles flavored with fish broth at the hotel restaurant. These are things she ate at the orphanage.

Abby likes it when Daddy gets her belly!

Abby had a big day, she was really tired. We gave her a sponge bath, put her in the pj's the orphanage gave us so she would have something familiar and gave her a bottle. After a while, she just couldn't keep her eyes open any longer!

more first day pics

These are in the right order.








The statue in front of our hotel.

Joe at the "walmart" checkout.

This is dark but it is the BQ (China's version of a home depot). There was a big shopping center in the same building with a pizza hut, KFC and a walmart type place where we got bottled water.

Pictures from first part of trip

I put these in backward :), you might want to start at the bottom.





Our hotel lobby in Beijing.

The North Pole as we flew over in the plane.

Dinosaur from the Chicago Airport layover.

First Full Day In China

Our first full day in China was very packed! We took a tour of the Jade Factory, we climbed the Great Wall of China, went to the Frienship Store for lunch, and walked through the Ming Tombs. Then we visited the Silk Carpet Factory, went to a Kung Fu show, and ate a traditional Peking Duck dinner. We are very tired and we took our video camera today so we can't post any pictures because we don't have the software for the camera on this laptap (the laptop we had planned to take bailed out on us the day before we left!) We are very excited for tommorow. Our video camera is charging and we'll bring the digital! We fly to Nanchang in the morning.





Here's the website of another family in our group:


http://www.adkinsadventure.blogspot.com/

We are in Beijing!

We flew through Chicago, had a great flight to China in the exit row & even took pictures of the North Pole from the plane. We had dinner at the hotel and walked around a mall & got water. Tomorrow, we climb the great wall! We miss you Samuel & Micah & everyone! I haven't been able to load pics yet but I'll try again my tomorrow night.

We are in China!

We made it! We had a great flight over, we had exit row seats with extra leg room. We met another couple from Missouri on our flight who are adopting a 10 month old from Hunan. I took a picture of the North Pole out our plane window. We haven't slept alot but we are checked into our hotel, a very nice Howard Johnson's, and we are going to try to find some dinner. We miss you Samuel & Micah and everyone. Maybe when we get back in we can put up pictures.



Joe & Julie

I'm brain dead :)

I meant she's been in foster care since birth and now is back at the orphanage!

We leave This Week!

We also got updated pictures! It looks like our daughter has been at the orphanage since the day she was born and now she is back at the orphanage. They don't normally use AC in China so she looks so sweaty, but happy! We can't wait to meet her!










We are almost packed and ready to go! We have diapers, 6-9 month clothes, all kinds of medicine (just in case), a few toys, formula, bottles, and whatever we think we can't do without while we're there! Thanks so much for your prayers and good wishes (pray for a good adjustment for our daughter Abby Meng Wen, pray for her birthfamily, that we don't get sick, travel mercy and anything else you think of!)