Friday, March 25 - It's official!

This morning we finished the China side of our adoption paperwork and Lydia QianTing is officially our daughter in the eyes of China!  What a hurdle!  To be honest, I have no idea what we really did this morning, but we signed a bunch of stuff that we couldn't read, and they stamped a bunch of stuff we couldn't read, they made lots of copies of a bunch of stuff we couldn't read, and they said, Congratulations, you're done!  It really was a confusing whirlwind of activity and commotion in these government offices.  They call it the registration office - we're thinking it's the equivalent of our local offices where we go for marriage licenses and birth certificates.  But for us it was just a lot of being told where to sign, where to sit, and when to wait.  That process took all morning and some of the afternoon.  We met our guide at 9:10, and we didn't get back to the hotel to rest until around 2 pm.  In that time we went to I think 3 different government offices, the last of which was to apply for her Chinese passport.  That is what will keep us here in Beijing for another WHOLE week from now!  We have to wait until next Friday to get her passport and then we can fly to Guangzhou for....how do I say....MORE paperwork - this time for the USA side of things.

One of the offices where we went for the paperwork process.

Where we waited while they processed papers and copied them

I wish we had known how long this process was going to take.  We really didn't have enough in the backpack to keep TingTing busy!

We ate lunch at a sort of pizza buffet.  I say sort of because while there was some pizza on the buffet, there were also many other things.  And the pizza was quite good if you could get some with normal toppings.  I don't know about anyone else, but pizza topped with corn and peas just isn't really pizza to me....

What we think was Lydia's first ice cream cone.  Our guide asked if she had ice cream before and she nodded, but if she did, she certainly hasn't had it in a cone.  We had to show her that you can bite the cone!  We're gonna have to do some serious DQ training with this girl this summer!

 After all the paperwork was finished and lunch eaten, we went back to the hotel for naptime.  Hmmm...wishful thinking.  So yesterday she didn't like laying down for a nap, and today she liked it even less.  After Ting Ting and Mama had both cried, we finally gave up and just played quietly and interacted for a while.  That seems to work wonders with her.  She relaxes with us and interacts a lot when we just play quietly with her.  

At 4 pm we met our guide Theresa in the lobby, and thus began our evening adventure.  She took us to see the Chinese Acrobat show.  It was quite a show!  Lydia loved it and we were super amazed as well.  Some pictures...

Ouch

Ouch again

No really...OUCH!

These guys would be really good at the Wii balance board!

Yes, that big double wheel thing is hanging in the air.  And yes, it spins around like a big double ferris wheel.  And yes, there is one man running inside a wheel and one running outside a wheel staying on top the whole time as the wheels turn and as the whole contraption spins around it's center point!

 So the reason the evening turned out to be an adventure was because of our experience after the acrobat show.  Theresa had gotten us to the show in a taxi, but then she left.  The guides we have arranged with our travel service don't stay with us all day every day.  They do only a couple of things with us and then we are on our own.  Which overall is better for TingTing's adjustment to us, and which works fine most of the time.  But NOT when that means you have to find a taxi on a Friday night in a city as crazy as Beijing.  What's the big deal, right?  Just flag a taxi!  Yeah, well that implies that you can find an available one to begin with.  As we stood by the street to flag one down, 15 minutes went by before we saw a taxi with no customer in it.  The next problem we had was apparently being the wrong race.  That's all we can figure.  We finally spotted taxis with no customer, but none would stop for us.  As Jim stood by the road with his arm out to flag one down, he got responses like them turning off their taxi light when they saw him, them waving to him and driving by, honking, and even swerving their taxi closer to him as they sped by.  45 minutes later - NO taxi had stopped.  Meanwhile, my arms are breaking holding Ting Ting, she is getting hungry and pointing urgently to the KFC behind us, it's getting dark, and Jim is getting VERY mad.  We were stranded somewhere in Beijing - a long way from our hotel, and we had no way to get back.  We finally ended up calling our guide - thank the Lord we borrowed a Chinese cell phone from a friend back home - and our guide left her home to come and get us back to our hotel.  The catch was we had to wait for her to get into the city - another hour long wait.  So into KFC we went, to get Ting Ting something to eat.  Jim and I were too mad to have any appetite.  We saw other people catching taxis from where we were standing - but none would stop for us.  So Theresa finally arrived, having taken the Subway into the city.  Then she proceeded to flag down a taxi.  Same spot we were standing.  Only two taxis went by before she got one to stop.  She was in the same place we were standing, she did the same thing we did, everything was the same....except she is Chinese and we are not.  Made for a very tiring and frustrating evening.

Finally back at the hotel, we moved quickly into a bedtime routine with TingTing.  With no nap (except for the quick one in the taxi ride on the way to the show), she was really tired and we wanted to get her moving toward bed.  Bath, pj's, brushing teeth, looking at books, then lights out.  And tonight she went right to sleep.  Thank you Jesus!  And now I am extremely drowsy and falling asleep staring at the computer!  I need to get into bed very fast and hopefully sleep through the night.  (By the way, after our bedtime struggle last night, TingTing did not sleep all the way through the night!)

One struggle I became much more aware of today is the language barrier.  It is so frustrating at times as a parent to not know what our child is saying, and to have her not know what we are saying.  That awareness made me crumble to tears this afternoon.  It doesn't help that I am tired either - my mom always said, things seem much worse when you're tired.  Get a good sleep, and things will seem better in the morning.  Well, thankfully today I didn't even have to wait that long before things seemed better.  Just needed to get some perspective and focus on the knowledge that things will certainly get better, we just have to take it one day at a time and get her home!


Three things we are thankful for today...


1.  That we haven't needed the phrase in our Chinese language book, "Please don't go potty in your pants!"


2.  That in America, 3 lane roads are 3 lane roads, not 5 lane roads.


3.  That tomorrow is another day


That #3 brings to mind a quote that Jim had posted the day before we left...

Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day.  You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Night night...