"Gotcha Day," Monday, Dec. 8, and today

Orphanage officials who brought Ben:

Rejecting us at this point...
After the chocolate:

Riding on daddy's/ baa-ba's lap on the way back to the hotel. There are MUCH different safety standards here. Car seats...What is a car seat?

Standing in the lobby...We looked at the Christmas tree, listened to Chinese ladies playing traditional instruments, and got a little free Santa made out of pipe cleaners from a nice lady in a sales booth/ gingerbread house.

There's so much to say that I don't know where to begin. When we first met Shan Shan (nickname for You Shan) in the notary office, he knew what was going on and was pretty much rejecting us, especially me, who's taking the place of his nannies. But chocolate warmed him up a bit. When we traveled from the notary office back to the hotel and took him to the hotel room, our guide explained to him in Mandarin that he would stay there with us and be with us from then on. He went into a pitiful heart-wrenching scream crying session and I held him, while he tried to push me away. After a while, daddy got the bubbles out and started blowing bubbles. That distracted him out of crying and perked him up. We played with some other toys, walked around inside and outside our hotel, and went to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant. By the time we went to bed, he was beaming with a big, contented smile as he slowly looked back and forth at Bob and I.

Ben is SUCH a good boy. Of course he is 3 yrs old and starts playing "I'm going to be a stinker right now" once in a while, but after a firm "no" from mommy and a displeased mommy face, he quickly changes direction. He is a people pleaser.

He is extremely independent and methodical and knows how to do a lot of different things that he learned at the orphanage, including washing his hands. He hates having dirty hands. He didn't seem to know/remember any English, but he's catching on really quickly. I'm using a few Chinese words, but one problem, though, is that the Suzhou dialect is so different that Suzhou people sometimes can't be understood by people speaking the main dialect. For example, our first guide explained to me that instead of "shway" for water, it's "shwee" in Suzhou dialect. The only thing he seems to understand me saying is that and a few other words that must be the same--hello, are you hungry?, no (to not permit)...I tried a few other phrases to only have him look at me like I was speaking gibberish, so either I'm not saying them right or they're different in Suzhou. He communicates very well by grunting and pointing to what he needs or wants and doesn't seem to be frustrated by our lack of Mandarin.

He is such a happy little boy, smiles and laughs a lot, and loves holding both of our hands while going anywhere outside of the hotel room. He's such a cutie and so full of love. He slept peacefully all last night after he understood that we were all going to stay in the same room, but I hardly slept. Ah well...there's tonight!

AAAHHHH.....

It's 12:40 p.m. in Nanjing and Bob and I are sitting in a hotel room...We flew into Jiangsu Province this morning. We take a train at 1:30 to travel to the notary office and meet Ben at 2:00!!!! Then he is in our care! We are SO anxious...I could barely eat lunch. The time is going painfully slow. We are so excited and filled with emotion!!!

Day number 3 and 4

Pictures of our travel group

Here is the group...the other adoptive fams we are traveling with:

Second Day in China

Tiananmen Square. Where government officials meet:
The Bird's Nest:
Where Mr. Phelps swam:
Our room, nice and quiet:
In the lobby of our hotel:
We took a rickshaw ride through the historic Hutong area of Beijing (guy rides a bicycle and pulls you in this tiny two-person buggy). Area is 280 years old, but not all the buildings go back that far:
Detail from a beautiful building in the Forbidden City, where emperors used to reside. Now, there is still government operations going on in some of the buildings and troops living there, but many of the buildings, like the emperors' residence, are only on display for tourists. The forbidden city was finished in 1420:

Garden in the Forbidden City:
Door top in Hutong area...the displays above the doors show how rich the family is/was. This is a 4-star family. Before modern dating began, fams would arrange marriages and a 4-star fam would look for other 4-star fams for partners:
Forbidden City buildings:

Tiananmen Square with the Forbidden City in the background:
Hutong area:
In the Hutong area, people's homes are buildings connected around a rectangular-shaped outside courtyard. You might live in one section of the buildings while your brother's family lives in another section of it. Our guide took us to the house of one family who is currently living there. An elderly gentleman invited us in and made tea for all of us. We sat in what looked like his living room area while he talked to us about his family and showed us pictures of his family from the 1920s and on, living in the same hutong. Here is one of his dogs in the courtyard and a child from another adoptive family, Mariah:
Man who invited us in, explaining the hutong set-up and talking about his family:
One of our Chinese guides translates what he is saying to English. The windows look out into the courtyard:
Courtyard:
Bob with the rickshaw driver:
Hmmm, who are these people?
While riding in the rickshaw:

Our first day in Beijing

Ok, how blogger works in China is totally random...sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I can't seem to figure out a way to move the pictures into order...it won't work the way I can do it at home. So, I will add a lot of verbage to explain them all...

We are having a great time...which is fantastic since I didn't think I would, being the cautious person I am. It's miserably cold, but the outings have been extremely interesting and the Great Wall area is amazingly beautiful. The massive size of some stores, population, amount of apartments in the city...it's mind-boggling. I believe this is a picture I took of the Great Wall while riding back to the city on the bus:

People have gone on about how the food in China is not like the Chinese food in America, but everything I've eaten here tastes just like the stuff I get at home...bok choi, sweet and sour chicken, chicken and rice with chili peppers, pork with chilies, tofu soup, etc. Perhaps knowing that we're American, they didn't bring out the things that would cause us to wretch, like a duck with its head on...We probably only got the items that they know fly ok with us. Also cuisine is different depending where you are in China--very different--so you really can't go to one part of China and say, "This is what Chinese food is." I only ate the veggies and rice at this meal, but they were delicious:

Pictures from climbing the Great Wall...the wall goes on and on...

The wall was finished in the Ming Dynasty:
We took a small glass cable car up to the top of one of the mountains with the wall...This was my favorite part of the trip so far...the views were AMAZINGLY beautiful. Pictures I took while on the cable car:

The icy cold wind was cutting up there. We got our excercise and went a little farther than the other fams. We realized how far we went when we turned around and had to walk back up a LOT of stairs...ha ha:

On the way to the Great Wall: