In Guangzhou

We have been in Guangzhou since Friday night; it's Monday night as I type this. We are in Guangzhou because this is where the US consulate is at. We were very ready to come home last Thursday before we even got to Guangzhou, while at the same time looking forward to the warmer climate down here. One more full day tomorrow and we come home Wednesday. We have to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to leave...ugh.

The part of Guangzhou we are in is very nice; the buildings have an old world European flair. It was wonderful to see the palm trees after getting off the plane. The White Swan hotel is absolutely amazingly beautiful, with a waterfall and pond inside by the dining room and big windows that look out on a bay. The breakfasts are delicious and Ben enjoys watching the boats going by while he's eating. We have been hanging out with the Mast family, going shopping and walking around outside and visiting the hotel's playroom with our boys.

The days have been flying by with this busy little guy. He was Mr. I want to please the first couple of days and a simple "no" and displeased face worked. Then, he got really comfortable quickly and started to test his boundaries by doing things like flipping the light switch on and off, even after 5 or more "no"s and pulling his hands away. So, we had to move to a raised voice "no" and pick him up and put him on the bed. When we do that, he knows it's a time out, gets upset enough to stop, and just sits there until we go to him a few minutes later to cheer him up and reassure him we still love him. He's really well-behaved whenever we're out and overall, he's a really good little guy. He's just a very active 3-year-old boy and loves discovering anything new, taking things apart, and is learning that there's a lot of things mama and baba don't want him getting into.

The orphanage staff said that he's a little actor, and we found that is so true. He is a Drama King. Our first night at dinner, we ate at this wonderful restaurant called Lucy's outside on a patio with palm trees decorated with lights. We waited a while for our food and Ben thought he would entertain both himself and us. Bob and I were laughing so hard, we were crying. Ben started mimicking things he saw us do during the day...He pretended to drop pills in his mouth and swallow them, went through all the motions of taking a bath and washing, and reinacted the difficult time Bob had opening a jar the day before, including tapping the jar on the sink and then pretending to try to open it with a scrunched up frustrated face just like Bob had! Ben is highly visual and imaginative; he loves looking at pictures, drawing, pretend-play, books, and dancing. He also appears to be a vain little guy, as he loves looking at himself in the mirror and posing for pictures.

I think Bob is finding out that kids are a lot of work, but Ben is such a joy to us and we are so blessed to have him. We love his cute little giggling and voice when he says "ah baba" over and over, which means, in his dialect, that he loves baba. He comes to us often for huggies and is very affectionate most of the time. He has started to say "ah mama" too.

Our friends on the trip; wish they lived in Chicago:

Ben loves the traditional Chinese outfit we bought him. Here, he wears the hat:

In the playroom:

This is when Ben was enjoying posing for Grant's mama, Lori Mast. After you take a picture of him, he insists on running to the camera to see how it turned out:

Bouncing up and down with buddy Grant Mast:

Posing again for Lori:

The socks I bought for him are way too big. Ben pulled them up all the way past his knees over his long pjs and started running around like that and laughing; he had us laughing too:

Ben getting his required medical checkup:

Bob and Ben the second night we ate at Lucy's. Lucy's serves American food and Bob thinks that this was a welcome break from noodles and rice. Ben loved his glasses baba bought him until he broke them:

Our last full day in Nanjing.

Ben and Baa-ba on a bridge

Boats had colorful lights on them:

View from bridge:

Sally and Ben at a lake in Nanjing:

From the top of the Emperor's tomb in Nanjing.

Ben and Bob near the bottom of the Emperor's tomb.

Today and yesterday at the orphanage

Ben on baa-ba's lap on the bus

One of the directors of Ben's orphanage (holding Ben) and a nanny who stepped in the picture...not one of Ben's nanny's so I'm not sure why or how she came to be in the picture....ha ha...

A market on the main street outside of the orphanage:

Walking to Ben's abandonment place:
He was left near Dapuji Bridge:
A woman and her daughter also walking down the road to the bridge...Notice the hanging ducks and clothes on the tree branches of someone's home:
On the way back to the orphanage:
Standing in front of the gate to the orphanage

With three of his nannies in his room at the orphanage:
We brought candy and Ben handed out a piece of candy to each child in his room:
Ben sits on the bed that he slept in:

Ben with the section chief and his teacher in the classroom:
Ben hands out candy in the classroom:
Ben sits near where he used to sit in the classroom:
Playground outside at the orphanage that foreign volunteers made possible:

Administration staff members have lunch for us, our Nanjing guide Linda (next to Bob), and our driver, not pictured:
The orphanage is part of a government complex that also houses the elderly. Here is a garden area in the complex:
Building where we had lunch:
Residences along a river in Nanjing:


Ben eats dinner with Baa-ba at the Mandarin Garden hotel in Nanjing:
He feeds himself; he doesn't want anyone to help him:

I woke up to Ben babbling and giggling this morning...he's doing really well so far today and as usual, he was really happy in the evening yesterday.

We went to the orphanage yesterday. When we got on the bus to go, he was not wanting to be by mommy, I think because he came to us on a bus...Perhaps he thought we were taking him back...I hated to see him upset, but I felt we should visit, take pictures and gain information for him...something he will appreciate later. He was a little upset as we got closer to the orphanage, but then perked up when he went around visiting the orphanage staff, his old nannies, and his old classmates and roomates. He's very outgoing. He was fine when he said goodbye to everyone and was better on the way back. My guess is that he now thinks we are living in this hotel room from now on and going to make visits back to the orphanage.

We visited the place where Ben was abandoned...Dapuji Bridge. It was a small bridge...not for cars...fairly close to the orphanage. The path to it was a very narrow winding dirt road...only for walking and bikes. The walk was very third world...the poorest part of China that we've seen yet...actually, the poorest area we've ever walked through in our lifetime. First, we went down a main street a little ways. There were small open markets and everything imaginable was going on in the street...a man killing chickens on the ground, a child relieving herself right by the stall of fruit her parents were selling...the smells were pungent.

Then we turned left to walk down the narrow path to the bridge. There were tiny dusty stone houses no larger than one room in our home with a few items inside like a mat for sleeping. On the other side for a little were apartments. They opened up onto the dirt path littered with old garbage, like pieces of tile and dishes. Dead ducks to be eaten hung on rusty barbed wire alongside clothes that were air drying. Women sat outside their doors making things like shoes, probably to be sold at a market somewhere. They smiled at us, ironically much more friendly than some of the cold stone glances from women walking in furs and go go boots on Beijing and Nanjing shopping streets. A man was washing linens in a small plastic tub in the path and old men sat on the side chatting with each other and yelling "hello" at us. We passed a girl with a young boy who looked way too young to be a mother...perhaps, hopefully she wasn't mom. All the way there, I was wondering if any of the women and men we encountered could be one of Ben's birth parents. If Ben came from the area he was abandoned in, I highly doubt his mom had proper nutrition and can understand why children could come out malformed in some way.

Today...nap time...grieving

Just after Ben woke up from his nap today, he was very upset, hung his head, and was on the verge of crying. He was not liking mommy and daddy and was especially angry at mommy, refusing to look at me or take food from me and pushing my hands away. It was heart-breaking to watch him look away from us off into the distance with glassy red eyes, remembering his nannies and little friends, most of whom have been, are being, or will be adopted. I had to go into the bathroom and have a cry for him. It took him an hour or two to let the grieving go, forget for the day, and perk up to his bubbly self again. We had a great rest of the day until bedtime. We just laid him down to bed, which he took as a rejection from daddy...he started crying and refused to have anything to do with daddy until daddy pulled him out of the crib, laid with him in daddy's bed for a while until Ben was sleepy and then moved him back there. Poor little Shan Shan.

"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