Our last days in China

Friday, May 28, 2010

Thursday was much better than Wednesday as both boys were in a much better mood and consequently so was Mama and Dad.  We didn't have to be at the American Consulate until 3pm so we had plenty of time to eat breakfast and play.  We spent about an hour in the "Swan Room" which is Mattel/Fischer Price playroom at our hotel.  Daniel has not wanted to play in the room but Evan was happy to be there.  He ran around and tried out the different toys.  I finally convinced Daniel to come in when I saw some Lightning McQueen cars in a locked glass cabinet.  After that, he had a fantastic time.  Other families came in and we enjoyed visiting with them.  There are a lot of families that have adopted "waiting children" which are children with some form of a special need.  Most are mild to moderate and some are severe.  The other families that were here adopting children waited four years for their referrals.  I did not have the patience to wait and in fact
we would still be waiting for our first child if we had not decided to adopt our boys from the "waiting" list.

After a quick lunch in our room we got ready to meet our guide to go to the American Consulate for our Oath Taking Ceremony.  We rode on a big bus with other families and it was fun to finally be riding with other people besides ourselves.  Once we arrived we had to go up 5 floors and wait in a large room for them to call Evan's Chinese name, Pan Sheng.  It was hard to hear because all of the children were loud and the announcers had thick Chinese accents.  While we waited Daniel and Evan played with other kids in the back of the room where they had some toys.  They had a play house that all of the kids enjoyed including Daniel.  I watched him sit inside with some girls and I could see that he was telling them something.  He held up his left hand and he always does when he is trying to tell a story.  It was pretty cute until the girls decided that the house was for girls only.  That did not sit well with Daniel and he got into a physical and
verbal fight with girls that were at least 3 years his senior.  One little girl told me that I need to get my son away from her because she is tired.  I just walked away and kept Daniel away from them.  Evan tried to open the window of the little house and another girl about his age approached him and he hit her in the face.  She got in a couple of good hits on him before we could put a stop to it. 

The ceremony started (informal) and the woman gave us instructions and some statistics about adoption.  There were 37 families there to adopt 40 children.  3 families adopted 2 children all of which were older kids.  They also announced the May birthdays as we clapped for them.  They had everyone stand and hold up their right hand to repeat the oath.  When it was over we all boarded the bus to head back to our hotel.  We decided to go to dinner at Lucy's again for one last meal.  We sat outside so Daniel could use his bubble gun and play in the garden.  He saw a man playing hacky sack and wanted to join him.  The man didn't let him so he went and sat on a bench next to another man and watched him as he played on his phone.  Our new friends from Ohio came to eat as well so we stayed and visited with them before we left for another adventure on the streets of Guangzhou.

We headed in the same direction as before but took some different streets to see other stores.  I am amazed at how late all of the shops stay open and how many people are still on the streets at 8pm each night.  Because Guangzhou is getting ready to host the 2010 Asia games in October, there is a lot of construction and that has closed down some shops.  We ended up heading towards the mall area we visited a couple nights ago to find dental floss.  We purchased a few items along the way before making it to the Mall square.  We are running out of baby wipes so we were looking for drug store and while we were looking for one we stopped to look around at our surroundings.  About 5 women stopped to look at the boys and ask us questions.  Unfortunately we couldn't understand them but we held up fingers and pointed at the boys to show them their age.  They kept talking to us as we smiled and shook our heads "yes".  As they were looking at the boys we
started to get a crowd.  More and more people came over to see us which confirmed for me that people will look at anything when there is a crowd!  I would estimate about 100 people formed a ring around us to see.  One man who spoke English asked to take our picture.  I took all of their pictures too because I didn't have video camera. Eventually our latest fan base thinned out and we continued with the rest of our shopping.  We walked back to the hotel and made it there about 9pm. 

The Chinese children that are in high school go to school about 8am and finish around 8-9pm at night.  They have classes 6 days a week and still have homework to do when they get home.  Our guide in Hohhot said that it is the same for students attending the Universities.  He said it is hard on the kids because they don't get much free time.  I think the same is for a lot of the workers in China, especially the shop owners.  They seem to always be in their shops.

Today we are leaving China and heading for Hong Kong to spend the weekend before we fly home on Monday.  We really wish that we were flying home today but I am sure we will have a good time in Hong Kong.  We are taking the train and it will be about 2 hour ride to HK.  Daniel is looking forward to the train.