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Our Trip
December 2, 2001 - Day Fifteen: Paperwork click HERE for Day Fifteen Photos Question for Ms. Foster's Classroom: Have your parents taught you any handicrafts that are a part of their family - like knitting, crocheting, beadwork, or painting? Paige's comments: Greetings from room 1252 of the China Hotel in Goungzhou. It's 4:30 Sunday afternoon and I am in charge of Sophia for the next four hours while Ann has a documents meeting with our agency rep, and then has some quality time with a massage in the spa. Four hours is daunting. In fact, this might be the longest I've ever been alone with a child. But so far I'm handling it well and there haven't been any, oh, wait…Sophia! Put down the curling iron. Okay. Good girl. As I was saying, everything is going great and she's playing with an assortment of toys on the floor while I pound this out. This morning we hit (another) folk art museum. I was tempted to ask if they had a velvet Mao, or a portrait of Chaing Kai Chek playing cards with dogs, but I figured I'd already pushed my luck enough on this trip. We got back here by 1 p.m. and had a great lunch in one of this hotels restaurants. While some of the other families are playing it safe and sticking with American-ized food, we figure that this will be our last chance for awhile to get real Chinese food, so we're making the most of every opportunity. Some of the more interesting menu items included pickled pork intestines and braised ox tail soup, but we stuck with stuff we knew we could handle. As usual Sophia drew quite the crowd. After lunch I hit the fitness club to try and shed the 15 or so pounds I feel like I've put on on this trip. A fantastic fitness club with an olympic-sized pool on the fourth floor terrace. For Goungzhou, the weather (80 with a maybe 95 degree humidity) is chilly, so the only people at the pool were foreigners. I hit the steam room, sweated out some Tsing Tao, and got back to the room in time for Ann to do the meeting. The agency has been really smart and is breaking up our days with half tourism and half bureaucracy. We got all the Chinese paperwork out of the way in Nanjing and Sophia now is the proud owner of a Chinese passport under her given name Chang Xin Ju. In Goungzhou, we're doing all the American stuff. One person from each couple is now downstairs with all of the notarized papers, forms, copies of tickets, visas, tax returns…basically the whole shebang that we all lugged over. After the document signing party, Ann's going to treat herself to a 45-minute massage in the spa. This is an amazing hotel. Like the Bellagio in Vegas. And we're going to soak up the opulence for as long as we can. (FYI: the massage costs about $25. Beat that.) A couple of unusual observations: · When we were at the orphanage in Changzhou on Monday, we were told that there was another American family that was going to be there in about an hour. We missed them but met him (his wife is with the other three kids back in Massachusetts) the next day in the Hilton. We ended up running into Richard and Mave (his new two and a half year-old daughter) at just about every meal. And then on the street. And then at the airport. And then at a store in Goungzhou, last night at the Hard Rock, and today at another store. It's getting humorous. But it only makes sense: in a city of 8.6 million people it's logical that you'd constantly bump into the same people over and over. I kind of expect to run into an ex-girlfriend or two. · The other two hotels had hot water pots that plugged in for instant coffee and tea. Kind of like those little three-cup coffee makers you see in every motel in America. Not at the China Hotel. When you need hot water, you dial 64 and your friendly floor attendant delivers a thermos bottle of approximately 10,000 degree water in about 90 seconds. The water actually stays hot for most of a day. ·
Like any international hotel, you'll always have some eclectic characters.
This morning at breakfast we were seated next to the Punk Rock King
of China. ("Chang Viscious"?) He looked like he should
be in an MTV video from 1982. His wife/girlfriend had an affected
Yoko Ono thing happening. With them were two Eastern Bloc supermodels.
Like I said, this ain't the Americinn in Forest Lake. Ann's comments: Today we went to a folk art museum and a porcelin factory. The folk art museum had more contemporary folk art versus the very old fine art and folk art work we saw in Nanjing. There were a lot of tour buses of older Chinese women and men enjoying the work. Like the other museum, there was a lot of talking and laughter - not the quiet that you experience in the U.S. It's a welcome change. The work that stood out the most in the museum today were these huge embroidered pictures. From a distance they look like oil paintings, but close up you could see the thousands of little stitches with different shades of embroidery floss. They were amazing. There was another section that had huge pieces of work all done in beads. Taken out of context, they may seem kind of kitchy, but if you looked at the amount of work and detail that went into each piece - and remember this is all done by hand - it is amazing. The other place we went to was the porcelin factory. The neat thing about the factories/stores here is that artists are often working right along side the work that is for sale so that you can see that a machine isn't generating the work. There was an artist who was painting very detailed images on vases. They were beautiful. Upstairs there was a hand painter. I've never seen this done so I watched this artist for a while. He used his palms that he tapped in black ink and made incredible nature prints - mostly of water, mountains, and clouds. The trees were done by a combination of his palms and fingernails. He doesn't use any brushes. This was one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. We came back to the hotel and ate at the Chinese restaurant here. It was really good. Had fried rice and mixed vegetables. Paige had something with chicken which he didn't like - it had long translucent noodles in it, almost like a soup. Sophia ate some of my fried rice and vegetables. Came back upstairs and Paige left for a while to workout. Sophia needed a nap so I pulled the curtains. The minute I did that she let out her normal wail. She really doesn't to take naps, but she needs one so she can stay up for the rest of day. Laid down on the blanket on the floor next to her. She tried to play for awhile, but quickly wound down. She crawled over to me and then half-way over me so her head was on the ground and her stomach was on my neck/chest. She slept that way for 1 ½ hours - until Paige got back and was able to lift her off without waking her. Went to the 14th floor with the other couples to do paperwork for the American Consulate. What could have taken an hour ended up running from 3:30 until 6:00 because people had a lot of questions even though Amy (the ACAA rep) was clearly explaining the answers to each question; and they forgot documents in their rooms or their payments. I was progressively getting more sick (terrible sinus/allergy problems) and had to leave several times to blow my nose and get medicine. Each time I returned (sometimes 10 minutes later) the group was still on the same question. A very frustrating pace to go. We put all the documents in clear envelopes for Amy and Leneker to take to the American Consulate on Monday to process. We go there Monday afternoon for a special swearing-in ceremony. I thought it was the adoption day ceremony and had Sophia's special dress ready to go. Found out that her actual adoption day was November 28, 2001 - in Nanjing when we went to the registry office with John and the orphanage director. We'll make next year's celebration more special. Had the one-hour massage which I needed. Carrying around a baby and being sick are two good reasons to invest 90 yuan for the massage and 50 yuan for the tip (less than $20 total!). The massages here are different from the ones in the U.S. Generally in the U.S. the room is dark, there's music playing, and the massage is relaxing. This one the lights were dim, there was no music, and the massage was more invigorating than relaxing. It was funny because when she was doing some of the work she made the chops and pounds sound like music. So that's about it. We have a big day tomorrow and I need to get rest. Have to shake this sinus/allergy thing before we head back. |