almost an American

Exactly one month since we met Little Guy, we have made it to Guangzhou to finalize the adoption. And when I say we made it to Guangzhou, that would be because we barely made it here. Some people say adoption is a journey, etc. I would say this journey is Rough!!!!
I'll back up and recap the last few days of the rough road. Anyway we turned in our paperwork to the You-Know-Whos at immigration like the second we got Little Guy and started begging to have them issue some new form BLAH BLAH#A, becausethey no longer accept form WHATEVER#B. Then they wanted our fingerprints. Why? They have the prints already and they are suppose to be good until 8-29-08 and like, even on that magic date of fingerprint expiration, my prints are going to be just the same as the other 4 sets they took last year. Like baring my fingers getting cut off, my prints aren't going to change. Anyway when we first were printed for the adoption, you fill out a little card with everything, everything about you on it. We were printed and waited 2 months and asked, hey whats up, why haven't you given us any more forms? They responded, oh, ooops, we lost them. No sorry or anything. It was much more like a demand, get on the next plane up to Beijing and redo them. Anyway we complied.
When we switched to the Waiting Child program, it was the fingerprint expiration in the back of our mind that encouraged us. We were waiting to be matched with deaf or cleft anyway, the Waiting Child program is a little faster and you get more info upfront.
Anyway so this summer, we again complied and were reprinted. Chris was printed before he went back to Harbin and I was printed one week later. When I was printed I asked, could I go ahead and make the appointment for Guangzhou on day x, so I could get to Guangzhou and back to Harbin before I have to teach on day z. The guy said, "sure, I don't see why not. Call back in 2 weeks to see if we got your clearance back." I noticed he said "if", lost fingerprints must happen enough to use the word if in a standard speech. So I made the appointment. Patiently we waited 3 weeks and 2 days. Our appointment was coming up so I called and asked about our case. You-know-who at immigration told me, "we'll tell you when you can make an appointment in Guangzhou and I thought I told your husband to tell you to come here and be refingerprinted." So as patiently as one can be, I kindly told You-Know-Who at immigration that I had been fingerprinted 3 weeks ago and that her agent told me that I could my appointment and so I had an appointment in 3 business days. So typical of my dealings with immigration, she said "call back tomorrow afternoon". So I asked her name so that maybe I didn't have to be transfered all over the embassey when I called. She said, "You don't need to know my name. They know who to tranfer the call to." So much for government for the people, by the people.
As you can imagine, the next day, Friday, there was no answer that extension that we were tranfered to. So Chris and Little Guy went down to the Embassey. Lets say, US citizens without appointments are not very welcome. After standing an hour in the shadeless heat, they were allowed in.. And ya gotta love the Marines, cause the guy knew sign language! So hours later he gets out of there.
Back in the burbs, the Korea roommate actually put on white gloves for the moveout inspection of our room. And at the school they assigned me a bunch of busy work that had to be done before they could pay me. Augh, I finished and got that envelope of cash. I did like the higher pay there, but I'm not sure I could do that again.
So we huff and puff or bags to the bus stop and then ride to downtown and do the Great Wall of subway stairs with the bags. We were hungry and tired to we decided to just get McD's. They have changed the hambuger meat!!!! When I go to McD's I want it to taste just like McD's everywhere, thats the whole idea behind brand recognition. I hardly ever eat McD's in America but when I eat it in China and pay the same price as I would in USA, I want the American taste.

So our travel plan was to spend the night at the youth hostel and take trains on Sat night. We figured we check out the Lama temple since Little Guy is pretty spiritual. Then the Big Bookstore one more time. Youth Hostel was great! Free bag storage! The foriegners that are there are cool, the chinese are themselves, its not pretentious.
Most temples in China I find very calming and relaxing. It is not my religion, but I respect the beauty of it and love the architecture. The Lama Temple was in Lonely Planets book as a not to miss. Everyone must have that book because it was packed. Totally full of venders on the road to it and then inside was crowded. Then add the element of fire. 2 four year olds and insence sticks, the furthest thing from a relaxing experience. Little Guy is totally business in the Temples, this stuff is his belief system and he prays his little heart out. He certainly is interested in some statues more than others. Previous visits to a Temple must have been on a limited time basis because he runs and prays to everyone in there like there is not enough time to get all your prayers in. Now Princess thought this was great, she just imitated him and giggled loudly. So then we had to be the enforcers of whispering in case there were people who were not tourists and were there for religious reasons. It was definately not peaceful for us. Then Teenager bought Little guy a Peking Opera mask and he decided to wear it everywhere.

So we went to the bookstore. I love books. Again 2 four years olds, no looking at books for me! Little Guy had a throw down tantrum when he couldn't get The Monkey King. Now I know he didn't come from an environment where the throwdown tantrum resulted in the purchasing of things. And I know that it must be frustrating for him to not have language and live with us must be very different. But I'm not giving into tantrums. In general, I don't see Chinese parents giving in to tantrums either. Actually Chinese kids don't seem to have as many tantrums or they aren't as loud about it. Anyway, Chinese people are not understanding Little Guy's tantrums. They think I don't know what they are saying, but my comprehension is actually quite good. They think I should make him stop crying or that we have stolen him, or just general foriegner distaste. When we tell them he's deaf (in Chinese) they act like they don't believe us. So, here we are with a screaming on the ground (nobody touches the ground here, much less lays on it) kid and people saying stupid stuff to us. It's just awful. So we pick him up (carefully, he kicks, scratches, punches) and let him continue his fit outside. Soon we have a crowd. Now Princess hates crowds. So she starts telling them off in Chinese. Then they start laughing because they think its funny that she speaks so well.
So by train time, 10pm, we were pretty frazzled. Princess and Teenager were headed back to Harbin. They had a nice sleeper, no problems. Things headed South for us. Now, I thought my last train trip was hell. This was a much lower level of hell. We had car 3, Seats 4,5, and 6. Yes, seats, not sleepers. Now in most transportation situations, you would imagine that 4,5,6 are together. Wait, we're in China. 4 is an unlucky number. The train seats were grouped in a set of 5 on one side and a set of 4 on the other at the first grouping on seats. So 5 and six were together with the other lucky numbers 1 and 8 and 2. Now 4, back corner window, far way. Did it matter that we were a family and clearly wanted to sit together. Luggage, the fact that we had 3 seats should mean we could have part of an overhead bin. No. In fact car 3 of the train was Marshall law. In fact we were lucky to sit at all. 2 seats. No one ever came to check tickets. We showed a ticket to get on and after that you were on your own if you got in there. The capacity of the train car on the sign was 118. Probably 300 people were in there. It was insane. We only got our seats because I was tired and frustrated enough that I mustered enough Chinese to be able to argue for our 2 seats and bargained to put some luggage in seat 4. So we had 2 seats and Little Guy and half our suitcases in our laps, people at our feets and ontop of our seat backs. The guy that was suppose to sit next to us, sat down for 3 minutes with his briefcase and then freaked out and sold his ticket to somebody on the floor and got off the train. People were everywhere, in the bathrooms, aisle, under the little train tables. Little Guy was overwhelmed. He put on his mask and went to sleep. Chris has been to Kenya and said that this train was like the bus there accept after 3 stops in Kenya they cleared the bus and put people on the roof and people had chicken. We rode for 11 hours. Chris took Little Guy to the bathroom once. He got up and somebody crawled in his seat so quick. It took him 45 minutes to crawl thru the people to get there and back. The conductor never even set foot in the car. Very interesting sociology. So with in an hour this one group of dudes took over the water and bathroom on our end of the train. If you control the water, you control the train. We watched person after person try to go in there and be refused. Nobody could use that bathroom. So 300 people 1 bathroom. People were using water bottles, right in front of us. It was gross. Woman that sat next to seat 4 was actually pretty nice to Little Guy. Now the train kids were not nice. It was hard for him to make an effort to be friendly and be rejected. And it was hard to watch that or understand the parents of the kids not saying be nice. But we couldn't move. We couldn't sleep either for fear of being robbed. Luckily Little Guy slept most of the time.
So we arrive in Hefei. Our thought was to journey halfway by train and then spend sometime in Hefei and fly to Guangzhou for the appointment.
We battle our way off the train. We get off the train and Little Guy wants to be carried by Chris. It was impossible with the luggage and exhaustion. He had sleep and we knew he could walk. So we decided that we did indeed have all day and could wait out this tantrum. Well, he had his fit and the train was unloaded and he was still carrying on. We were incrediably patient and just kept signing walk. So a couple of people were milling around to watch the scene play out our rob us, I dunno. Anyway Little Guy is just going on and on. So the train personel come. We explain he is our son and we just want him to walk. They are all standing around making us very uncomfortable. We exhausted but we really felt like that if we gave in, it would make make the next time even worse. So we stood our ground for a while, then I heard them radio for the police. So I picked him up. He did not want me. I could not carry all our bags (usually we travel light, but we've been on the road for 6 weeks) So I carried him screaming and fighting thru the train station with the posse of train people and whoever a short distance behind me. We get out of the train station and at this time the only way I can handle him safely is with my arms under his and him facing forward and when he kicks I kind of just set him down on the ground slightly to have his feet kick the ground instead of me. So now we are in the crowd of the train station and this woman comes up to me and says in very good English. "Is that a Chinese child? Why is he crying?" I explain in chinese he's ours and he's deaf and he's mad that his dad can't carry him. A much larger crowd starts forming. It was insane. We started yelling at the crowd in Chinese because they wouldn't leave us alone. Chris ended up dropping all the bags and taking Little Guy and grabbing a taxi. The minute he left the crowd dispersed and the beggars started hounding me. I couldn't believe it. I was standing there and exhausted and trying to guard the bags and I thought I would just collapse. I dragged the bags to the street in a non-taxi pick up zone and waited for Chris. Then the police came because I wasn't suppose to stand there with luggage. Luckily when the taxi arrived, the police decided I could get in. We just went straight to the airport.
In the taxi, Little Guy was a happy fellow. He was looking out the window and clearly saw things he recognized. We pulled up at the airport and he was so excited. He likes planes. The airport carts were wonderful. We just pushed him around and he was happy. The plane ride was great. He was so happy. He kept signing plane and when it was time to land, I signed that the plane was going down. He did not like that, he would sign the plane rising again. It was so cute.
We were able to take the airport bus almost all the way to our hotel. The hotel is in walking distance to the consulate. There are 2 subway sandwich shops and 3 Pizza Huts with in a 5 block radius.
The consulate in Guangzhou seems to be staffed with very friendly people. Coincidentally one of the ladies that notarized something for us remembered us from Shenyang where we first filed our paperwork. It felt nice to have someone remember us. It felt that things had come full circle since we started the journey of paperwork in Shenyang. So everything went smoothly and tommorrow we will take the oath and get the magic envelope that will make Little Guy an American.

almost an American

Guangzhou, China