Well, El and the gang are back from the land of OZ. We're exhausted! El didn't sleep much on the plane from Beijing, so she was pretty much awake for 28 hours straight! That meant that Pat and I were pretty much up for all that time too. Luckily, Maeve managed some sleep.
But, we had a safe trip home and no one has slipped, tripped, slid or been dropped down the stairs. Maeve is overjoyed to be home. El is happy to no longer be traveling on a plane or van. Mom and Dad aren't sure which end is up right now. Popo and Gunggung are taking care of the lot of us.
Elspeth appears to have a cold. Maeve is just over her flu that she had in China. I'm sure the rest of us will be getting sick now that the traveling part is over. Still, you'll probably hear from one of us in the next few days.
Tomorrow, OHIP and maybe EI.
For tonight, to sleep perchance to dream.
PS It is nice to be able to sign in to the blog for a change!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Final Pics from Beijing...
Our final morning begins with ... Tiananmen Square! We were supposed to go the previous afternoon, but Obama beat us to it, and the square (and the Forbidden City beyond it) were closed to all but the American dude. Yes folks, Obama was given precedent over us, heh heh.
Remnants of Obama`s visit ... Note the odd flag flying just to the upper left over Mao's portrait.
Kath and El outside the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Don't try to go in through that gate ... You may never come out again!
Penetrating deeper into Forbidden territory.
El proves as bored as Maeve was on her first visit to the city ... (Again, Maeve stayed back in the hotel, too feverish to accompany us. Marcus and Lucilla had her sleeping in their room, or just hanging out watching Chinese TV programs ... Unfortunately, Maeve's sickness meant we had to keep our girls apart as much as possible during our Beijing sojourn).
Talk about incongruity ... A digital display inside a gateway deep within the Forbidden City. What was playing on it? Why, footage of the Forbidden City! A meta-anachronism!
Kath and El recreate a pic taken before the same door of me holding Maeve :)
In the heart of the Forbidden City.
Note the snow ... It was colder on this morning than on our first visit here!
A dragon-turtle caught in a frozen wail about the weather.
A chill sunshine over a Forbidden City courtyard.
Forbidden skyline.
Three temples visible beyond the walled mystery City.
Snow on the rooftops.
Kath ducks in to an imperial antechamber to collect her thoughts.
A dragon statue in a small outer courtyard as we approach the end of our exploration of the City.
Dogs, dragons, and priests guard the edges of rooftops throughout the City.
A special treat for El in the spot where a Starbucks once stood (now "The Imperial Tea House") ... Her first taste of an Oreo cookie. (Some day she'll tell her high school friends 'Had my first Oreo in the Forbidden City!')
Leaving the Emperor's walled private city, we cross its great moat.
Yesterday afternoon, five of us ventured out for a little exploring of our own. Kath's dad wanted to see the Olympic site ... Here's the Bird's Nest stadium. Winds here were as bad, if not worse, than on the Great Wall!
Now that's a cold job. Guarding the base of the Nest.
A view of the "Olympic Torch" building.
One final pic, showing a pair of little nightlights near the Bird's Nest. All the spotlights around the stadium were nestled in their own little meshwork ... Quite pretty, but not as beautiful as the pair of nestlings we're preparing to take wing with! Folks, we depart for the airport in one hour, and the trip back home to Canada at last! We cannot wait to get our wee ones back home to Waterloo and tucked into bed! Elspeth has come down with whatever Maeve has, so it's going to be a very very long flight indeed ...
Thanks for all who accompanied us on the second life-adventure (and a special thanks to Carolyn Clow for posting all these pics and captions posted for us!)
Remnants of Obama`s visit ... Note the odd flag flying just to the upper left over Mao's portrait.
Kath and El outside the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Don't try to go in through that gate ... You may never come out again!
Penetrating deeper into Forbidden territory.
El proves as bored as Maeve was on her first visit to the city ... (Again, Maeve stayed back in the hotel, too feverish to accompany us. Marcus and Lucilla had her sleeping in their room, or just hanging out watching Chinese TV programs ... Unfortunately, Maeve's sickness meant we had to keep our girls apart as much as possible during our Beijing sojourn).
Talk about incongruity ... A digital display inside a gateway deep within the Forbidden City. What was playing on it? Why, footage of the Forbidden City! A meta-anachronism!
Kath and El recreate a pic taken before the same door of me holding Maeve :)
In the heart of the Forbidden City.
Note the snow ... It was colder on this morning than on our first visit here!
A dragon-turtle caught in a frozen wail about the weather.
A chill sunshine over a Forbidden City courtyard.
Forbidden skyline.
Three temples visible beyond the walled mystery City.
Snow on the rooftops.
Kath ducks in to an imperial antechamber to collect her thoughts.
A dragon statue in a small outer courtyard as we approach the end of our exploration of the City.
Dogs, dragons, and priests guard the edges of rooftops throughout the City.
A special treat for El in the spot where a Starbucks once stood (now "The Imperial Tea House") ... Her first taste of an Oreo cookie. (Some day she'll tell her high school friends 'Had my first Oreo in the Forbidden City!')
Leaving the Emperor's walled private city, we cross its great moat.
Yesterday afternoon, five of us ventured out for a little exploring of our own. Kath's dad wanted to see the Olympic site ... Here's the Bird's Nest stadium. Winds here were as bad, if not worse, than on the Great Wall!
Now that's a cold job. Guarding the base of the Nest.
A view of the "Olympic Torch" building.
One final pic, showing a pair of little nightlights near the Bird's Nest. All the spotlights around the stadium were nestled in their own little meshwork ... Quite pretty, but not as beautiful as the pair of nestlings we're preparing to take wing with! Folks, we depart for the airport in one hour, and the trip back home to Canada at last! We cannot wait to get our wee ones back home to Waterloo and tucked into bed! Elspeth has come down with whatever Maeve has, so it's going to be a very very long flight indeed ...
Thanks for all who accompanied us on the second life-adventure (and a special thanks to Carolyn Clow for posting all these pics and captions posted for us!)
Beijing!
A final pic in the Gloria Grand: Kath and Elspeth back in the corner of the lobby where we first received El, one week after she joined our family with tears and trepidation ... She seems a little happier now, n'est pas?
El's first flight, from Nanchang to Beijing. A lot less turbulent than the first flight Maeve and her Xinyu sisters took, but El's not too happy with the cramped quarters ... It's going to be a long long uncomfortable flight back to T.O. for this wee one---and for us!
Arriving in Beijing's massive airport, we can tell we're no longer in provincial Jiangxi just by the chichi fashions of the locals waiting for relatives and friends ... We meet up with most of our small Children's Bridge adoption group in arrivals, then take a pair of van-buses to our new digs, the Jianguo Garden Hotel, just down the road from Tiananmen Square! Unfortunately, it's too dark to see much when we finally get there.
Next day, we head out to the Great Wall. Apparently it's quite cold, and there's been lots of snow ... We also visit a Jade factory situated on the route between our hotel and the Wall (the ancient Wall looms over the spine of the mountains north of the city). Here's Maeve hamming it up in the Jade factory.
Maeve and I explore the factory while Kath feeds El (who takes a lot longer to eat than Maeve---she's very tiny, a fragile little sister indeed!) ... Here's Maeve posing before a wall of paintings.
But what we've come to see is this Wall, right dad?
Kath and El at the base of the Great Wall at Badaling.
Note all the people on the higher stretches. A few days later Obama came here, walked along this very section, and the news footage we saw showed absolutely no one else on the Great Wall.
A family pic a short way up the Wall ... We didn't get much farther up, as the wind was so fierce and temperatures close to minus 20 with the windchill.
Maeve, meanwhile, was coming down with another dose of the seasonal flu she'd had before our departure. Her cough had come back, and what we at first took for a bit of exhaustion-crying on the Wall quickly became evident to us as something more ...
Maeve was developing a high fever again, and I had to retreat with her to an exorbitant coffee house in the square of shops down at the entrance to the Badaling section ... Here virtually our entire adoption group was encamped, hiding out from the fiercely cold winds, paying 12 dollars Canadian for a mug of Chinese tea (talk about gouging! Starbucks could learn from this shop).
All of our babies were crying their eyes out, even the two jie jies (six year old Rae-Lynn and three year old Maeve---though in Maeve's case, more than just a frozen nose and cheeks were to blame ... She was really sick.)
So our five hour round trip to the Wall resulted in a fifteen minute venture onto the wall itself, followed by a half hour communal cryfest in a cafe. Our adventure turned out to be more Great Wail than Wall!
While the babies gave voice to their wind-chilled contempt for the Wall, Kath dashed up the far side of the Badaling stretch for a final pic ... You can see the square of shops just below, where we were still wiping away the unending tears of the Great Wail :)
Next day Kath visited a pearl market ...
... While I accompanied most of our adoption group to the SOS medical clinic, where they had their new babies examined. El did not go because we'd applied for direct citizenship for her, rather than immigration. On the way back from the clinic our group dropped by the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, so I could complete the last transaction required before El could become a citizen.
This pic shows the play area in the SOS clinic, where Shanghai girl Cloe was checking out the toys with Claire, her new mom. As Claire and Doug live in T.O., Cloe's moving from China's hip cultural capital to Canada's!
Here's our hotel in daytime ... It's situated essentially on the Chang An, the Boulevard of Eternal Peace that leads directly to Tiananmen Square.
One afternoon while Maeve napped away her fever with grandma Lucilla keeping a close eye on her, Kath and I slip out to explore the Chang An with our new wee one. Here Kath and El pose before the Raffles Beijing ... Too bad we didn't get to stay there!
A McDonald's just off the fabled Boulevard of Eternal Peace. Yeah, this is capitalist Beijing, all right.
Clarie and Doug accompanied us on our ramble down the Chang An, and took this pic of us outside the famous---or infamous---Beijing Hotel, depending upon your point of view. This was the place where events unfolded best not talked about here ... Peace to everyone back in Canada!
El's first flight, from Nanchang to Beijing. A lot less turbulent than the first flight Maeve and her Xinyu sisters took, but El's not too happy with the cramped quarters ... It's going to be a long long uncomfortable flight back to T.O. for this wee one---and for us!
Arriving in Beijing's massive airport, we can tell we're no longer in provincial Jiangxi just by the chichi fashions of the locals waiting for relatives and friends ... We meet up with most of our small Children's Bridge adoption group in arrivals, then take a pair of van-buses to our new digs, the Jianguo Garden Hotel, just down the road from Tiananmen Square! Unfortunately, it's too dark to see much when we finally get there.
Next day, we head out to the Great Wall. Apparently it's quite cold, and there's been lots of snow ... We also visit a Jade factory situated on the route between our hotel and the Wall (the ancient Wall looms over the spine of the mountains north of the city). Here's Maeve hamming it up in the Jade factory.
Maeve and I explore the factory while Kath feeds El (who takes a lot longer to eat than Maeve---she's very tiny, a fragile little sister indeed!) ... Here's Maeve posing before a wall of paintings.
But what we've come to see is this Wall, right dad?
Kath and El at the base of the Great Wall at Badaling.
Note all the people on the higher stretches. A few days later Obama came here, walked along this very section, and the news footage we saw showed absolutely no one else on the Great Wall.
A family pic a short way up the Wall ... We didn't get much farther up, as the wind was so fierce and temperatures close to minus 20 with the windchill.
Maeve, meanwhile, was coming down with another dose of the seasonal flu she'd had before our departure. Her cough had come back, and what we at first took for a bit of exhaustion-crying on the Wall quickly became evident to us as something more ...
Maeve was developing a high fever again, and I had to retreat with her to an exorbitant coffee house in the square of shops down at the entrance to the Badaling section ... Here virtually our entire adoption group was encamped, hiding out from the fiercely cold winds, paying 12 dollars Canadian for a mug of Chinese tea (talk about gouging! Starbucks could learn from this shop).
All of our babies were crying their eyes out, even the two jie jies (six year old Rae-Lynn and three year old Maeve---though in Maeve's case, more than just a frozen nose and cheeks were to blame ... She was really sick.)
So our five hour round trip to the Wall resulted in a fifteen minute venture onto the wall itself, followed by a half hour communal cryfest in a cafe. Our adventure turned out to be more Great Wail than Wall!
While the babies gave voice to their wind-chilled contempt for the Wall, Kath dashed up the far side of the Badaling stretch for a final pic ... You can see the square of shops just below, where we were still wiping away the unending tears of the Great Wail :)
Next day Kath visited a pearl market ...
... While I accompanied most of our adoption group to the SOS medical clinic, where they had their new babies examined. El did not go because we'd applied for direct citizenship for her, rather than immigration. On the way back from the clinic our group dropped by the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, so I could complete the last transaction required before El could become a citizen.
This pic shows the play area in the SOS clinic, where Shanghai girl Cloe was checking out the toys with Claire, her new mom. As Claire and Doug live in T.O., Cloe's moving from China's hip cultural capital to Canada's!
Here's our hotel in daytime ... It's situated essentially on the Chang An, the Boulevard of Eternal Peace that leads directly to Tiananmen Square.
One afternoon while Maeve napped away her fever with grandma Lucilla keeping a close eye on her, Kath and I slip out to explore the Chang An with our new wee one. Here Kath and El pose before the Raffles Beijing ... Too bad we didn't get to stay there!
A McDonald's just off the fabled Boulevard of Eternal Peace. Yeah, this is capitalist Beijing, all right.
Clarie and Doug accompanied us on our ramble down the Chang An, and took this pic of us outside the famous---or infamous---Beijing Hotel, depending upon your point of view. This was the place where events unfolded best not talked about here ... Peace to everyone back in Canada!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Highlights of our Two-Daughter Week!
Elspeth on the bed watching us get ready in the morning.
El and Maeve getting to know each other ... It's called a bottle, kid sis.
Mind if I borrow the bottle, big sis?
Borrow what-eva you like, xiao mei mei!
Hey, there's no bottles in there, little El!
Elspeth's so funny she's cast a spell over me!
I so want to feed her that myself, Mom.
Can Jie Jie Maeve feed me, Aba-mama? Maeve promises she won't spill anything on the bed.
Here you go, mei mei of mine.
Meanwhile, Baba tries once again to get info out to family and friends far away ...
... And next morning, Kath tries to read her email to El---good luck getting anything on your new netbook, Mom. Windows 7 has cast you back to the Bronze Age!
Escaping from Bronze Age frustrations, Mama and El visit a Nanchang museum for a bit of Jiangxi history.
Then we revisit a place with a more personal history ... Here is the very spot where we first laid eyes on our Maeve---and saw her foster sisters Kennedy and Claire, and her Xinyu sister Ava. What wonderful memories we have of the lobby of this Nanchang government building!
Upstairs in the same building, on the very floor where Maeve was handed over to us, we run into the very same orphanage nanny who brought Maeve from Xinyu, and placed her in Kath's arms ... That's the Xinyu nanny on the left. The odds of meeting her in Nanchang, far from her home, were quite small indeed!
A happy coincidence ... And we had on us a picture of her handing Maeve to Kath, and she was absolutely astonished and delighted when we pulled it out to show her!
After receiving our beautiful El on Sunday, we knew this trip to Jiangxi held one more unforgettable day in store for us:
A daylong trip to Xinyu to rendezvous with the foster mother who looked after Maeve from the time she was ten days old until the day she joined our family. Meeting her in person was a moving and amazing experience. What a wonderful woman, so full of life, laughter, cheerfulness, kindness ... One of the most gentle, affectionate, loving souls we've ever met.
Just look at her smile! Our Maeve is just as full of life and joyfulness, and no doubt that's partially Maeve's innate personality ... But surely she was influenced by having this woman as her first tender mom!
Maeve was a little nervous meeting her, a little overwhelmed. But she consented to climbing into foster mom's hungry arms ... The woman was reaching out to her, calling 'Cai Ling!' from the first moment she saw her. She regaled us with memories of Maeve and her foster sisters.
It was a beautiful and sad meeting ... Over the ninety minutes we were with this woman, it was clear she had difficulty keeping from scooping up our daughter and hugging her for all she was worth.
Just before we departed the Xinyu orphanage where the meeting took place---the same orphanage which Maeve was sent to for transfering to a foster family---the girl who was once Cai Ling, the long-gone foster daughter, gave her loving Jiangxi Mama a kiss goodbye.
Outside the orphanage, time for one last pic with the woman we'll never forget, never be able to thank enough. The banner draped over the entrance to the orphanage reads "Welcome back Yu Cai Ling" ... And when we first drove in through the orphanage's gate, fireworks were set off in Maeve's honour, and a pair of drummers began drumming on huge drums. Maeve was astonished, and so were we, naturally!
Note how even at the end, foster Mom could not take her eyes from Maeve. El, meanwhile, was being held by our guide, Helen, who arranged the whole head-spinning emotional day for us. Thank you so much, Helen!
After retracing the route our daughter and her foster sisters had taken from Xinyu to Nanchang, peering out the windows all the way and thinking how long and confusing that journey must have been on the Xinyu sisters, we settle back into our Gloria Grand hotel digs for a relaxing night.
Baba Pat and Elspeth at play on the bed together.
El loves to be tickled by a bit of Baba neck-blowing, just as her jie jie Maeve does!
Well everyone, we depart the Gloria Grand for the airport tomorrow at noon. Next stop, Beijing ... And early next week, the Great Wall and Forbidden City with our Jiangxi girls!
So goodnight and goodbye to all from Mama Kathleen and her youngest daughter :)
El and Maeve getting to know each other ... It's called a bottle, kid sis.
Mind if I borrow the bottle, big sis?
Borrow what-eva you like, xiao mei mei!
Hey, there's no bottles in there, little El!
Elspeth's so funny she's cast a spell over me!
I so want to feed her that myself, Mom.
Can Jie Jie Maeve feed me, Aba-mama? Maeve promises she won't spill anything on the bed.
Here you go, mei mei of mine.
Meanwhile, Baba tries once again to get info out to family and friends far away ...
... And next morning, Kath tries to read her email to El---good luck getting anything on your new netbook, Mom. Windows 7 has cast you back to the Bronze Age!
Escaping from Bronze Age frustrations, Mama and El visit a Nanchang museum for a bit of Jiangxi history.
Then we revisit a place with a more personal history ... Here is the very spot where we first laid eyes on our Maeve---and saw her foster sisters Kennedy and Claire, and her Xinyu sister Ava. What wonderful memories we have of the lobby of this Nanchang government building!
Upstairs in the same building, on the very floor where Maeve was handed over to us, we run into the very same orphanage nanny who brought Maeve from Xinyu, and placed her in Kath's arms ... That's the Xinyu nanny on the left. The odds of meeting her in Nanchang, far from her home, were quite small indeed!
A happy coincidence ... And we had on us a picture of her handing Maeve to Kath, and she was absolutely astonished and delighted when we pulled it out to show her!
After receiving our beautiful El on Sunday, we knew this trip to Jiangxi held one more unforgettable day in store for us:
A daylong trip to Xinyu to rendezvous with the foster mother who looked after Maeve from the time she was ten days old until the day she joined our family. Meeting her in person was a moving and amazing experience. What a wonderful woman, so full of life, laughter, cheerfulness, kindness ... One of the most gentle, affectionate, loving souls we've ever met.
Just look at her smile! Our Maeve is just as full of life and joyfulness, and no doubt that's partially Maeve's innate personality ... But surely she was influenced by having this woman as her first tender mom!
Maeve was a little nervous meeting her, a little overwhelmed. But she consented to climbing into foster mom's hungry arms ... The woman was reaching out to her, calling 'Cai Ling!' from the first moment she saw her. She regaled us with memories of Maeve and her foster sisters.
It was a beautiful and sad meeting ... Over the ninety minutes we were with this woman, it was clear she had difficulty keeping from scooping up our daughter and hugging her for all she was worth.
Just before we departed the Xinyu orphanage where the meeting took place---the same orphanage which Maeve was sent to for transfering to a foster family---the girl who was once Cai Ling, the long-gone foster daughter, gave her loving Jiangxi Mama a kiss goodbye.
Outside the orphanage, time for one last pic with the woman we'll never forget, never be able to thank enough. The banner draped over the entrance to the orphanage reads "Welcome back Yu Cai Ling" ... And when we first drove in through the orphanage's gate, fireworks were set off in Maeve's honour, and a pair of drummers began drumming on huge drums. Maeve was astonished, and so were we, naturally!
Note how even at the end, foster Mom could not take her eyes from Maeve. El, meanwhile, was being held by our guide, Helen, who arranged the whole head-spinning emotional day for us. Thank you so much, Helen!
After retracing the route our daughter and her foster sisters had taken from Xinyu to Nanchang, peering out the windows all the way and thinking how long and confusing that journey must have been on the Xinyu sisters, we settle back into our Gloria Grand hotel digs for a relaxing night.
Baba Pat and Elspeth at play on the bed together.
El loves to be tickled by a bit of Baba neck-blowing, just as her jie jie Maeve does!
Well everyone, we depart the Gloria Grand for the airport tomorrow at noon. Next stop, Beijing ... And early next week, the Great Wall and Forbidden City with our Jiangxi girls!
So goodnight and goodbye to all from Mama Kathleen and her youngest daughter :)
