update

Yesterday morning we got to see where Isabella was abandoned. It was in front of a small little shop, and it was actually only a five minute walk to the spot from our hotel. We got some pictures, but my mom is forbidding me to post them. Anyway, it was pretty cool to see.

In the afternoon we had a short one hour flight to Guangzhou. Our hotel is awesome. There's a 7-11, McDonald's, and Starbucks in the same building complex. So we had some McDonald's last night for dinner (which was amazing) and then went to sleep in our super comfy beds. This morning was Isabella's physical examination. The doctor's said that they didn't hear a murmur in her heart, and they also thought her hearing was just fine as well (for those who don't know, those were her two special needs). We went shopping afterwards, and it was super crowded and hectic just like the previous stores we visited. I'm not really in the mood for a long update, so that's all you're getting.



We straight up gangsta

For those of you who are slow, yes, those are matching shirts.

I look creepy

Us buying tons of drinks

This is where I'm at now. It's free wifi here, but it's 15 bucks in our room.

Nick visits an ancient Chinese village

AThe highlight of today was a short (maybe about 20 minutes) walk around a rural Chinese village. It's really not ancient, as about 75% of all Chinese people live like this as opposed to the city life we've seen thus far. There's no running water, living conditions are (as you'll be able to see) less than comfortable, and this is how my two sisters would have lived had they not been adopted. Instead of Ana singing Hannah Montannah like she is right now, she'd probably be dirty, cold, and hopeless. Ugh.

It was really interesting though. Everyone was really nice and they all seemed excited to have visitors. Some of the allowed us to walk through their home as well. We didn't stay long because the tour guide said its very unsanitary, and she didn't want us to get sick.

After that we went to a Porcelin (I probably spelled that wrong) shop, which is what Jiangxi province is known for. The 'rents got some very fragile dishes that they're going to force me to hold on the 12 hour flight home. Joy.

Now we're just relaxing at the hotel again. I took another three hour nap (jetlag is persistent), and we're now waiting for our room service to be delivered to us. Tomorrow fly to Guangzhou, where we'll be staying for a week before heading home. Most families in our group get to leave Wednesday, but we have to stay until Friday because of some appointment we have to do that they couldn't schedule in with the rest of the families. I'm really enjoying myself over here, but I'm also so looking forward to getting home and getting back into my normal routine. And after seeing the terrible lives people are forced to live over here, work and school won't seem so bad.

Hopefully our hotel will have wifi in the next area (it should). I probably won't post an update tomorrow though, as I'm sure I'll be too lazy/apathetic to set up the laptop just to say "We woke up today and got on a plane, and now we're in our hotel. Bye."

Isabella has really taken to myself and my dad. Her clothes that we got her in smell heavily of cologne, so we think she must have been close to her foster father. This is a complete opposite of how it was with Eliana.

Picture time:


More than a billion people live in places like this in China.


The grey house on the left is a new house that was just finished.


Isabella wants YOU to adopt


Last night whenever I sat Isabella down she would instantly start crying, and when I picked her back up she would immediately start laughing and being silly. It was awesome.

Another village shot


Rows of houses

A day in the life

The past two days

After a decent nights rest, I woke up at 4 a.m. yesterday and took a shower (did I mention how awesome the showers here are?) We went to three different places to do paperwork (it didn't take that long), and then they took us to Walmart so we could get some supplies for the babies. I'll never look at Walmarts back home the same way again. Our Walmarts back home are practically deserted, even on their busiest days, compared to what its like here. You can barely take two steps without bumping into someone. It was insane. In fact, I'm going to stop talking about it because I don't like thinking about it... *shudders*

We stopped at the KFC inside Walmart, and it was delicious (even though it took 30 minutes to get our food). I can't wait to eat real food back home.

After that, we were done for the day. It was nice. I took a three hour nap, woke up for a couple hours, and then went to sleep for the night and woke up at 6 this morning. Even with all that sleep I'm still pretty tired. It will be nice once I'm back home to get into a normal sleeping routine.

This morning we didn't have to leave the hotel until 10, so we enjoyed the hotel's continental breakfast. Then we went to the Tengweng Pavillion, which was awesome. Instead of describing it, you can just see the pictures.

We're in for the night again, which will be nice. We're ordeirng Pizza Hut tonight (which will hopefully be better than the Pizza Hut in Beijing), but other than that, it's just relaxing. Tomorrow we get to visit a rural farming village, I can't wait to see that.

Isabella is doing great, and so is everyone else. There really isn't a whole lot left to say as these past two days have been slow paced. My sister just handed me a piece of paper that said "Gugu doof", so I guess that's something. I'll update again tonight if anything exciting happens, otherwise it will be tomorrow.


I bet this is prettier than anything you've seen today

This is from a performance done inside the Pavillion. When these dancers came out, Eliana turned to mom and said "They're skimpy"

I have the best sisters in the world

Everyone loves me, what can I say?

Ana helping feed Isabella

Tengweng Pavillion. It was built by some ruler as a vacation spot.

Me taming a stone elephant. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. You must have the magic touch, or else you're in for a trampling.

Ana riding a wild steed of stone

Is that a picture of Bill Clinton? Well, it depends on what the word "is" is.

Pretty

My two awesome sisters

Wally's World, Oriental Style

Shopping is serious business

My jokes are just really funny, I guess.

A soldier training ground as seen from the window in our hotel. Okay, so it's actually a middle school. But that's not as interesting.

The Longest Two Days of My Life

This entry details what we did yesterday since I didn't get a chance to update it. I'm going to be typing in present tense because I'm just not too fond of past tense.



I awoke at 4 a.m. this morning to the sound of my mom throwing up. Lovely. After a couple more off and on hours of sleep, I got ready to go. Unfortunately my mom was still super sick and she had to miss out on the whole day's activities. My dad and sister and I went down to the lobby and headed towards the bus.



Our first stop was Beijing Internation Christian Fellowship. It was actually awesome. The worship was really neat. There were tons of different ethnicities there (although no Chinese citizens, as they had guards at the door checking passports). The actual sermon was pretty boring/shallow, but half of it was in Chinese and the other half in English, so that was neat.



After church we went to the Jade Factory. Cool, another feminine chick place. We were there for over an hour and a half (remember this for later). There were some pretty neat things there though (they had a pretty big jade battle axe, but it was like a thousand dollars).



Then it was lunch, where I barely ate anything again because I'm not a fan of Chinese food. At all.



Finally, time for the great wall. The stairs there are incredibly steep, and there are tons to climb. We made it up to the third tower (out of four) in the area we were at. We were there for a grand total of... one hour and ten minutes! In case you were wondering, yes, that is twenty minutes less than the stupid Jade Factory. What the heck.



Then we went to dinner (where I had a Sprite to drink and nothing to eat). But before entering the restaurant, I went on an adventure. The place we ate at was fairly close to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube, so while my dad and sister were in eating, I walked about half a mile alone in the busy streets of Beijing, past tons of communist soldiers to the edge of the fence around the areas. Of course, I still wasn't that close because the security is intense. But it was totally worth it for the pictures I got.



We stopped back at the hotel for a few minutes before we headed to the Flying Acrobatics Show. Luckily my mom was dressed and feeling better so she came with too. The show was simply incredible. There was one where there was a huge teeter totter, and some guy climbed on a ladder, jumped to one end, launched the guy on the other end who flew threw the air and was caught but someone else, although he caught him standing on his hands (hope I explained that well enough). And they didn't use any cables for that either (some of them they did, but not that one which was amazing). For those reading this who are waiting to travel to China, definately definately go to the acrobat show. It's optional and the tickets are a little over 30 dollars a piece, but it's so worth it.



That was the end of that long day. It was weird that so much happened in just two days. With the lack of sleep I got plus the amount of things I did, it felt more like four or five days.



This morning we got up at 5 and headed to the airport for an uncomfortable 2.5 hour flight to Jiangxi province. I started feeling sick, but luckily that passed once I got some (semi) real food. The province we are in is much more rural than Beijing, and we are hopefully going to get to tour a poor Chinese farming town. It's weird seeing the poverty and extremely low living conditions all around. Especially considering that our hotel is in the middle of all the poverty, and it is far and away the nicest hotel I've seen in my entire life. It's astounding. Beautiful design, luxurious restaraunts, amazing rooms with incredible views, etc. etc.



We had about five hours down time between arriving at our hotel and picking up Isabella. That pretty much catches you up to everything before the actual adoption.



Now that we've had Isabella a bit longer, we've seen just how great she's doing. She can sit up by herself, and she can walk as long as someone is holding her hands. She's so sweet. And so is Ana. She's been helping change diapers, feeding her bottles, wiping her face when food drops out of her mouth, telling us to be quite so we don't wake her when she's asleep, it's just incredible.



Both sisters are asleep now, and I'm about to head off to bed as well. Tomorrow there is some more paperwork and then a trip to Walmart, but after that the day should be relaxed.



Now enjoy my awesome pictures.







The Acrobats. Wow.


Seriously, why aren't these people fighting crime?


Us on the way to Jiangxi.


The amazing bathroom in our hotel. The bathtub seems nice, but closing the glass door and having that much floor space to shower is amazing. I will be showering at least twice a day, just because I can and because truthfully it's fun. Also, you can turn on background music. So cool.


I'm blogging. How nice of me.




Our guides said this building was the official Bicycling center for the Olympics. I'm not sure what events used bikes other than the races that took place on the road by the great wall, but apparently the other ones happened here.


The Olympic Torch Building. This is where all official Olympic business took place. The architecture is amazing.


The Water Cube, where Phelps totally dominated everyone. Definately worth the trek to see.


The Bird's Nest.

If only I could have gone in...


Church in China

Here's all of the food I didn't eat

Great Wall

Everyone was impressed with how good Ana did

This is Lineker (pronounced Lyn Ick Er), our main guide. He's awesome

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to update again tomorrow.

Mission Accomplished!

At 4 p.m. we got her. We just walked into the room and all the babies were there, it was much different than last time. She's beautiful and the orphanage director said she was "very healthy". She's been screaming ever since we got her. We're now back in the hotel for the night (yay), but there's some paperwork to do in twenty minutes. The only concern thus far is that she seemingly hasn't been able to sit up (which she should be able to do at 15 months) but it could just be because she's emotionally exhausted and crying. I'll update as soon as we know more. She's getting her first bottle as I type this.

Us leaving the hotel to get Isabella. We walked through a busy highway and almost died several times on our way. I'm actually not kidding.

Us inside the building, moments before we got her. Just to the left of us was the hall leading to the room with the babies. Our last picture as a family of four.

Ana and Isabella meeting for the first time.

Yo, weh mah ladiez @?

Isabella with 3/4 of her new family.

My dad likes to knock back a few (dozen) before life-changing events.

The first time I got to hold her

Aww

Alright! As I was posting these, my mom said she pulled herself up while she was sitting on her lap, so that's a good sign. My dad is now doing paperwork, and my two sisters (wow it feels weird saying that) and my mom are on a walk through our 5-Star incredible hotel. It's 4:15 a.m. where you guys are now, but over here we are enjoying our first evening as a whole family.

I was surprised at just how different she looks from our original referral pictures. She's absolutely beautiful. She's also the smallest baby of the ones adopted today (Ana was tiny too).

Ana is so amazing with her. She's so gentle and caring. She helped change her diaper, sang her a lullabye to try and calm her down, and she was the one that suggested that they go on a walk to try and make Isabella feel better. How sweet. Unfortunately Ana was crying too, feeling jealous and left out since Isabella was getting all of the attention. I think she's okay now though.

One last thing before I go for now: I found out both of my sisters Chinese nicknames. Ana's is Yiyi (pronounced yee yee), and Isabella's is Simbei (pronounced sim bay). Those names are totally rad, so I think I'll start calling them by that.

I'm so happy that we finally have her. I found out that we started this 19 months ago (I thought it was 17), and it's surreal that now everything has come full circle. Everything's going to be different now, but just like with Yiyi, I'm sure in a few days I won't even remember what it was like without Simbei.

I really love reading all the comments. It's great to have that connection from back home, and to know that families I've never even met before are reading this and praying for us as well. Thanks everyone! :) Hopefully I'll get in another update tonight.