After blogging about the heavy topic of racism for the past few days, I decided I really must finish our adoption story in China. So, sorry for getting sidetracked by a multitude of other topics in our lives, but I will finish our trip to China by picking up where we left off, which was leaving Guangzhou for Beijing.

January 10, 2007

When we got to the airport,in Guangzhou, Caleb thought we were leaving for America. We have asked the guides to explain things to him and what will be happening, but they don't always follow through. Since we haven't had a touring guide the past few days I asked a shopkeeper in Guangzhou to explain to Caleb what would happen, but apparently he didn't convey it clearly. So, thankfully Helen came out of the snit she seemed to be in on the drive and decided to help us out a bit. She told Caleb that we were going to Beijing so he could see places like the Great Wall and he seemed happy with that.

I have been told by others who adopted older children and who even lived in China, that most Chinese children are rather ignorant of the geography of most of China (gee, sounds like American kids too!), but they do know about Beijing and the Great Wall. I can't imagine what must be going through Caleb's mind as he willingly follows us where we take him without knowing what is at the end of the road.

It reminded me of Kimberly's son, Charlie, whom she adopted just last week. We met online before we traveled and had hoped to travel at the same time through the same agency, but we ended up moving our dates back by a week. Luckily, we were able to meet up in Guangzhou when we first arrived as tourists before our adoption and while she and her son were there finishing up his adoption.

Charlie is deaf and the most adorable 13 year old Chinese boy I have ever met. His sweet and silent grin are movie-star caliber in my mind. But I digress....
Anyway, Charlie uses Chinese Sign Language which is totally different from American Sign Language, so there have been some miscommunications. When he got off his first plane flight in China, I guess he thought he was in America and was startled to see Chinese writing everywhere. He asked her, "Chinese writing in America??" Too cute.

The kids all zonked out on the plane flight to Beijing after they fed us dinner. American carriers could take a lesson from Chinese airlines which still feed you if the flight is more than 2 1/2 hours long. Alyssa is still not feeling well and didn't really eat which worries me. It's hard to recover from illness if you won't eat, but she is complaining of a sore throat, and noodles with soy sauce were not something she was interested in. I admit to be tiring of noodles myself. Thankfully they had the amazingly sweet and wonderful tiny oranges that you can find everywhere in Guangzhou, but Alyssa didn't want those either as she isn't much of an orange eater and the citric acid in them burned her throat.

It was only 15 degrees outside when we landed, so thankfully we had on layers and had taken our coats out of our luggage and stowed them in the overhead bins. We had to climb down stairs onto the tarmac and catch a bus over to a terminal so it was a good introduction to the cold of Beijing. We didn't arrive at our hotel and fall into bed until almost midnight, but it is good to be here and know that we have two more days of touring and then we are headed HOME!!

continued...