One year ago in between the Gotchas...

Continuing the authentic Chinese experience sans forks at any meal except breakfast at the hotel. Forks? We don't need no stinkin' forks! Other meals include random animal parts in my dish (aka chicken feet or was that a beak?). No internet for a few days, just for grins and giggles and to completely cut me off from Western civilization. I am the only white person in this entire "small" town of 7 million people. (My guide kept referring to the city as "small". I guess it is when compared to Beijing.) Eating meals in places where no white person has gone before. Feeling like part-freakazoid and part-rock star with every Chinese person staring at me as I walk by.  No air conditioned tour buses taking me door to door, just my angel-guide and taxis and walking to get to where we needed to go. Carrying a 27-pound boy EVERYwhere, and seeing his beautiful face light up every time he looked at me ~ that's what kept me going I tell ya.

7/28/11 - Chris and David go back to the Registration office to complete David's adoption. Welcome to the Oehlkers family, sweet little munchkin! THEN drive 4 hours to David's city to get a passport. Then wait 3 hours for the passport lady to spend about 2 minutes doing paperwork. Then drive 4 hours back to the provincial capitol city. Unfortunately, no time to visit the orphanage.

Riding in the car between Taiyuan and Datong

7/29/11 - Our flight leaves for Zhengzhou at 4pm. In the morning, we go to the passport office to get D's passport that was supposed to be overnighted and ready by 10am. It was not overnighted. No sign of any paperwork related to David's passport.

(insert Tums here)
(oh, and a bunch of f-bombs too)

My angel-guide sweet talked a passport official and while I don't know exactly what happened since I don't speak Mandarin, I do know that we went across the street for lunch at a small, dirty restaurant. After an hour, the passport official that my angel-guide was sweet talking appeared with a passport for our son. I may or may not have slipped him 900 yuan literally under the table...

7/29/11 - This day deserves two entries. Angel-guide gets us to the airport, walks us to the gate, hugs us and then once we pass through security we are on our own. Me and the Chinese kid vs. Taiyuan airport. We find our gate which is at the other end of the universe the airport, and we sit down. We still have two hours to wait. The young man working behind the desk at the nearby gate tries talking to me. It makes me very uncomfortable. Thankfully David has to pee every 10 minutes, so we are able to move around the airport gate area rather easily, but the same young airport worker follows us and keeps trying to talk to me. He is trying to get me to pay him some money. "Dolla" is what he keeps saying and to explain he puts some yuan on the counter and slides it toward him like he wants me to slip him some money. I just play stupid like I have no idea what he could be talking about, and I quickly learn that when I sit next to other people he stays away, so I move us around trying to always be near people.

Two hours of this, people!

I picture me refusing to give him money and him calling security and D and I get detained... oh my mind went to some scary scenario places. One of those times where I just kept talking to God. Finally it was time to board our airplane.

7/29/11 - OK this day deserves three entries. We were flying "Joy Air" on this day. It was a small propeller plane that seated maybe 60 people - 4 across so D and I had our own row. David didn't yet understand that he could pee in the pull-up I put on him, so he would scream and cry in pain when he had to go potty. This happened only on take-off and landing three different times. Three different times?, you ask. Shouldn't we have had one take-off and one landing? As we were making our initial descent into Zhengzhou airport, we hit some turbulence that threw the airplane around lifted my bottom completely off my seat. I am grateful for the strength of the seatbelt, and that I was able to hold David to keep him from flying away. The plane bounced around like this for several minutes, then I felt the plane sharply rising again. This actually helped us stick to our seats. The plane landed maybe 30-45 minutes later, and we walked out into Luoyang airport.

WTF??? you say.

That's what I said too.

Yep. Me and the munchkin in Luoyang "International" airport. I actually didn't know that we weren't in Zhengzhou until I walked off the plane and saw the sign. No English writing anywhere except "Luoyang International Airport". No announcements in English either. I just stayed near other people from our flight, and listened for "Zhengzhou" when announcements were made. No food for me, snacks only for D. I had hardly been able to feed the munchkin a regular meal since I had met him. I was talking to God, trying not to cry, and trying to keep a pleasant look on my face and smile for D. David was an absolute trooper, just going along with me. Remember I can't even talk to him yet because we don't speak the same language.

Apparently there was a fast moving violent storm that hit Zhengzhou exactly as we were trying to land.

Our flight from Luoyang to Zhengzhou was uneventful. Thank you Lord. The flight attendant took pity on me and let me take David to the potty as we were coming in for a landing. That would never happen in America, eh? Arrived at the airport I don't remember what time - maybe midnight? Exhausted, hungry, carrying a 27-pound boy, a very very heavy backpack, and rolling a 50 pound suitcase... I finally found our Zhengzhou guide - what a sweetheart - with a big smile on her face. It was such a blessing to check into our room at around 1:30am-ish.

7/30/11 - David and I hung out. We ate regular meals. We took a nap. We walked over to Wal-Mart. We played and laughed. It was a great, uneventful day. I talked to our guide once on the phone, and told her I was happy just being left alone with David. I felt like a good Mama that day.

7/31/11 - Jason arrived!!! Yahoo!!! Baba, meet your new son! It was so amazing to see my husband, and to have him meet David. And to meet our travel group. And to be in a travel group. And to be able to speak to other people. And to see my husband.

I remember what a sweet friend told me when I was in China: "It's like a gift wrapped in really ugly paper."

Yep, it was just like that.

(((hugs))),
chris



Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.
              1 Corinthians 16:13-14