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Black Chicken, Eel, Black Chicken Liquor, and the Squatty Potty!

What a day, the good the bad, the downright silly.  So I’m posting this entry first.  This will add some levity to the day.  We left at 7:30 from our hotel to go to Maisey’s orphanage.  I’ll post on the actual visit separately.

Before we left for the nearly 4 hour drive to Taihe County.  We both made sure that we had done our business to avoid any awkward roadside stops.  Well a little more than an hour into the trip, the coffees we drank were exacting their toll.  So we stopped at a rest area.  Now rest areas in China are slightly different that they are in the states.  Let’s start with the similarities first.  Both are easy to access from the highway, both have fuel, both have options for food, and both have bathroom facilities.   But even though the would seem identical from my description, they are not.  First the food is sold by some vendor who just seemed to come up and set up a table, second they are not air conditioned, and it 98 degree, 100% humidity, that’s a big deal.  But if that weren’t enough, when Lisa went to the ladies room, she opened the stall, an bam! No toilet.  Not what we westerners would call one anyway.  They’re called “squatty potties” by the westerners.  It’s basically porcelain tray in the floor of the stall with foot pads on either side.   Simply put a foot on either side and while carefully balancing  and aiming, you squat and take care of business.  Thank goodness Lisa had some tissues in her purse, because guess what?  That’s right no TP!!  We’ve chosen to believe that the general public in China are so particular about which TP the use and bring their favorite everywhere they go.  So common is the practice (we believe) that no facility would even dare to stock just any common TP.   Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on our part, and if you know differently, please keep it to yourself.

Not the actual one we would never bring
a camera into the restroom (for the record)

Anyway, squatty potty adventure behind us we made it to the orphanage.  Again I’ll cover the details from this visit in a separate post.  After our visit, the orphanage director treated us to lunch at a very local restaurant that specialized in it’s very local cuisine.

We started with the regions delicacy, “Black Chicken Soup.” Now while it looked less that appetizing, I figured you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, and be open to new things.  Well first of all the call it black chicken because the meat is naturally black as night, and while the first bite tasted okay, the second closing of my mouth discovered that the bones are still in the chicken.  So you need to remove them as you go.  So that was followed by spicy eel, that's right, eel.  And, to make matters worse the director who was sitting right next to Lisa, in a demonstration of her hospitality piled it on top of Lisa’s plate as high as she could.  I was still miking the soup as a way to avoid the eel, when I heard Lisa say it was very good, but too spicy. So not to be left out I took some and ate it.  It was indeed spicy, but also full of bones, and not very pleasant tasting for my liking.  I found out later that Lisa never did eat the eel but just claimed it was too spicy. 

Black Chicken Soup:
Again, stock image from Google, but it did look just like this.

So after the eel I stuck pretty close to the steamed rice and ate plenty when I heard our guide translate for the director about how the locals make “Black Chicken Liquor.”  Then, the dumbest thing I ever said came out of my mouth before I could realize what I was saying.  “Black Chicken Liquor?  What does that taste like?”  The table immediately insisted I try some.  I did everything I could to back out without creating an international incident, but to know avail.  The 3 women from the orphanage toasted me, and I, not wanting to draw out the whole poultry liquor thing, shot the glass down in one gulp.  As it turns out in China, if a women toast a man he’s required to shoot the drink.  They did not expect me, an American, to do that, and asked if I’d do one more.  Thanks to Jenny our guide I was excused.  For the record in case your wondering, it tasted like chicken! Sorry I could not resist the cliche', actually it tasted like a mixture of Sake and Brandy.  Not entirely bad.

We then started the 4 hour drive home, a little bit more worldly and a whole lot more relieved to be heading back to the comforts of our hotel.

Maisey Updating her Facebook Status to "Adopted"

It's Official!

Monday was a very busy day, very busy.  We started our day with a great breakfast at the hotel, and then at 11:00 our guide in Nanchang, Jenny, came to our room to have us sign a lot of documents. 

After we were done with the documents we had a few hours to get lunch and let Maisey nap.  At 1:30PM we left to the Nanchang Office of Civil Affairs.  On the 27^th floor of an office building in Nanchang (the Old City.) The office was very small with on large room where family’s waited for their appointments there wasn’t any air conditioning an it must have been in the high 80’s in that office.  We met up with the contingent from the Orphanage who was very happy to see Maisey, or “Fen-Fen” as they called her.  They were very happy to see she was doing well and that she would be living with a good family.  Long enough to be educated in the US before she would, naturally, move back to China and live out her life there.  I say that a little tongue and cheek but the truth is that is the hope of everyone in China who is involved in foreign adoption.  They are very proud of their heritage and hope that Maisey will not lose any of her love for her homeland. 

The meeting with the official was very quick, she reviewed our stack of papers and asked us questions about why we wanted to adopt, and how we’d provide for her and that we would not neglect or abandon her.  Needless to say we passed.  We then gave our orphanage donation, and we were given our official document from the Chinese government that states WE are Maisey’s legal guardians!  It’s done!  Now for just a little more red tape for passports and visas.

I want to say something about the orphanage donation.  On the surface it sounds strange, or somehow less that above board.  It is NOT.  The orphanages in China that participate in foreign adoption are a smaller percentage than those that don’t do foreign adoptions.  These orphanages need to be compliant with the UN’s Hague Convention, which raises standards of the participating orphanages, and adds some safeguards in the system to minimize corruption.  This “certification” requires more staff, better facilities, etc. This costs money.  In China, those orphanages receive only half of their operating budget from the Chinese government; the other half comes through the donations of parents like us.  It’s kind of a pay it forward concepts.  Those who adopted before us, paid in part for the care that Maisey received.  The donations me made will help those to be adopted in the future.  The whole process is truly amazing and very well run.  I was impressed.

We left the Civil Affairs office with our guide and went to the Government’s Notary office, just across town.  We had another short interview, mostly to confirm the information on the report.  We were in and out in 5 minutes.  Then we went to the Safety office, Chinese homeland security, in the “New City” part of Nanchang. This is where we applied for Maisey’s passport.  We now need to wait 3 days to receive her Chinese passport.  Although she’s our child, she is still a citizen of the People’s Republic of China; therefore she will travel with a Chinese passport.  She will become a US Citizen the moment our plane touches down in the USA.

Then we went to a baby store to buy a potty for Maisey.  You see not only can she walk, she’s also potty trained.  In everything that happed this day, Maisey would not go to the bathroom in our room, or in her diaper or anywhere for that matter.  She held it all day the poor girl, until she had her own potty like the one from the orphanage.  We brought her back to our hotel, put the potty on the floor, and presto, back to normal.

More to come stay tuned.

A New Day!

The last 12 hours will be among the most memorable of my life!  And I slept for 6 of them.  After soothing Maisey and getting her a little more comfortable with us, she was finally willing to eat.  We were getting a little concerned as she normally eats at 5:00 according to her caregiver, and it was nearly 10:00. 

We gave her a sippie cup with some rice formula and she drank the whole thing.  She even let me feed her some rice cereal, although she wasn’t really that interested. She did a bit of FaceTime (video chat) with her brothers, both of her grandmothers, Uncle Scott, and Aunt Lori. 

We then put her in the bed with us so she could see us while she settled into sleep.  With the king bed there was more than enough room for her, and she slept like a champ.  For the record, Lisa had her first good night’s sleep since April 16^th (the day we knew Maisey was matched to us.)

As I sit up at 5:00AM Beijing time, I’m reading though all the comments and words of encouragement from our friends and family.  I’m overwhelmed.  I was literally moved to tears when I received a photo from our friends at church of the whole bunch of them cheering in front of a photo of Lisa and Maisey from our blog.  I feel that they, among many others, have gone though this with us at least in part.  It made it so much easier knowing that so many people shared our moments of hope and heartbreak. 

So now we enter the next phase, the mission.  All the pre-work, paperwork, inspections, interviews, the travel to China, the touring, all of it, have been a run-up to this moment!  What’s next?  Well this is not the end of our blog, and certainly not the end of this story.  Stay tuned.

Liftoff!

Maisey is here!!  We have a new daughter, and a beautiful, intelligent one at that!  At 4:40 this afternoon,  a group from the Social Welfare Institute came to our hotel room in Nanchang City with our  gift from God himself.

We are overwhelmed with joy. Maisey is overwhelmed too, not sure if it's joy though.  The group left very shortly after, and we have spent the last :45 minutes getting to know this precious little one.  More later, photos for now.

Thank you everyone for the prayer!

Zero!

Last day before we finally meet Maisey!!  Let’s get you all up-to-date.  We arrived in Beijing Capital Airport at around 1:30PM on Friday (1:30AM EDT Friday.)  We met our ride and traveled to our hotel where we met our guide Xia Jing (called Grace.) She told us not to sleep until normal bedtime in Beijing, as it would be easier to adjust to the time difference.  Good advice, except for the fact that I can’t sleep on an airplane and I’d now been awake for over 24 hours!  Lisa did get some sleep on the flight, but she was also exhausted. 

On our guides recommendation we went to a local grocery store, Wu Mart, to buy bottled water.  In China you can’t drink tap water without boiling it first, so we bought 6 bottles to get us through the 2 days in Beijing.  We had dinner at the hotel and went to our room for a good nights sleep.  When I got to the room, and literally flopped myself on the bed, ouch!  We soon realized that the Chinese prefer very hard mattresses.  Not firm, HARD.  If I weren’t so tired it would have been difficult to sleep.

We started our first full day in China with a breakfast buffet of Chinese and Western food, and then got on our bus with the one other couple traveling with our agency.  They are Lee and Sarah from Seattle and they are adopting their first child.  They are wonderful people and it was nice to finally talk about the process with someone who was going through it at the same time.

Our first stop was to be Tiananmen Square.  But before that we learned one very important thing.  The drivers in Beijing, in the opinion of everyone on board the bus, are among the worst we’ve ever seen.  Fearing for our lives we finally arrived at Tiananmen Square, which is the center of the Chinese Government like the US capital.

As we walked though this enormous plaza we noticed something that should be quite obvious.  Beijing is full of people!  There were tens of thousands of people in Tiananmen Square, and there were thousands waiting in line to see the preserved corpse of Chairman Mau.  We didn’t do that but we did walk down the square to see the Forbidden City.  We entered though the first gate under Chairmen Mau’s enormous portrait and into the outer court of the city.  The Forbidden City is huge and very ornate.  It was built under the direct of the Ming dynasty and was completed in only 14 years. Which seems impossible when you are standing in its vastness.  We learned a lot about the ancient Chinese all the way though the last emperor, son of the famous concubine, the “Dragon Lady.”

After the Forbidden City we got on the bus for another white knuckled, teeth clenching ride to a Jade Factory where we had lunch and took a tour.  After the tour we purchased a gift for Maisey to be given to her when she’s older.

From there we held on tight for our ride to the Great Wall of China.  Let me say in all honestly “Great” is an understatement.  It was magnificent.  There were lots and lots of steps, but truly an amazing life experience. 

We returned to the hotel for dinner and went to bed.  We could not sleep at all, it may have been the mattress, but I think it was mostly the anticipation of meeting our sweet Maisey.

See Photos and update following.

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE:

We left for Beijing airport later than expected, when we got there our flight was full, no we no longer had a seat.  Praise to God, they bumped us up to first class!  Not the big seat, but the seat that turns to a bed first class.  I actually napped.  Thank you Lord.

We arrived in Nanchang another huge city, which was built from what was farm land just 10 years ago!    Amazing.  We got to our hotel, one of the better I've stayed at.  God is taking good care of us.  Best of all?  Maisey will be here at 4:00, just 4 hours from right now!  Alleluia!!

More to come.  Stay tuned.