Home Sweet Home!

Matthew says:

Arrived home! We were met by our great neighbor, Don Stupica, at the Detroit airport, and Mia got her first ride in a car seat today. Thankfully, she likes car rides because she always has to be in perpetual motion, and was unfazed by the car seat, so we figured she was in the right family (keeping in mind our tendency to take really long car trips). We also received a very pleasant surprise when we got home. On the airplane, we had developed our ‘to-do’ list, but when we got home, there was a wonderful welcome home and welcome Mia poster signed by all of our neighbors, along with a sign made by the Stupicas, who had also decorated the interior of our house. Aunty Lynn, another one of our neighbors who watched the house, had left us a great basket of baby toys, and a wonderful welcome home poem and two meals! The Stupicas also gave us a gift and a card, and also filled our refrigerator with fruits, salad, veggies, and even a couple meals. Now we are nocturnal because of the awful jet lag, but our busy schedule has started back up already. We are leaving to attend my mom’s godson’s first communion in Erie, Pennsylvania at 6:30 am tomorrow morning, and will be starting school again on Monday! In closing, I'd like to make the following acknowledgements:

- Thank you to Uncle Manny (my mom's brother) who posted all our blog info during our time in China (we couldn't open our blog site for the duration of our China trip!)

- Thank you to the Gathard/Thaman family for letting us use their net book computer for the duration of our trip.

- Thank you to Leanne Leong-Fern (and Kristin) who helped my mom shop, prep and pack Mia's suitcase full of everything she needed during her first two weeks in her first two weeks with us.

- Thank you to the Ross family for the bag full of wonderful clothing Mia has been wearing.

- Thank you to the Stupicas for picking us up at the airport and making our return home a very happy and comfortable one.

- Thank you to the Dunns for watching our house and taking care of everything for us.

- And last but not least. Thank you to every one of you, our faithful followers that supported us throughout our entire trip!

Homeward Bound

Matthew says:
We checked out from our hotel (the White Swan) today and left for home. The first leg in our return journey was a private shuttle from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, where Lola returned to the Philippines, and we left for San Fran. We flew halfway around the world, and it took less than a day! We left Hong Kong early Saturday morning, and arrived home at about 7 am on Saturday also, even though our total flight time was about fifteen hours. Can anyone guess why? Answer: The International Date Line and about 12 hour’s worth of time change and jet lag. We jumped the pond (the Pacific Ocean) at 12:30 am on Saturday and arrived into San Francisco at 11 pm Friday. Here the immigration officer opened ‘The Brown Envelope’, and Mia became a citizen of the United States of America! From there we took a 4 hour domestic flight to Chicago and then one last hour-long flight to Detroit.(This is really confusing for me, but I am going to talk about arriving home in the next day even though I already talked about Saturday twice, I will elaborate on the second Saturday more in the next day.?

Having a new family member is hard work!

Maria says:

We enjoyed our last breakfast together at the hotel, packed our bags, and said goodbye to the White Swan, Lucy our guide, and China. Here begins our 35 hour journey home: a 4 hour shuttle van ride from Guangzhou to the Hong Kong international airport, a 12 hour flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco (we depart Hong Kong at 12:30 am Saturday morning and arrive in San Francisco at 11:55 pm Friday night!), a two hour layover in San Fran, a 4 hour flight from San Fran to Chicago, a one hour lay over in Chicago before our one hour flight to Detroit, and a one hour drive home from the Detroit airport (thanks to the kind services of our dear friend Don Stupica who offered to pick us up from the airport!)

Mia did fabulously on the plane...much much better than I could have expected. What is even better is that we arrived home to a wonderful, warm greeting from neighborhood and friends: welcome home banners and signs balloons, gift basket of books and toys, a STOCKED REFRIGERATOR! (fruits, vegetables, milk, juice, bread, yogurt, hummus, salad dressing, homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade chili, chicken casserole, greek stew ...WOW!!! (thank you neighbors, Auntie Lynn and Uncle Tom, and the Stupica family! We love you!)

We are so thankful to all of you for your warm wishes, thoughtfulness and prayers. WE FEEL SO BLESSED! We ARE blessed! We have a wonderful, beautiful new daughter and are surrounded by kind, helpful, generous, supportive friends and family.

So...our travel journey (and blog) ends here, but the next phase of our life now begins at we settle into our life here in Sylvania, Ohio....

New American Citizen

Matthew says:

Today Mia took the oath of petition to be an American citizen. This means that as soon as she sets foot on American soil, she is naturalized, but we figured that we carry her around so much that she might not set foot on the soil for a whole month! To celebrate this occasion, we went on a dinner cruise down the Pearl River, a tributary of either the yellow or Yangtze River.



Maria says:
We spent a leisurely morning enjoying a wonderful breakfast buffet at the hotel, and then went to the American Consulate, where Dale and I took an oath on behalf of Mia, swearing her in as an American citizen. We were told that she is not officially a U.S. citizen until her feet touch U.S. soil and we hand her official documents (in a sealed brown envelop) over to the U.S. Consulate officer at the San Francisco airport.

We spent our final evening on a dinner cruise up and down the Pearl River, enjoying the beautiful sights of the city.

Wow. It's hard to believe this is our last night in China before returning to the states with our new daughter!

Safari Park

Matthew says:
We visited the local theme park here in Guangzhou today, and went to the safari. It was a cool zoo that was themed after the African safari. The first thing we went on was a mini-train ride through a large ‘free range’ animal area containing everything from blue deer to peacocks to lions and giraffes. We also saw an amazing elephant show where the elephants did relay races, walked on balance beams, played basketball, soccer, and even bowed down to their ‘king’. We saw quite a few more giant pandas and had lots of fun looking at how they were interacting and relating their behaviors to ours. Then we saw a bird show where lots of prehistoric looking birds and eagles did fly-overs, parrots took tips from the hands of the audience, and birds talked in Chinese. We also went to the animal nursery where Mia got to see little tiger and bear cubs that were her size get bottle-fed just like we do with her. The last show that we saw was the White Tiger Show. In this show, two trainers were in a cage with 10 or 12 tigers and had them crawl under each other, jump over each other run laps, walk on two legs, walk backwards on two legs, run up a ladder and jump over a gap, jump and break through hoops covered in cloth/paper, and one of the tamers even put her hand into a lions mouth and kept it in there for a while. We all thought this was spectacular, which it was, but what we saw next made everything we had seen look like child’s play. Our next stop was the Circus. Contrary to our early ideas, this circus was not so much an animal circus, but more like the Cirque de Soleil. The opening stunt set the scene for more even more amazing displays, a diver jumped from the ceiling five stories up, into fire on top of a moat full of water. Spectacular. There were the typical standing on horseback tricks and we saw a group of five men make a pyramid standing on each other’s shoulders while the horses galloped around the stage. A bear walked a tightrope on two legs, while more rode bicycles and even motorcycles. There was also an incredible compilation of trapeze ticks. The artists were almost three stories of the ground on platforms, and did amazing combinations of flips and turns before catching another trapeze that was thrown to them. They jumped, twisted, and swung, usually letting go of their trapeze and flying through the air to catch another one or to grab onto a swinging persons legs. It was incredible. The craziest stunt we saw was a giant four-leaf clover metal thing with pipes on all arms. Acrobats would walk in them like hamster wells and when they got to the top, they would jump, being able to float inside their ball for half a rotation. Then they walked on the outside, being four stories off the ground at the peak without safety nets. Then they put on blindfolds, and jumped rope. After they had taken off the blindfolds and gotten back inside while still moving, the main acrobat jumped and got hang time on the outside of his ring while it was on fire! Super crazy in my opinion. While they were changing the set for the last scene, we were distracted by cute little people puffballs, unicyclists, stilt walkers and contortionists. The last scene was pirate themed with a central diving structure with two high dives and one super high dive. On the sides it was flanked by two gymnastics trampolines with a ‘backboard’. Clowns dressed up and did funny stunts off the diving boards holding umbrellas and the like, while acrobats on the side bounced and did flips on the trampoline, periodically disappearing and reappearing through doors in the ‘backboard’. It was spectacular. If you are in China near Guangzhou, it is a must-see. We're a little worried about what seeing a show like this will do to Mia's psyche... we're sure she has seen nothing like this ever before, and being exposed to these stunts so early in her experience of the greater world might have an undesirable influence on her. We're hoping she doesn't think stunts like this are normal!



Maria says:

Mia's newest tricks are giving people high five's and running. Well, not really running. More like leaping. If you put her on the ground, take a few steps back from her, hold your arms open to her and call her name, she takes a few steps in your direction then kind of takes a flying leap the rest of the way, right into your arms, with delighted squeal and giggle. She is quite daring and trusting...you'd better make sure and look in her direction to see if she's coming your way, or she'll end up doing a face plant at your feet!

For our first (and only) full day in Guangzhou, our guide suggested we might enjoy the local safari park. She said the international circus performance in the evening is really something our family would enjoy. We listened to her suggestion, and had a fabulous day. My favorite part of the safari park was the Giant Pandas...they were very active and entertaining to watch. Mia seemed fascinated by the tall old trees at the safari park--she kept pointing up to them all day long, as if she had never seen mature trees before. The Chimelong International Circus performance in the evening was fabulous...something like a Cirque de Soleil.

When we returned to our hotel room tonight, we found a "Going Home Barbie" (a blond haired, blue eyed barbie holding a little Chinese baby in her arms) on our desk. It turns out that the play room in the hotel is sponsored, designed and outfitted by Mattel as a special place "where you can relax while your child enjoys playing and learning with many of Mattel's toys and videos." The back of the the "Going Home Barbie" box reads "This souvenir is presented by Mattel Ltd. to adopting parents of Chinese orphan children staying at the White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou, China".

I never played with dolls as a little girl; I was amazed to see how starry-eyed Mia was as she gazed at the Barbie doll placed in front of her. When the boys saw how enamored Mia was with her doll, they immediately decided they needed to up the level of testosterone breeding toys in the household! I don't know if I'd go that far, but we will certainly do better than blond-haired, blue-eyed Barbies (Benjamin's comment to me after his first encounter with a Barbie up close: "Barbies are weird, Mom...they sort seem out of proportion because their legs are almost double the length of their torso!)


Tomorrow, Mia will attend her swearing in/oath taking as an American Citizen at the American consulate tomorrow. Better get her to bed so she is ready for her official duties!

First Airplane Ride

Matthew says:

Mia rode an airplane for the first time today. I wouldn’t say she enjoyed it though, because she screamed until we got her to sleep, and I think some of the other passengers wished they had brought earplugs. We realized that this is a super- huge overload for a 15 month- old little girl, and that just about everything that we do will be new to her. When we landed in the city of Guangzhou, the place where Mia gets her visa, we had to take her to a medical checkup. Lola waited with us boys in the van while our new guide, Miss Lucy, took Mama, Papa, and Mia inside the clinic. When they came back out we asked them how it went, and my dad replied, “Didn’t you hear? We thought the entire country would have heard Mia’s report. That’s why it went so quickly, because the doctor couldn’t wait to get her out of there!” Mia came to life again this afternoon, she has started walking on her own, and even runs a little bit (even though she cheats a little bit), but still can’t crawl. I say she cheats though, because she will take a slow step until she is close to you, then she will start cracking up, and will run a tiny bit and lunge and fall into your arms and give you a hug and start laughing even harder. She has the same mentality about crawling, because she Chinese babies aren’t encouraged to crawl, Mia doesn’t really know how. If you put her on the bed and hold out your arms, she will struggle until she inches close enough to just lunge at you, trusting that you will catch her, and laughing the whole time. We think she is the cutest, funniest thing that has ever walked on two legs, and she knows it. She has become a little fireball and comedian and has started copying other people.




Maria says:
Mia's first airplane ride went relatively smoothly, thanks to the fact that the plan was half empty and Dale had the freedom to walk her in the aisles in the back of the plane, out of earshot of everyone seated at the front of the plane.
On the way to the hotel from the airport, our guide took us to have her picture taken for her visa, and to have her checked by the doctor. According to our guide, the doctor said she passed inspection.

We are staying at The White Swan Hotel, a beautiful hotel right on the river here in Guangzhou. Dale has renamed it the international baby hotel--it seems like everyone on our floor is an adoptive family. This hotel even has a play room which is specially outfitted for adoptive families.

Buddhist Temple

Matthew says:
Today we visited the only Buddhist Temple in the city of Nanchang. As Buddhist temples go, it is considered small, but we thought it was huge! It was shaped like a long corridor, and had a string of four buildings, kind of like little chapels, with trough like incense burners in between.


Maria says:
Just as Mia started getting accustomed to her surroundings and routine here (and unleashed her energizer bunny persona), we are moving on (she received her Chinese passport today). We spent our last day visiting a Buddhist temple,learning about how porcelain is made (since Jiangxi province is known for their porcelain), and getting prepared to leave this place which has been our home for the past 7 days. I will always remember Nanchang and will have very fond memories of this place because of all the great bonding time we had here with Mia.

A Visit to the Countryside and an Emerging Personality

In front of the hotel

These are children from the Cao village we visited


Super Mia! (This when I hold Mia on her belly and fly her through the hotel room saying "Super Mia!")

You can't tell, but this is Mia hula dancing on her chair at the restaurant


This is one of the precious faces Mia experiments with...her drill sergeant mode

It may look like she is in pain, but this is Mia in a full-fledged giggle mode


Meet our sweet little girl Mia!!

4-11-10

Matthew says: To complete our China experience, we took a private bus out to the countryside today. Even though ‘countryside’ has a different meaning in China, it was a cool place to visit. China’s countryside looks more crowded than most suburbs, with the exception that their backyards are rice paddies. Another funny thing is that everybody in the town shared the same family name, and that name was the name of the town, apparently this is very common here. Kids in the countryside love it when foreigners like us come to visit, because it is an unspoken rule that you bring candy as presents for the children as a thank you for them letting you visit their village.
Attention! Does anybody know where Mia went and whose kid we have now?! You had better look out, for Mia is on the loose! We don’t know where our quiet and reserved Mia went, but now all we have is a little aspiring hula dancer/ baseball player/ professional comedian/ ‘attitudinal’ two- year old Mexican Jumping Bean all in one. She is still cute and cuddly, but life just got interesting, and that’s one big understatement! We don’t know if Mia threw off a mental depression in the past few days or if it was something she ate, but the Mia that used to sit contentedly in our arms is merely a memory. Now we can see the Mia that is like the Energizer Bunny and the life of the party. Now she is laughing hysterically, pounding a computer keyboard, pushing elevator buttons, flinging around mini champagne bottles from the mini bar, sticking her tongue out at me, practicing making funny facial expressions that range from full-flegded giggle to confused to mad to well, drill sergeant looking. She has been expressing her own ideas in a language nobody understands, holding conversations with me in her sleep, and jumping all over her chair when we stand her up at restaurants. She really made a scene when we stood her up with her holding on to the back of chair at the restaurant, and she started hula dancing, talking to us and making her hilarious faces, pushing my hands away when I tried to make sure she didn’t fall (we have to be really carful, because she has super-fast reflexes and can move just about as fast as any of us) laughing all the while, and sticking her tongue out at me. She wasn’t walking on her own as of today, but at this rate, tomorrow she might be running the 100 meter dash.

Maria says:
Watch out Theis Family! Don't know what caused it, but the shift in Mia's personality has been like from night into day (or from sleeping into a super charged caffeine buzz!) The change came on suddenly, like someone flipped a switch. Who knows what unleashed the hilarious little personality we witnessed at dinnertime, but I'm eager to see what tomorrow brings!

Dale and I decided that Mia is the best cure for Matthew's grumpy-itis. (He stayed up pretty late last night trying to meet a deadline for his online Biology class, and when Matthew doesn't get enough sleep, he is a completely different child! We have never seen anyone be able to get him out of his sleep deprivation induced mood like Mia can. She adores Matthew, and Matthew adores her. It brings great joy to my heart to watch them interact with each other.)


The small countryside village we visited today was called Cao. Even though Mia came from an orphanage in the bigger city of Zhangshu, our guide said it was likely her family came from the countryside to deliver her to the orphanage in the city of Zhangshu.


Karen told us there are about 1,000 residents in the village, and everyone knows each other. As we walked through the village, every door was open, and children and adults spilled out into the streets. As we peeked into their homes, many families were playing Mahjong.

There are no landowners in China. Every square inch of the country is owned by the government. Houses, of course, are owned by the people. A typical house is made of brick or cement, with the first floor used for cooking, eating and gathering. One or two bedrooms could be found upstairs. Beds are usually very hard, made of wood without any padding, because it is believed this is better for one's posture. Even babies are laid to sleep on hard wood because woman whose heads are flat in the back are seen as beautiful. (she assured us that this doesn't affect their brain power!)


Both of our guides (Linda in Beijing and Karen in Nanchung) have talked about how dramatically the numbers of children in the orphanages have declined as a result of the family planning emphasis. The bumper year for Chinese adoptions was 2006 (the year we began this process!). Now, there are not as many children in the orphanages, and most of the children that remain in the orphanges are special needs children.


We have one more day here in Nanchang. After Karen talked about the more cosmopolitan life in the bigger cities of Shanghai and Beijing, we realized that life in Nanchang is much more of what real China is all about. It will be interesting to have the opportunity to experince one more city in China when we move on to Guangzhou.

Karen says she will be able to pick up Mia's passport in the morning. After that, we will visit our last sight in Nanchang, a Buddhist temple. We will spend the rest of the day packing and preparing for our last stop (Guangzhou) before our (long) journey home! We hope Mia likes flying...the first leg of our journey home is a 12 hour flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco.(If not, she's going to have lots of opportunity to learn to like it!)