Is Benjamin in this picture?

Saw where one of our mom-to-be's didn't see their sweetie in our pics. I haven't posted all of them, though there are not many more. I will put those on our Jinhua group later since I'm having trouble doing that right now.

OK now. Let me try to remember everything... The children's program director (short guy) said for Jin Cong (Shannon's sweetie) that she now is aware of strangers and gets upset by them easily. This of course is all normal for her age, and thus one reason why we just can't seem to get a picture with a smile from this girl. (I say this last sentence. :-) However, I saw with my own eyes that she smiles. They love her to death, as they do all the kiddos. He picked her up and she just smiled and giggled. But she wasn't happy to see us. Our guide said this was the best SWI she has ever seen. Definately the best in ZheJiang. The children's director/manager (can't remember his definate position) also said that he was heart broken when Jin Mei left and shed a tear after she left. Post that on the group ladies please, in case I forget. I believe that is Chris's little girl. He said he plans to work hard to put more up for international adoption. They really want them to go to the U.S. and other countries to have good opportunities and education. (If I said that before, forgive me.)

Ideas of things to bring as a gift/donation...clothes. Even though they don't mention that as a need from when I checked several months ago, seeing what these kids were wearing and what Autumn came to us in I say bring clothes for these kiddos. Some simple cotton dresses for the girls, shirts, shorts, shoes even. I gave them a bag of socks, panties (both still in the bag), and some shirts along with shorts. They did mention when I had the Our Chinese Daughter's Foundation contact them that they need cleft lip/palate bottles and powdered milk/formula. Shannon and I sent a big box of bottles with the OCDF people when they went to Beijing and then they mailed it from there. Lynn at OCDF said someone is going over their basically monthly, so it can be easy to send donated items as long as you get them to their Illinois office before they leave.

By the way, Autumn writes out numbers 1 to 10 and imitates what I write. She saw me write Hi Yo and then wrote it under what I wrote. (I was writing phonetically things she was saying.) :-) And I mean nice, neat, small writing. She writes smaller than Anna Lin does, who just finished Kindergarten. But she also does it like it was a daily exercise. Not a bad thing, just quite repetitive. Anna Lin did something similar, but it was kinda like basic Chinese characters. (If I've already said this just ignore it. It has taken me three tries to get this out. Not having good server connection today as far as blogger is concerned. )

By the way Cynthia asked about the blog. I see my blog fine. However, Michelle said she had a problem in Shanghai. SHouldn't have a problem in Guangzhou, where we go tomorrow. :-D

One last comment. The dress Jin Ming is in is what Autumn came to us in. Also, I heard him call her Ming Ming.

Angi

A Free Day...and don't drink the water...

OK. I was going to give up but now I will try again. This is my third time writing this. Each time before I've done something that erases everything I type. Now I am not hitting any keys beyond the letters. But I type very fast and try to self correct as I go. So maybe I'm hitting a certain secret combination erase thingy that I don't know about. But for YOU, I will try again. :-)

Yay! Yay! We had a free day! No business to do, no guide, just us and where ever our feet can take us to. Nice! We started off with a Skype talk with the boys and family, then a chat with my brother, his lovely wife Kelly, and one of my most wonderful nieces, Nicole. Anna Lin just LOVES her Aunt Kelly and cousin Nicole (cousin Sarah Ann was in bed. She loves her too!). Skype is the way to go people, for you heading off to China. Talk computer to computer for free. You can chat, you can talk through the microphones, or add a webcam and you can really kick it up a notch! What a great way to start the day, hearing the voices of those we love and seeing their faces. Though Dawn had to troubleshoot her webcam, so we hope to see our boys' wonderful faces today. We hear that Noah is like a bass-maniac catching them right and left. Zak has commandeered Uncle Bob's golf cart. Spencer and his cousin Nick are the four-wheel renegades! I believe they said Spencer crashed, which is just another reason why we are not in a hurry for him to get his driving permit. ;-) Oh we miss you guys so much!

After this it was a walk around the lake here in Hangzhou, which is just a walk across from the hotel. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I love parks and man this one is beautiful. It was a cloudy day, but like where we live a cloudy day is a blessing in the summer. The weather was so nice, with a little breeze. It was just the right thing for energetic kids. Michelle and Alex went with us with their new son Paul Lei. He's a hoot. A male Anna Lin kicked up a notch. :-) His dad is really bonding with him, messing around with him, rough housing a little, and racing him here and there. Makes me smile. I have three boys and I really do love boys. Love my girls too, don't get me wrong. We found Pizza Hut and had the American Special. Yes that is what it was called, pepperoni pizza. It was good. They put us upstairs in a room by ourselves. Notice a pattern here... Maybe the down stairs didn't have room for us. But we were the only ones upstairs... Still it was nice.

After that a walk back to the hotel, some R & R. We found the Monkey King on the TV. We were so excited. Autumn doesn't seem interested in the TV, which is fine by us. But Anna Lin and Ric were in heaven. OK, maybe Ric wasn't in heaven but he was excited. I later went to the grocery store with Michelle and her family, with Autumn in tow. She's my shadow. Got the essentials: instant noodles that come in a bowl with folded up fork, Lay's potato chips for Ric, a 12 pack of water, and one Milk Tea for me to try. I like chai tea lattes, cold or hot, and this reminded me of one. Tried it this morning...well let's just say it's not the same and I'll be hitting the Starbucks later. :-) Not terrible though. Some people look at us like crazy (beyond the fact that everyone looks at us period!) because we buy so much water. But there is a reason for that. One that I forgot when we first arrived and brushed my teeth. Then I remembered and thought, "Oh, that was just a little. No big thing." Well I'm only getting bottled water from this point on. Let's just say Imodium is a good thing to bring along just in case... Cause dealing with stomach issues, on top of sleep deprivation and adoption paperwork is not fun.

However, we are now set with water and all is fine with the world. Autumn is doing well. We're getting closer each day. Can't remember if I already posted this (since I have had to rewrite three times now...) But yesterday she surprised us by writing out the numbers 1 to 10. Wow! This was unexpected. I don't mean the Chinese number characters, but the Arabic numbers that we use. (Did you know they were Arabic?) I can't wait to find out what else this little girl has up her sleeve.

Angi

A Farmers Life...

Wendy said, "People think our farmers are poor, but they live in these big houses." Houses? Houses? Where are the houses she is talking about? I had asked her if anyone owned a house in China since all I had seen looked like housing buildings. Apparently these buildings on the outskirts of town, which would be equivalent to an small appartment building, were really houses. Close by, if not in the front or back yard are their fields. Wendy said they will rent out rooms to people when they have space. Usually the whole family lives there. We saw rice fields where they were planting rice now to be harvested in October. We saw grape fields, lotus fields, some corn, and other things I just cannot remember at the moment. Sometimes farmers were plowing with a water buffalo, sometimes they used a hand driven tractor. How they managed it in the mud and water is beyond me. They have to have strong arms and legs to hold it steady. It was nice to see the country side. We saw this on our trip to Jinhua and on the train from Shanghai to Hangzhou.

I even saw kudzoo!!!!! Yes, it does the same thing there, which is where it is from. Kudzoo is a vine planted in the south during the depression times I believe, to help with erosion. It is called the plant that ate the south, since it grows rampant taking over anything in its path. We also saw lots of laundry and laundry rooms on top of some of the houses. It's the little square building right on top that looks like a look out room or something. No uses dryers. Everyone hanges out their clothes.

But I just couldn't believe those elaborate houses! I'd love to see inside one.
-Angi

Back Tracking - Aerial Views

Arrgggh! I wrote this whole thing and then lost it. It does auto save, but doggone it, it saved right after I lost it. Don't what button I pushed on this crazy laptop, but blip! It was gone! So you may not get the meat out of this one, but I'll try again.

I am posting some aerial pictures both of us took while flying across Alaska and the Eastern European/Asian continent. Very cool for us. One picture that is part land, part water is over Russia. I especially love the rivers, like veins racing across the land, sometimes dark bluish and sometime brown. But when you get around Alaska they are silver from the ice. Very cool. I love the clouds too, fiels of fluffy marshmellows at times. Anna Lin said she would love to run across the clouds. Me too sweetie! If we were like the Monkey King we could bounced on and throughout them, even riding as a skateboard. :-) The pictures are when we are almost leaving Alaska since I could not get to the window for the line of sight seers waiting for a view. We were second to the last row of seats on the plane, so is was here we got our view.

We were lucky to sit by a motley crew of people. Sitting in our fourth seat in our section was a young radiologist from China, who I really thought was a student. Poor guy, he looked so young. He was probably getting frustrated with me, but couldn't speak as well as some others. In front of us were some girls who he talked with. We got a chance to chat with them on the 'second' round of flying out of Chicago before boarding our plane. Anna Lin was enchanted by the girls, all lovely young and educated. She even took out her pony-tail to have her hair down long like one of the girls. One lady was a PhD student in Educational Research. We talked the most and her English was excellent. It was through her that I realized the young man was a doctor not a student. We chatted for a good while once about children's literature with her seat-mate who was from the states doing a study abroad. In China they do not read for personal pleasure when they are young because they are studying to pass exams to get into schools and such. (They do try to read a lot while learning English, but she has mainly read like American Literature stuff.) Education is very important there. It makes sense. You have towns that are considered small, which have 4 millions people. In order to get good jobs you have to be well educationed and have an edge other others. Learning English is one of the best ways to do this. I cannot imagine competing with so many for a job. It is mind-blowing. They were amazed, and have been others that Anna Lin can speak so well in English after almost 2 years with us. The orphanage staff, and our guides, were also blown away from this. The children's ed program director said he would work hard to put more children up for the international adoption. He said 30 kids have been adopted by U.S. families. I think he saw in Anna Lin where Autumn would be in two years and was a amazed. Of course all kids are different, but Autumn said, or repeated her first English words yesterday with meaning. Repeating to just repeat is one thing, but repeating with understanding is another. I was pointing out they each had their own pinky bears. "Anna Lin's pinky bear." "Jin Qiu's pinky bear." (We are slowly introducing Autumn to her name, mainly by letting Anna Lin call her that. We'll start more soon, just wanted her to get use to us." Anyway, after I said the second statement she said, "Jin Qiu's pinky bear" and nodded her head, then repeated it. Wow! What a kid!

Boy, I really got off the subject of my aerial views. But those who know would be disappointed if I actually stayed on track. :-)

By the way, the last picture was taken inside the plane by Ric himself. It was taken over part of Russia by the Sea of Okhotsk (Google it). Now figure out our flight path from Chicago. Just had to include it. :-D
-Angi

Even more pictures...

Whose the mama of the little boy in the lunch time picture wearing the black shirt? I can't remember, but I was told that he makes sure to sit by Autumn especially on days they have shrimp. She does not like shrimp, so will give hers to him. :-) They say you will be there in about a month to bring him home.

Angi

More pictures...

Autumn and friends singing