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| Parading Through the Wuhan Train Station It's Quite a Process! |
This entire meeting took less than five minutes. It was neat to see Minsy's red Chinese passport. She'll use this for a bit, but once we re-adopt her in the US so that she can have a US birth certificate, we'll probably go ahead and get her a US passport just to avoid extra complications if we ever decide to leave the country again. We left the civil affairs office and headed to another government office where the notary was located. I expected this to be like we would experience at a US notary, where Herman and I would have to show our IDs before signing several documents and the notary's book. We sat in a lobby for awhile while Shirley ran around setting something up. At one point a man came to us and asked us to double check some information on some forms that he was preparing for Minsy. The lobby looked just like you would see at a US government office with lots of people mulling around, waiting for their turn to see a particular government agency. While we sat there Minsy had to go to the bathroom. We found one eventually. It was one of the worst bathrooms I have seen on the trip, but I held my breath, and we got the job done. For all of the weirdness of the Chinese squatty potties, I do like that you can flush them with your feet. It seems less likely that germs are going to pass that way. Really, the whole squatty potty thing manages to avoid transference of germs since only your shoes touch any part of the system. Still, after almost two weeks in country, I'm still not used to the contraptions, but they don't gross me out nearly as much as I expected.
After waiting for fifteen minutes or so, Shirley came up and told us that we were all done. That was it? It seems like we hadn't done anything. I wondered why we had shown up at all. It seems like we had already checked and double checked our information several times at the civil affairs office. But they really wanted to make sure that we got our information correct, so I really can't fault them for that.
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| Minsy enjoying her last sleep in Wuhan |
We headed back to the hotel to gather the kids and our belongings so that we could head to the train station. While we drove we talked to Shirley a bit about Laney's desire to come back to China to spend more time. Shirley said that there were lots of wonderful opportunities for English speakers to come to the country to teach English to Chinese children, whether at the high school level or in college. She said that English was an important language for them to learn, and so many parents are willing to spend a large amount of money for tutoring for their children on top of the teaching they receive in school. She has several contacts, and she told us to contact her in the future to let her know if Laney is interested, and Shirley would hook us up. It sounded very interesting to Laney. She could volunteer to help in orphanages while she was here teaching English, if that is something that she is interested in doing in the future. I can't imagine her coming here alone to do all that, but she is a very confident girl, so I think she could manage it if that is was she wants.
We got back to the hotel and gathered everyone and everything together. Things were going to be a bit more complicated this trip because now we had Minsy to come with us along with her backpack that was too heavy for her to carry on her own. We solved that by giving her to Spencer to push in a stroller with her backpack draped over the back. Then one of the girls just doubled up and took Spencer's luggage with them. It worked out. We came rolling into the lobby in good time, prepared to take our bus, The Golden Dragon, off to the station.
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| Our family with Shirley preparing to leave our hotel in Wuhan |
We were sad to say goodbye to Shirley. She was a wonderful guide to us. She didn't really take us all over the city for touring like a travel guide would do, but we didn't need her to do that. We have more fun exploring on our own. But she did know her adoption stuff, and she got us everywhere we needed to be. The younger kids drew some crayon pictures for us to give her in thanks, and they also gave our driver, Mr. Chen, some pictures. I think they really liked them. Shirley took us all the way to our waiting area in the train station. I was glad for that. The Wuhan station seemed bigger and more complicated than Beijing's had. There were fewer signs in English to guide us. We could have found our way eventually, but Shirley got us where we needed to be in a lot less time. We said a fond farewell, and then sat down for some time to wait for boarding of the train.
Once again, we were definitely the only foreigners in this place. We were a curiosity again to everyone, but they were all very friendly, and they loved to have their kids come up to say hello to us as we waited. After a short amount of time we were able to board. I have gottten used to the Chinese way of managing lines. It is quite similar to the Chinese way of driving. I thought that it would be difficult to handle lines since they don't really do any sort of organized lines. At first glance it seems like utter chaos with people jockeying for position in lines. But once you are in the midst of it, it just works. You just have to be confident and push along the mass of people. You will eventually make it to the front. The people who suffer in this sort of system are those who are overly polite and keep allowing everyone to go in front of them. Instead, you just push forward with purpose, and eventually the others will let you pass, just as they will do in their own time. No one gets angry or insulted at all in this system. I don't think that some of the short tempers present in America would allow anything like this to take place in the US. I'll have to remember that things don't work this way when I return home or I'll tick someone off in a big way as I muscle my way through lines in public places.
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| Savannah enjoying the train trip to Wuhan |
We took a super fast bullet train from Wuhan to Guangzhou. It was way fun. We were not in the first class car that we had on our trip to Wuhan, but this was nice, nonetheless. There was a bit less leg room, and this train car was totally full of people, but we were in the very back of the car, so we didn't really bother anyone. There were a lot of kids on this train, and that made it easier to not feel like our loud family was disturbing anyone. The train traveled at a top speed of around 330 kilometers per hour. It didn't feel much different than being in a car on the interstate, but it was a lot smoother. I was excited for the trip. I've always wanted to travel in one of those bullet trains. I watched the countryside as we speeded by. You could tell that we were getting into a warmer climate area because the farms were greener. They were still growing crops at this time of year. We passed through some beautiful mountain country. They weren't super high mountains like the Rockies, but they provided a nice view as we passed.
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| Minsy on her first train trip! |
Minsy did pretty good on the trip. She was wiggly during a lot of it, and the problem was that she only wanted me to hold her unless she tried someone else to see if they would put her down so that she could walk around. We couldn't let her do that, so she struggled a bit with me. She never really got mad or sad, just wiggly. Eventually she calmed down and went to sleep. That made things a bit easier. I think it is going to be a long 13 hour flight between Hong Kong and Chicago. We'll survive. Hopefully there will be several hours of sleep involved to make things easier.
We arrived in Guangzhou after a three hour train ride. At the Guangzhou train station we met John who was just picking us up for Wasatch. Our actually guide for the week, Helen, was at the airport picking up some other families. John was great as he got us to the hotel and checked us in. He got us our rooms at the Holiday Inn Shifu, where we'll be staying for the week. This hotel did not put us in conjoining rooms which was a bit sad for us, but it is a very busy hotel, so we took what we could get. The rooms are separated by two other rooms. It wasn't so bad. This nice thing was that the rooms were super large, so there was lots of room for us to maneuver. That will be nice for us after a couple of weeks of smaller hotel rooms that didn't really hold all of us.
After getting settled we headed out to explore our neighborhood. We didn't go very far because it was already dark outside. We had the option of turning right or turning left as we left our hotel. We decided to turn left. We found another of those outdoor shopping malls. This was the most crowded mall like this that we have encountered in China. There were tons and tons of people shopping. I was glad that we had our buddy system well in place before today, because it would have been easy to lose one of us in this environment. There were mostly retail clothing shops around us. We did find a couple places that sold meat on a stick, so we sampled a bit of it. It tasted a lot like all of the other meats on a stick that we have bought in China. We're not exactly sure what sort of meat this was, and maybe it was best if we didn't find out. It was still pretty good.
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| Out to explore the neighborhood in Guangzhou |
We eventually decided to try out a Chinese fast food restaurant for something different to try. We went to a place called Kung Fu which seemed to be set up as a place to worship Bruce Lee. We had no idea what to order, other than to make sure that our food was not too spicy. The things that looked the best on the picture menu were apparently the most spicy, but the workers assured us that they could find something good for us to eat. We ended up with a less than filling meal. One dish appeared to just be chicken broth with small bits of chicken skin and fat in it. There were two containers of rice that were okay, and then there was some sort of beef dish that tasted okay but mostly consisted of bones. It tasted okay, and it was definitely not spicy, but I could have used a bit more flavor in it. We were glad to have tried it at least. The hard thing was trying to figure out what to do with our containers once we were finished. Laney finished first and stood up with her tray to try and take it to some sort of trash container like you would at a US fast food restaurant. There didn't seem to be any nearby. She walked the restaurant looking for one as the locals watched her curiously. After much searching we realized that we were just supposed to leave it all
on the table for a worker to collect. It seemed wrong to do that, but it all turned out okay.
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| It was a little like a mini Times Square with 10,000 times more people |
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| It was definitely more active than the street near our hotel in Wuhan |
We headed back to the hotel for the night, ready for a busy day tomorrow with Minsy's medical exam and some paperwork needed to obtain her US visa. Guangzhou seems to be a lovely city. It seems to have more of an international feel than the others we have visited in China. We don't stand out nearly as much here other than because of our number of people. It definitely seems to be a wealthier and more modern city than the others. There is still poverty, but it is more hidden than in the other cities. It is very beautiful, though. It is nice to finally be somewhere in China while the sun is shining. It has been cloudy everywhere else for the past two weeks. Guangzhou is in a more moderate climate zone, so there is more greenery with plam trees found throughout the city. I am excited to have the next several days to explore.
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| JoJo enjoys the bubbles blowing right outside the hotel |
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