Good bye Sandy!

We fared better than most, only had our electricity blink twice.  I don't even have pics of damage I don't think we even lost any trees this time.

Tues morning Faith woke and asked if we are going to have a hurricane...she didn't hear it blow past during the night.

Today was the first day of just Shekinah and mama. We did fine, we went to the bank and the PO and then later to Sa*'s to stock the shelves again.  Did I mention that she loves shopping.

I think I'm almost over jet lag, I'm pretty much awake and it's after 9...
Hopefully little one's system starts to adjust to US time and she stops the smelly diapers at midnight.

Batten Down the Hatches!

This will be interesting. We don't remember a hurrican/tropical storm with a predicted path right over Lancaster county.  Schools are closing already. Shekinah has a Dr appt in the AM (we signed a notarized paper saying we would make sure she gets any necessary shots in the first 20 days)

 She is learning that big brothers are fun

      even the ones that were away all weekend.  The married big brother and wife need to stop in more often so she can warm up.

Life is interesting around here. It's been awhile since we had a little one in the house. She is getting A LOT of attention. Maybe it will be good if they don't have school tomorrow.

HOME!

 After a delay of almost an hour in Chicago, thanks to our "illustrious leader" and the weather we finally got on our flight at 9:10 eastern standard time.

 Miss Shekinah sat on that seat like a pro and put the lap belt on stuck the pop in her mouth and soon fell asleep.  When we arrived in Harrisburg she woke very friendly and met the family.  Slept what was the rest of the night, but sometime during that night she crawled out of her bed and slept on the floor.

 Sorry for the blurred picture, but this is what she thinks of baba.

And this is the sign that was on the garage door when we arrived.

Shopping and Consulate Appt.

Yesterday we went to the medical clinic to have the TB tests read. Shekinah's looked wonderful...no reaction at all. Then we went off to the Pearl Market and the pedestrian street shopping. We quite honestly would have liked to look in some of the other shops, but the purpose of the visit was pearls. I did find a silk dress for Quan-quan and the lady that was in our group found some very good deals on pearls.
Today was my day for shopping. We went to a fabric store, I had hopes for more dress type fabric, but then we found some shops that had cottons that we liked.  As we were leaving Cari spied a shop with dress fabric bolts in the doorway. The prices were 20 RMB a meter..54 or 60" in width.  We then went to Trust-Mart where we saw many Great Value brands...yup, it was the British equivalent of Walmart (at least that is what I understood).

Found some stickers, scotch tape etc for the trip home...I'm sort of at a loss what to have this child do while we are on a plane. I just pray the plane ride does not involve the wailing we seem to like to do in the middle of the night. Poor Cari had to listen to her for an hour and 20 min last night. I timed it because I was hoping she would not cry as long. As I type she is wailing in her crib. She seems to need to cry LOUDLY for a period of time in order to settle down...and yet not every night....just wish I knew if there was something that I could do about it.
She seems happy during the day and tonite she actually called me mama...she says mama when she looks at my picture,but had not actually came to me and said "mama" before tonite.

Explaination of the pictures....the first is a grandmother that is with her daughter and SIL for an adoption trip. We noticed her right away because she wore a veiling. anyway today I asked her how old she is because I could tell she was older, but she seemed pretty spry...She is  83  YEARS OLD!   She said she did all the touring with the families and said she has two knee replacements otherwise she couldn't have done it. today at the Consulate she said she is ready to see some meat and potatoes again.

The picture of the man with the phone just baffled me...it was cordless,b ut had an old type hand set??

Me looking at a pile of fabric piled on the bed, just like Hannah piles her quilts she has for sale.

Pineapple Beer at the Trust Mart

And our room tonite!  We are packing and trying to decide if we need another suitcase...We think we have it figured out as long as Cari doesn't buy any more scarves.....(just kidding)  
I think Cari and I will laugh about this trip for years to come...after spending two weeks in this close proximity, you sort of get to know each other....poor Cari.
Then the next picture is for Ray...she really is another bag lady!...she even got her trash out of the trash can so she could put it in her bag.

Then Cari working on making some of the luggage "luggable" 

And poor Quan-quan was being ignored while we packed, so she gathered all the cardboard pieces and piled them in the middle of the floor and sat on them...she looked like she was pretending something, until she saw me watching.

Tomorrow (Our Wed afternoon) we are catching a train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. It is a two hour high speed train ride.  We spend the night in Hong Kong then around noon on Thurs we catch the plane to USA!  We gain our lost day back and arrive in Harrisburg around 10 PM, Thursday. Lord willling!

Miss Quan-quan stopped wailing after about 10 minutes of it so I'd better sleep while I can.

Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com

I know I'm In China....

I KNOW I'M IN CHINA....
#1- when the BREAKFAST buffet serves baked beans!
#2- when the hotel carpet is softer then my bed
#3- when the cashiers have to type my amount due on a calculator so i know for sure what number they said
#4- when i get more second glances then a movie star=)
#5- when I never can find shoes that fit my size 8 feet and 2x is actually a medium.
#6- when clerks are friendlier then the Wal-mart greeter @ home
#7- when I don't gasp when a car comes within millimeters of hitting our car
#8- when the choices for coffee are instant or starbucks
#9- when going to the zoo is considered romantic " hi georgia"
#10- when you see people riding bikes and wearing high heels
#11 when "duct" tape might be translated as " duck or gooose" tape!!
#12- when bouncing on the bed could cause a concusion even with out falling off!!
#13- when there is no 14th floor in a 20 story building or at least not listed on the elevator buttons!!
#14- when no tap water is drinkabe and in the bathroom theres a sign that reads "non-potable"
#15- when out of the 36 TV channels you can only understand two!!
#16- when CARP are considered a sign of wealth!!!!
#17 - when I'm glad to see pink money in my wallet.  (100 RMB notes are pink)
#17- when I'm actually looking forward to a 15 hour plane flight with a two year old!
#18- when you have 2 essentials in your purse hand sanitizer and toilet paper!!
#19- and last but not least when everybody cheers and races to use the "western" toilet cuz there might not be another 1 like that today=)
Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com

Sunday in Guangzhou

Some pictures to show a bit of our lifestyle these days. The pictures of course are out of order on the blog because I can't get on blogger in order to arrange anything. But the pictures include our supper at Pizza Hut on Sat evening. She likes mushrooms, but not tomatoes...a little bit of cheese and the flavor of the meat, but not the chewy parts.
You can see pictures of the hotel lobby...it is huge! Very hard to capture it on our cameras....the wall behind the registration desk is a carving the place is beautiful and quite a few notches above our normal living standard...but they tell me this is where they want their families to stay...

Outside on the hotel grounds there is an amazing waterfall with a little pagoda at the top. The koi are fat and hungry...I don't know what they would do if you would fall in.  Shekinah was fascinated by them, but as you can see she studiously avoids smiling for a posed picture. We can capture the smile when she is acting silly, but she does not like to smile at me in public. Her fingers are usually in her mouth or her nose, but I'm trying to work on the important stuff right now.
Outside on the streets and in the hotel lobby it is a close to a United Nations convention as I'll ever see. We are here during the Trade Show and we have probably seen every nation on God's earth...today a man got on our elevator and in very good English asked where we are from and "what's with the round things on your heads?"  I asked him where he was from. He was from Sri Lanka. ( I did answer his question briefly too) Then as we were going on the elevator later two men accompanied by a bell boy and their luggage got on and the one man had a long white tunic and loose matching pants. Met another Mennonite lady- a grandmother of a little one being adopted (last name of Helmuth from WY)

But on the one street there is alway a couple of beggars, the man playing the erhu and using the clappers appeared to be blind...there is  an armless man and today I saw an older girl with Downs Syndrome and another time a lady sitting with a 20-ish y.o. boy that appeared to be physically handicapped.

Well it is time for bed, I'm hoping for a whole nights sleep...Miss Quan-quan had a night terror last night that lasted about an hour..not sure what to attribute it to, but it is never any fun....even if you know what it is....

Thanks for your continued prayers and comments are nice :^)   chris.ray.jubilee@hotmail.com



Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com

Guangzhou

This china trip from my point of view,
   Hello everyone this is Cari and i decided to write a little bit about this trip; chris will comment farther.
    Well we made it from Wuhan to Guangzhou last night like we had planned. Little miss Shekinah gave us a real work out though=) It started in the airport; we got there around 4:00pm and our flight didnt leave till 7:00. The reason for our earliness was that we checked out of our hotel @ 2:00 and had to go for her certificate of adoption and some other papers first. Our guide didnt want to be late for the flight so we decided to go strait to the airport just in case we might meet with heavy traffic which we didnt.=) After saying goodbye to our "Wonderful" driver that we called uncle (he was really great funny even if we couldnt understand him)=) we went inside and found out we cant get our tickets or get rid of our luggage till 5. Oh well no big deal! Right, well Shekinah had just woken up from a nap and was ready to go!!! (Btw she's really warmed up to both of us and is a little naughty typical 2 year old! lots of fun tho) All she wanted to do was run over the airport, and all the things we had brought along kept her occupied for 3min maybe=) Ok after an hr we could go thru security; which went fine she didnt cry or try to run away. However the 1 and 1/2 hr we spent waiting for the plane was interesting from just up and walking away, to being naughty to see what mama will put up with, or how about we ty to beg noodles from the guys across from us!! Then we found out the plane will be 20 min late=( oh no!! Well we finally boarded and were waiting for take off; the seat belt sign came on and we found out the seat belt is very very annoying lets make sure the whole plane finds out=) so she sat and cried until the plane began taking off. Yay, for Chris tho she kept her cool and just talked quietly to her!! After the plane began take off she sat up very straight and pointed out the window and before to long she fell asleep and slept for the rest of the flight.
   Elvin, our guide, met us @ the receiving area and off we went to our hotel. By that time i was very tired there was some mistake when we got there about our room but we got it straightened out; finally bed!!!!! oh how good it felt=) it was even soft=). That is my biggest complaint of this trip i think the beds in Beijing werent to bad but the beds in Wuhan were HARD with emphasis on the hard part!! Plywood comes to mind!! After the 3rd day of waking up @ 3 with pain in my legs i got smart and found a thick feather blanket in the closet, folded it 3 times and made my bed soft... ahh luxury!!
    Over all my opinion of this trip is - Its great=) i love visiting new and exciting places and China has always been 1 on my list. I like the food, well some of it, the people, having to use sign language to to fill in those words you cant say! Which for some of us its pretty many=) I like learning to eat with chop sticks, and the crowd of people we can gather in a very short time!! Yes, those Mennonite people look so strange, yes we do wear these clothes all the time even to parties belive it or not!! And no my covering is NOT a net for some small exotic animal=) ( there was a young by at 1 resturant who looked very very closely at chris's covering trying to see what was in there);) The people you meet isnt it great?!!  Cari
      picture captions
1- in Wuhan we found this huge market that sold any spice and dried vegatable it as pretty cool!
2- these old ladies in Wuhan were all standing on the street cmparing cell phones it struck me as funny=)
3- Shekinah found she likes my ipod pretty well, couldnt get those silly ear things in tho
4- inside the lobby of our hotel is huge this is the stair case that goes to the 2nd floor
5- Shekinah @ the doctor today
6- the outside of our hotel has a really nice water garden and sitting area!

Chris: I'll add a bit from my side. quan-quan is doing well, that is to say, she is not the quiet little mouse any more. I do believe the "irascible" child has emerged!  think - run away from mama at the airport and then laught hysterically when mama frowns and tells you to come.  When mama says no, cry very loudly so that all the Chinese people wonder about the mean white lady that is saying no to such a cute poor little girl.  She is a very normal 2 y.o. that didn't hear no too much...
So mama is in survival mode, she usually gets something soon after we get into a store. I try to over-react when she does the right thing and ignore as much as possible when she is disobedient.... "just a minute" and "wait" are not in her vocab.

As to how are they are doing at home...it sounds as if they are doing well. We Skype morning and evening as often as my schedule works out. Everyone has smiles most of the time.  Hope is doing a wonderful job of combing Faith in the morning. Ray managed to work for a few hours most days. I'm sure the two weeks are longer at home than they are here.  We are kept fairly busy here so we don't have a lot of time to sit around and worry. 

Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com

Food

OK, just to keep this interesting, here are some food dishes....the normal noodles in a dish, cooked w/ hot water
"Fred Spring Rolls"
Steamed buns with pork stomachs and greens"
Fruit cake
donut made w/ rice flour and chives
Bakken
Green dates
Mushroom dish....to make Cari healthy
Fish...."fresh water fish"  Ok never mind
hot Coke with ginger....am so gonna make that at home  "good for the digestion"
And an overview of our table after we were finished today.




Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com

Orphanage Visit

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Not really sure what to say about today, didn't even get to go through the pictures yet. I want to wait until Shekinah is in bed.

We had seen a little boy in the photo album we received from the orphanage and noted that he had a deformed ear and side of face...not sure if it is amniotic banding or a cranio-facial thing. Anyway we also knew that his name was "Tiger" . As we pulled into the pink courtyard of the orphanage, there was two ladies and a little boy that was unmistakeably Tiger.  I had been praying that God takes care of this visit. I did not know if the foster mother would be coming to the orphanage or not. I had not specifically asked either way. I know there are two schools of thought about visiting with foster parents again this close to adoption. I had the feeling that our driver did not think it a good idea and Mrs Wei was not saying one way or the other.  I just prayed that God  take control of the situation and not allow harm  to this little girl.

So when we were met by the two ladies, I took a deep breath and pasted a smile on my face.  Quan-quan took a glance around and yelled Ni-ni!  She went right to her arms. Ni-Ni was a whole lot younger than i thought she would be, well dressed and not looking like a Chinese grandmother at all!  She told us that she told Quan-quan every day that her mama and baba were coming soon. She  talked a lot to Shekinah, she even convinced her to give me a kiss.

We toured the empty orphanage, all the children are in foster homes or boarding school.

Then the visit came to an end and the crying began and I really was wondering if we had made the right choice.  Foster mom had brought me a professional photo of Quan-quan and her grandson and I gave her a Chinese Bible and a small photo album of our family.

Shekinah screamed as we drove away, she was waving bye-bye too though. About 10 min down the road she stopped crying and we went on to enjoy a full Chinese meal with the orphanage people. We were the center of attention and thankfully Shekinah made me look like a good mom. Slurped greens from my inexpertly held chop sticks...they brought Cari a fork, but did not bring me one...(score!) They fussed over my family pictures and of Cari's family photo. (Ten children!)

The ride home showed me a new little girl, she was jabbering and saying "Ni-ni smile" in Mandarin and grinning away while she did it (????) She was a handful and I'm not sure how this plane ride is going to be....maybe some Benedryl?   No, I know the negatives, but...
Then off the notary...there was one incorrect number on the paperwork (their mistake not mine)  so we had a few moments of wondering what the  frowns and phone calls were all about.  Paperwork corrected, fees paid then off to find a stroller.
After looking in multiple shops we ended up at the Carre-Fore. Found the stroller of choice...199 RMB  and finally back home.

Bought some chestnuts on the street, found out we don't really like them...I did promise some food pics to some of you, so maybe I can do that after I figure out how to get little one off to bed before I'm falling asleep.

Tomorrow is the short plane ride- practice run for the long 'un

Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com

Crane Pavilion and East Lake

I have this sneaky suspicion that the Chinese guides are told to take the American tourists on the tours that involve the most walking and as many steep steps as possible.   But I'm happy to say that this old American lady made it!  The Crane tower is 5 floors and we didn't use an elevator. It gave a beautiful view over the city and the Yangtze River. The weather was beautiful, not too hot and not too cold...I did have all the bare skin of my little one covered and a jacket on her, but I enjoyed short sleeves.
Then we went to East Lake...a fresh water lake in Wuhan that is preserved and is a very peaceful place to walk. We saw about 10 bride and groom couples that were there to have their wedding photos.
We also saw some older gentlemen fishing beside the lake...never saw such long fishing poles for such little fish. Miss Shekinah slept for the entire walk.
We came home and decided to go searching for a stroller, we found the dept store and had been told the childrens' dept was on the 7th floor Couldn't find the elevator, so up 6 flights of escalators we went....only to find the strollers are more expensive than the ones at home.  Then there in the children's dept we find the elevator!
Came "home" to rest and noticed that the wires that had been hanging outside our window were moving...could we be getting our very dirty window washed?  No it was just a man that was filling cracks w/ cement...he was very curious to see 2 Mei-guo-ren's and one Zhong-ren looking out the window at him.
 Tonite we traipsed acoss the street for steamed buns again...we all like them and they are cheap.  There is also a little girl that needs to stop eating so many pistachios..I hid them away...they cause crying and whining until the bag is empty.




Chris Weaver
www.shallrunandnotbeweary.blogspot.com