Sept 9. Megan went to bed at 8:30pm, woke up an hour later for a bottle, slept til 1:30am, then another bottle, and up at 7am. She was in a good mood. She played on the bed with some toys for a long time. Brian made a make shift play pen with the quilt and pillows. After breakfast we went to the countryside. This is a misnomer. I would call it a small town. It was called Cao City. Our guide Karen said that this would be similar to the area were our babies lived in their foster families. The “countryside” was nothing compared to our small towns, but Karen said that it was a rich area because the houses were fairly new. The houses were generally 3 stories and 3 generations of families usually live in them. They are mostly built of cement or brick. Generally, young people from the country want to move to the city because they think they can find better jobs. The grandparents take care of the grandchildren while the parents work. If they work in the city, the parents rent an apartment and come home on holidays and special occasions. They also send money home to support the family. Karen also said that some city young people want to live in the country because the homes are so much bigger. An apartment or condo in the city is very expensive and only about 500 sq. ft.
On the way to the countryside, Karen told us more about the one child policy. This policy was instituted in 1979. Parents wanted boys because the boys are responsible to care for the parents as they age. The girl leaves her family completely. In the country, if the first child is a girl, they can have a second child. The gov’t also recently instituted a new policy that says if both parents are from a single child family, they can have 2 children. However, the children have to be at least 5 yrs. apart. The gov’t issues a marriage certificate. Females must be 20 yrs. old and males 22 yrs. old to get married. Otherwise the marriage is considered illegal. You also must have a birth permit to have a baby. If you do not, the child is considered illegal and will not be allowed to go to school. Each family has a family book. When a girl gets married, her name is moved to her husband’s family book. It sounds like this is a legal document as illegal marriages and children are not recorded in this book. This is how the school knows that the child can’t go to kindergarten. Later we asked Karen what happens to the illegal children. She said they can go to a small local school, but the education isn’t very good. What they end up having to do is find the “right person” in the gov’t to help them get the child and ID (be legal) and pay a large sum of money.
When we were at Cao City, we saw a medical clinic. Karen said they only care for minor things such as colds or fevers. However, it is very common for them to use IVs to “fix” even minor things such as fevers. We saw a young child get an IV that was inserted in their head. This child would have been considered too old for that type of an insertion site in the US. Karen said they give IVs because it “goes faster”. I can’t imagine what type of needles they use. One of the babies in our group has a scar on her inner wrist that they think was from an IV. The babies also have scars from their immunizations. Megan has a couple of them on her arms. I noticed that our guide Karen also has one on her arms. Imagine what kind of needles they must use. In Guangzhou, some of the babies will have to have immunizations. If you are a Hague family (I’ll explain that next) or your child is older than 2, your child must have about 6 immunizations in order to enter the US. Because we are a non-Hague family, we don’t have to do this. We did have to sign an affidavit stating that we would get Megan immunized within 30 days of coming to the US or at your doctor’s discretion. I’m so glad Megan doesn’t have to be immunized here. Maybe the needles are better in Guangzhou, but I don’t want to find out.
The Hague convention established international standards of practice for intercountry adoption. If you are a Hague family adopting from China, it makes the process from referral to Gotcha Day much longer. Hague families travel 8-11 weeks after referral whereas non-Hague families travel in 5-7 weeks. Because the Hague convention was put into effect in the middle of our adoption process (April 2008), we were able to be grandfathered in with the old system as long as we kept our paperwork up to date. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was a good decision not to let our paperwork expire.
After the countryside visit, we stopped at a bookstore. Other adoptive parents said that CDs with Chinese songs and lullabies really help the children to calm down when nothing else can. So we picked up 2 packages of CDs and 3 children’s books with English and Chinese words.
God mercifully gave us a break from the stifling hot weather today. The wind was cool (relatively speaking) and it was comfortable to be outside. So we decided to walk to KFC. It was about a 1 mile walk, but the sidewalk was nice and again, it wasn’t so hot like our trip to McDonalds a couple days ago. Megan fell asleep in the carrier. We were able to order a decent meal at KFC and then headed out to look for some formula for Megan. The kind that her orphanage used is only made locally, so it’s more difficult to find. There was a store nearby KFC that was supposed to carry it, but we couldn’t find it. The Walmart was just across the street, so we went there quick to get some rice cereal. Aug. 1st park was just across the street, so we walked through there. We did find out that the revolution that happened in 1927 was something similar to Tinnanmen Square. On the walk home, we were able to find another small store that carried the type of formula Megan needs.
At 5pm, we received the documents back that we will need for the US Consulate. There are 3 copies of each document: one for the US Consulate, one for immigration in the US and one for us to keep. The 1st document is the adoption registration. Then 2nd is biographical info. and the 3rd is a statement of Megan’s abandonment. We had to check these documents over very carefully as there can be NO errors. There were no typographical errors, but there was one blatant error in one of the adoption registration booklets—there was a referral picture of a baby that wasn’t Megan. This can still be fixed, so Sissi, our guide will take care of that. One of the other booklets came apart at the seam when I opened it to verify everything. Sissi will fix that too.
For supper, we and several others families headed to the Chinese restaurant across the street. I like having meals with the other families because it give us a chance to visit. Megan took a 20 min. cat nap til about 7pm, so I don’t expect bedtime to be until at least 9pm. Her congestion is better, but she is a little pill to get her to take her medicine.
Yesterday we had our laundry done. We filled out a sheet of paper with Chinese and English words describing which clothing items we were having washed. For examples, 1 shirt, 2 shorts, 3 socks, etc. We sent the clothing to the laundry yesterday and got them back today. When the clothes was returned, all of it except pants were in 4 clear, plastic bags. Each piece of clothing was also labeled with a small pink piece of paper that was either stitched on or put in a loop and stapled. The sock pairs were stitched together with this pink paper. Everything in China is some type of experience.
I was reading through our hotels courtesy booklet about all the services offered. There are some pretty funny cartoons, but it also talked about souvenirs. If we would like to buy anything in the room, there was a price list in this booklet: everything from the soap dish to the mattress. I wonder how often this happens. The hotel also advertises itself as “Your green home”. Probably the most obvious examples of this is the lighting. Each of the hotel rooms has a switch as you come in your room. You must put your room key jn this switch for the lights and air conditioning to work. Of course the idea is that you take the card out when you leave the room. We didn’t do this though, because the air conditioner has such a hard time keeping up. We did turn the lights off though. Some of the other parents said that at night, the lights all over the hotel are pretty much all turned off, even in the lobby.
I’ve mentioned before that the traffic is crazy, but I don’t think it is nearly as crazy as it was in Beijing. There is a little resemblance of rules, but nothing like the US. Scooters are very popular and I can see why as they can weave in and out of traffic and even go on the sidewalk. They range in size from almost as big as a motorcycle to some the size of a bike with a motor. Most of them are smaller sized. Men and women ride them. Of course they don’t wear helmets. There are bikes, but not nearly as many as we saw in Beijing. I imagine Beijing has changed to more scooters too since 2005.
This is a totally random fact, but Megan wears size 6-9 month clothes, although she will very soon need 12 month sleepers for length.
Thank you for praying for little Lily and her parents. She seems to have turned a corner today. She went to daddy willingly for the 1st time and was doing somersaults and laughing. She is still sick, but hopefully that will get better soon too.
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