Today - feeling better and ready to see Guangzhou. But that will happen more tomorrow. This morning - heading to breakfast and there are a few other American groups here finalizing adoptions. Met a couple in the elevator who adopted two kids at the same time. 10 months apart. And they have 3 kids at home. Amazing.
Heading to do the medical exams today so all these kids can be cleared to leave China. Guess there was a period of time when three kids left China all of whom had measles and the CDC did an investigation into Bethany that lasted 6 months. We are now with Shaiyan, the China Bethany rep. Shaiyan and her family lived in Grand Rapids in the late eighties and early nineties when her husband practiced law. Then her husband went to work for GM and their new venture at the time selling vehicles into Asia. Since then they have lived all over Asia and Shaiyan has continued to work for Bethany. She has been with Bethany for 20 years. She has seen a lot of kids adopted. And she is a pretty amazing woman. She has two children herself. One of whom lives in San Fransisco and the other in New York City. She and her husband live in Shanghai.
On to Medical - we specifically went to a travel medical clinic. While it was super busy, there is a specific section for adopting families. Medical was a breeze. One more box checked.
Then our bus dropped us off at a supermarket so we could all get supplies. And lunch. We found bread and peanut butter, and Claire loved peanut butter! Good thing since we buy it by the case at home!!
The supermarket was actually really nice. Felt almost like Harris Teeter. Really. I find Guangzhou to be very nice. Funny - as we were waiting at the entrance to leave, we were standing next to a counter much like the ready-made food counter near the deli at the grocery at home. Lots of ready-made food nicely displayed. One of the other guys in our group said he wasn’t super interested in buying food to eat when the workers all had bio-hazard masks on. Laughing again!
We headed back to the hotel and got Claire settled for a nap. And we had another really strong thunderstorm. Feels like home!
Kyle had a brief conversation with Dean on the phone today, and we think Claire has torticullis. (We had a feeling before we talked to Dean.) We have a sense that claire is smart. She seems to be. And these physical issues we can tackle. (One of Kyle’s sisters was born with torticullis and was/ is deaf in one ear.)
Shaiyan took us to a real Chinese restaurant tonight - so so good! Really delicious food! And it cost us only $20 total for all three of us. We had three large tables - three families at our table, 6 adults, 2 kids, and 3 adopted children. We got about 7-8 main dishes, and almost every single one was gone. So so good. I have to learn how to make this stuff. Claire loved noodles! Not sure what the sauce was - very mild - and the noodles were like egg noodles but long and a little skinnier. We stopped in the hotel pastry shop for a really good dessert on the way back to the room. Since we skipped lunch, I splurged on dessert!
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