Notes from the terminal ward

It’s been a fairly light day here.  I’m reminded a bit of being at mile 9 in a half marathon.  It’s close enough to feel the finish line and far enough back to look at how much has happened. It’s here where you need to be careful to crush the mental aspect of the game. 

There wasn’t a lot on the schedule today.  In fact, it was rather slow. We are stuck out of the pool till tomorrow and the tb test is done, so it was a lot of playing today.  this morning, I made it out to a park to walk around and then we went to the folk art museum and got to catch some amazing local art.  Lunch was Chinese and it was the hottest thing I think I’ve tried – all chili peppers, it was a little more bruit force hot.  

Tonight, we spent some time with the paez family over pizza from papa johns. Holy cow, it was expensive – and they got our order wrong.  A lot of time today was spent hanging out with Brendan.  I was telling Melissa tonight that as slow as it is, I’m reminding myself that these are important moments.  we are growing in our trust, bonding, and attachment to Brendan.  He’s opening up more, beginning to look like a 5 year old and growing fond of us. Today he screamed as he played with bubbles for the first time.  

He said his name for the first time today, said “bubbles”, knows a couple of colors in English, and said “Iona”.  As nice as mile 9 is, the finish line is still a ways away.  

Pray for our time tomorrow.  We have a tight schedule and several things to do.  

Ok. we’re here. We are in Guangzhou and in community and I’m thankful for every second of the trip we had so far. One of the good God moments for me was listening to “In the night my hope lives on” by Andrew Peterson and just crying for that whole song the day after Gotcha Day with Brendan in my arms. Sitting on the airplane today we discovered that Brendan likes ear phones and likes that song. Oh, btw, Aidan, he likes ‘Alligator Sky’ too.

It’s hard for me as a 7 to get full of experience, but Zhengzhou left me so. We were driving back to the airport and we passed by the exit for the Shaolin temple. Henan province has some deep history – it’s the birthplace of Kung Fu and it’s also the place where some of the earliest writing samples were found. Where the US talks of age in terms of decades and occasionally centuries and Europe talks of age in terms of centuries and occasionally longer, China talks of age in terms of Millennia – everything is old and everything is big.

We said goodbye to our home this week with gifts we gave to three specific hotel staff who were the kindest people we ever met. One girl in particular would talk to Brendan in the sweetest mom voice and find out what he wanted. We wrote them up a “Customer Delight Card” and left them a gift. It was a bit of a big deal.

Another Lost in translation moment from the day: We’d discovered that Brendan didn’t come with a photo album we’d sent him in our care package and we’d asked for it back. We then found out that the nannies like to keep them as mementos of the kids after they’ve left. We told them No, it was ok, they could keep it. Zhengzhou and the area it seems culturally that you have to ask things several times; it could be that we’re foreigners and it was a desire to appease us, but we had to ask repeatedly to get something across sometimes.

Well, on our way out, we were driving down the road and the driver pulled up next to this random delivery truck and Theresa talked to him and he gave her a package and then she said it was a gift to us. It turned out it was the photo album we’d given Brendan. What was nice was that Brendan has since clung to it and has smiled when looking at pictures of his “Guh Guh” (Aidan). I can’t wait to see them play together – it’s going to be like Gotcha day when they first meet (only without the screaming).

We also said goodbye to our guide Theresa – we started the week off horribly and ended the week as friends. She was very kind to Brendan and us as well.

The airplane ride went well. We hit turbulence that dropped the plane about 50 feet or so and scared the snot out of us but Brendan spent the whole time giggling.

Then we met Amy of Lineker and Amy – the couple who work with AWAA in China. She got us into the hotel and on the way gave us our room key, specific information and got us settled.

Guangzhou reminds me a ton of pictures of hawaii I’ve seen. It’s very tropical in feel and the air is much cleaner here. The drive into the city was lined with manicured flowers and landscaping for about the 10 or so Kilometers in. Once we got to the hotel we discovered it’s more of a resort. It’s insane the niceness of this hotel.

Brendan and I went down to the resort level and the hallway is expansive, all marble and it’s lined with very posh rooms for drinking tea which all open out to a large courtyard with a large, well manicured garden. Playing on the intercom was a Chinese Moby (as best as I can describe it). I got some fabulous pictures of Brendan as he was playing on the play ground and doing swings.

Dinner was ok; we did, however, get to spend it with the Evans family who adopted the other older child in the group (she’s a very cute 8 year old Cantonese girl named Elyssa). The Marriott is like the fanciest, most western resort we’ve seen and dinner was Ladna for me but it seemed very pristine compared to the Chinese meals we’d ate in Zhengzhou. Tomorrow is our physical as well as some paperwork. Hope you all’s Friday is wonderful! It was great here.