Wonderful Day in Changsha

We had a lovely day today, quite busy but we saw lots and enjoyed being outside in the sunshine. After breakfast Amy, our guide, picked us up and took us to the Changsha Park. There we rode on a carousel, fed the koi, went for a boat ride, walked in the park and made a couple of new firends. We then went to the Hunan Embroidery Factory and saw the most amazing embroidery - some of it was so realistic that it looked more like a photograph than embroidery.

Since I can only load about 3 pictures at a time to my blog via email, look down below this post to see pictures from the day, loaded up a few at a time.

Changsha park is really beautiful as you can see, It is large and very well kept. While we were walking through it we stopped to rest beside the lake and met an older chinese couple who were fishing. They had already caught 11 small fish and added another while we talked. Our guide Amy translated for us and it turned out that they had taken a tour of the US once and even showed us pictures of them in San Franciso and at the Empire State building, the gentleman carried the photos in his wallet. They had brought a picnic lunch with them but insisted that we eat the dragon festival delicacy the wife had made. It was sticky rice around pork rolled into a large leaf, and was very tasty. We felt a little badly to have eaten their lunch but they seemed delighted to be able to share it with us.

After we came back to the hotel we ordered room service, rice and noodles, and then Kievah and Chris had a nap while I walked to the nearby grocery store to stock up on some Coke and other drinks. In the hotel a soda costs 20 yuan - about $3, but in the store a large bottle is only 2 Yuan, about 30 cents. We have a fridge in our room so have kept it stocked from the store.

Even though we saw a lot of wonderful things, the highlight of my day was while I was putting Kievah into bed for her nap. I lay down beside her and leaned over to kiss her cheek. She leant over immediately afterwards and gave me a kiss on my cheek. This was a really special moment for me. Kievah has been very happy and content, but she has definitely been somewhat distant, not looking us directly in the eye very much and turning away when we reach out to hold her or take her hand. I guess it is to be expected, so it felt very very good to have her spontaneously show affection towards me.

Boat Ride

Feeding the Koi

Walking In The Park

Hunan Embroidery

No Bullfrog But...

They did have:

• Stir Fried Duck Tongues
• Braised Turtles
• Pan Cooked Snake

...and those were only a few of the extra "special" delicacies that they had to offer us on the buffet this evening... there were quite a few others like baby octopus, forest frog oil soup, and many pieces of pig that I coudn't recognize.

You may say I am just getting boring in my old age, but I couldn't pluck up the courage to try any of them. Thankfully there were also great noodles, fried rice, and even pizza!!

She is Officially Ours

The first picture is of the moment Kievah May legally became our daughter. First Chris and I placed our thumbprints over our signatures in red ink, and then Kievah's whole hand print was put on top in red ink, the picture shows her hand being printed. It is quite symbolic, the bright red ink almost like blood blending the three of our thumbs and hand prints together on the page. Under Chinese law she is offically our daughter now. Next week we will undertake the American portion of the adoption legalities. But, for the next 3 days we wait here in Changsha while her Chinese passport is applied for and delivered, and the adoption certificate notorized and authenticated.

The adoption paperwork and formalization took most of the morning, then we came back to the hotel, went for a walk (took a picture of the bonsai tree outside the hotel), made noodles in the room for lunch, and then had a nap. We had a lazy afternoon and shortly will go downstairs to eat dinner at the hotel buffet. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they do not have the delicious sounding "pan fried bullfrog" on the buffet. Chris was very tempted to order this last night when we ate in the other hotel restaurant where you order from a menu. I coerced him into a steak instead! If they do you will see a picture here later!

Tomorrow our guide will pick us up at 9am and we will go to see the Changsha museum, park and embroidery market.

Today has gone well with Kievah, though she has definitely been testing the boundaries with her new parents. "No", in English and Mandarin, has definitely been the word of the day! We just had a small breakthought when she asked me before doing something that I had told her not to do earlier. At least she asked :)

Adoption Day

Today is the day when the adoption will be finalized per Chinese law, and Kievah will be officially our daughter. Her Daddy picked out her outfit this morning, and it seems an appropriate day to have "Daddy's Little Princess" written on her shirt.

She slept brilliantly from 8pm until 6:30am, and woke with a big broad smile when she saw us both sitting on the bed. We had a large breakfast, and I think she tried nearly everything on the buffet. I stuck with my beans on toast :). She has been trying out some English words and said a very loud "Thank you" when I passed her something at breakfast.

We leave shortly for the civil affairs building so I had better run, but I will post more later today. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, I could not have imagined our first day going as well as it has.

A Couple More Pictures...

In the elevator and becoming Daddy's girl already!! Sorry the quality is a little poor.

We are so thankful for how well today has gone, we expected the transition to be much harder and I expect some mourning will still come in the days ahead. Apparently she was only picked up from her Foster family at 10am this morning and was quite sad to leave them. The Director said she cried for quite a while. We learned that her foster parents are an older couple whose children are already grown up and have left the home. Kievah was with them for 3 years. We were also told that she has been attending Kindergarten this year, and has done a small amount of writing in English. She is already imitating everything we say and for some reason finds the words "Thank You" hilarious, they crack her up every time we say them.

She is quite tired so we will be getting into jammies shortly and then to bed. More news tomorrow...

Proudly Introducing Kievah May Geiger...

This was our first meeting with Kievah. The three of us and then with the Director of the orphanage that she was from in HengYang City. Our first meeting went really well. She was quite shy at first, but that seems to be completely gone now - she is FULL of energy and very smart! WOW... I hope she settles down a little before we have to get on the plane - or it will be a VERY long 15 hours.

I will post more pictures soon.

Kievah loved all the presents that she was sent by friends at home, especially her sun glasses, necklace, and the portable DVD player hasn't been turned off for a second!

We just took a short walk to a small grocery store near the hotel, to pick up some bottled water, soda, and snacks. Shortly we will give our daughter (imagine I can say that now) a bath and then find some supper in the hotel restaurant. It has been a big day for all of us, and has gone much more smoothly than I expected, thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!

Thanks to Michele, our boys, Ben, Granny and Grandma, for the lovely last post with pictures of you all at home! It was just what I needed to see this morning. I miss you all very very much!

A Message for YOU From Home :)

Everyone misses you both and can't wait to meet their newest family member, Kievah :)

*posted by Michele

View from our Hotel

We woke early this morning, excitement and nervousness got the better of us I guess. We have been to breakfast, and yes I did eat beans on toast again! Chris was much more adventurous and had a little of everything I think, including chinese noodles with beef - looked more like dinner than breakfast to me. The buffet at this hotel is very cosmopolitan and included everything you would expect to see on a US hotel buffet, plus many things you wouldn't! I have to admit all I could think about, as I walked around looking at the choices, was what Kievah might eat tomorrow. I hope she is brave enough to point to whatever she likes.

The pictures are the view from our hotel window on the 31st floor. According to our guide Changsha is a medium sized city, with a population of about 3.5 million - pretty much the same as the whole of Ireland!

We have 6 hours left until we meet our daughter.

We are safely in Changsha

Hi everyone, we are safely in Changsha.  Our local guide met us at the airport, her name is Amy.  She has been assisting adopting families for over 10 years and has helped unite over 400 children with their forever families.  Her English is excellent and we know we are in good hands. 
 
Tonight we will get settled in our hotel, our room is on the 31st floor -and amazingly we are able to look DOWN on some fireworks in the city right now.  Tomorrow at 2:30pm Amy will pick us up and take us to meet Kievah at the Civil Affairs Office.  Apparently she will be brought from Hengyng City to Changsha by high speed train.  Tomorrow will be our first day with Kievah, the adoption will not be finalized until Tuesday but she will spend 24 hours with us first.  Amy promised to take us to Walmart on the way back from the Civil Affairs office so that we can buy some food and stock our room with a case of bottled water.
 
Since moving on to the mainland I am unable to connect directly with my blogsite, so I apologize if the formatting of this post and subsequent ones is poor.  I am posting via email and cannot see the end result.
 
I have asked my sister in law to keep an eye on it, so hopefully she can sort it out if it looks terrible.  I also hope she can post some pictures as I am not sure it will work for me via email.
 
Please remember us tomorrow and pray for Kievah, I am sure tomorrow will be the largest adventure in her life so far, and I cannot even begin to imagine what the enormity of the changes her life is about to go through feels like for a 6 year old.  Hopefully the next time I post it will be with Kievah here in our room!
 
The boys back home are doing well too, and my Mum sounds like she is surviving too :) 

Rainy Hong Kong

Yesterday was very rainy here in Hong Kong, but we still got in a little sight seeing. Such an amazing city.

I have heard from several folks that for some reason comments are not posting - sorry! I checked the settings and everything is fine. So I don't know why it won't work.

We fly on to Changsha this morning, in just a few hours. We will be there until Friday 2nd July. Tomorrow we meet Kievah!

Our first morning...

Jet lag is a real pain! Despite getting a good few hours sleep last night we still feel like it is time to go to bed at 9am, this morning...

We just enjoyed breakfast at the Hong Kong Airport Marri0tt Hotel. It is very nice and had a good assortment of american, british and chinese cuisine on the buffet. Much to Chris' disgust I had baked beans on toast - yum! He had some hasbrowns, bacon and scrambled egg. Then we were a little adventurous and sampled the noodle station - a cooked to order variety of noodles with fish, pork or mushroom balls. It was very good, though a little too fishy for Chris.

We were able to call home and speak to the boys and my Mum a short time ago. Please can you pray especially for our littlest son at home, Colm. He is really missing us and broke down in floods of tears at the sound of Chris' voice. He was still crying unconsolably when we hung up with Kieran and Conor. We intended to bring him with us, but due to the price of flights decided it would be better that he stay home. He was fine with that at the time, but now is definitely feeling the separation.


We are going to leave shortly to catch a train into down town Hong Kong, will post more later.

Landed in Hong Kong

We just landed in Hong Kong. We were delayed about 4 hours at Newark, and then were almost 16 hours in flight. I cannot say enough good things about C0ntinental Airlines. They gave us over $50 in Newark for meals and snacks, then travel certificates for $300 each good towards future flights and 10% off our next bookings. The flight was great. I watched 3 movies, including Invictus - that is a must see movie.

Well it is after midnight here so we are off to bed. More news and pictures of Hong Kong tomorrow.

I am so excited to finally be here. 2 days until we meet our daughter.

Waiting in Newark...

Our flight is delayed until 7pm. Good job Chris has his car magazine :)

We're Going To China!

The kids TV show Kai-lan has an episode where she goes to China and the song from it "We're Going to China" has been running through our heads all week - helped of course by Colm playing the DVD of it 100 times a day every day!

We are all packed and ready to leave in an hour. My sister in law Michele kindly offered to take us to the airport. We fly from Newark directly to Hong Kong and will land as those in the US are waking tomorrow morning - the flight time is 16 hours.

We are happy to finally be on our way to meet our daughter. We will receive her on Monday China time, Sunday evening in the US.

Please keep us in your thoughts as we travel, and especially remember my Mum and Chris' Mom at home with the boys. Colm had a little wobble this morning when he realized today was the day we were leaving. He hasn't been away from one of us since the day we adopted him and I think we will miss him even more than he misses us.

More news from Hong Kong...

Packing...

Packing for a girl is REALLY different than packing for a boy! Definitely having fun developing my pink and fluffy side :)

Two more sleeps and we are off to China!

Adoption Updates - Sadness and Joy

Shortly after we received our long awaited adoption referral acceptance for Carrick, we received a second phone call. On Jan 4th our adoption agency shared the sad sad news that Carrick had gone home to heaven following a sudden and severe lung infection. We were all in shock and disbelief. We had been our son and part of our family for 18 months, even though we had not met him face to face. It is still hard to believe we will never meet him this side of heaven, and we mourn him still.

I haven't blogged at all since Dec, but wanted to restart using this blog because we have some exciting news...

After some contemplation and prayer we determined we should move ahead with another adoption, and in March received the referral for a 6 year old girl - yes girl! She is from Hunan province in the South of China, and has cerebral palsy like Colm, affecting her left arm and leg. We will be traveling to meet her and bring her home on June 24th, and I will be using this blog to send updates to family and friends along our journey...

So watch this space and follow along with us as we welcome Kievah May Geiger into our family!