In any case, we were told that the first 24 hours were the Harmonious Period and we we very, very lucky in that it actually (mostly) matched the title.
The previous night, a 7:00am wake-up call seemed like a good idea. It would give us a chance to get some sleep and still have time for breakfast before our scheduled 10:00am ride to get the next set of paperwork completed (at two different locations in the city, of course). I mean, c'mon, that's a whole three hours, plenty of time!
Not exactly. We still had to figure out a morning routine that included waking, changing, feeding, and re-changing a slightly crochety 13-month-old along with all the usual preparations PLUS making sure we had even more paperwork ready to go... and then figuring out what we needed in The Big Red Bag (the baby bag AJ had brought along just for Miri's stuff). I won't go into details, but we walked into the dining room for breakfast with just 25 minutes to go. (Lessons learned, believe me.)
I have to admit that I still miss most of that breakfast buffet. There were plenty of choices of Eastern and Western foods along with baskets holding all kinds of different breads & pastries. The only negative (aside from having to practically inhale what I chose) was the innocuous-looking green bean dish I elected to try, only to discover that it was spicy enough to peel paint off the wall at 30 paces. We also solved a long-standing family question.. If we call certain restaurants in the U.S. "Chinese," what are American-style restaurants called there? Turns out (according to the hotel signage), they're called "Western Restaurants," and now you know, too.
Our first stop was the building where we'd first met Miri , with the same crazy-small, sauna-like elevators. We were even ushered into the same room as the previous day. For me, the place felt friendly & familiar. Something very special had happened for us there; it could've been a run-down log cabin in the wilderness and still had a positive sense about it.
I didn't mention it in yesterday's post, but for a short time on Gotcha Day we'd shared the room with a Canadian family, and they were also back to do paperwork. Unlike our girls, they were adopting a slightly older little girl who was able to jump & run with ease. She began playing on the big plastic slide/tunnel in one end of the room, and after going down the slide a couple of times complained (in a combination of Chinese, sign language, and general pointing & nodding) that there was a wet spot at the bottom that had dampened her underpants. Next thing we knew, she had stripped off everything she was wearing from the waist down & began sliding again, happy as a lark! Her new teenage sister was trying desperately to get her to put her clothing back on (made it harder by how hard they were both laughing), and all of a sudden the little one laughingly took off down the hall at full speed, still naked from the waist down. Our last contact with the teen was her voice receding down the hall calling, "Mom! I need your help!" to the vast amusement of everyone on the floor.
The same group of people who'd brought the girls on Gotcha Day arrived, and it turned out that the older woman was the head nanny and the gentleman with her was the director of the SWI. The formal gifts were given and we had one last chance to ask any questions we had about the girls. We were given official documents of adoption in red leatherette books (complete with attached official portrait) and a few other important items, and then it was time to head for the next appointment.
Just as we were leaving, something really interesting happened. The head nanny went to say goodbye to each of the girls, all being held by their new mommies -- and each of them actively recoiled from her when she went to give them a hug. The poor woman was obviously embarassed (and maybe a little hurt) but everyone just let it pass. Miri was supposedly one of the SWI director's favorites and had no problem when he approached to say goodby, but for the past decade I've wondered why the little ones were so unhappy about the head nanny reaching for them while they were essentially being held by complete strangers...
Our next stop was a Justice Ministry building, where we pulled through a gate into a courtyard that had been converted into one of the ubiquitous basketball courts we saw everywhere in the city. We drove past the baskets to the front door and waited while Lisa ran in to check on our arrangements. She came out a while later to warn us the waiting room was full so we'd have to wait in the lobby... which had no air conditioning. (I forgot to mention that the temperatures were again in the high 90s with equally opressive humidity.)
We waited on our air-conditioned bus for about 20 minutes before filing into the sauna-like lobby for a few sweaty minutes until there was enough room in the official waiting room. Once there, we found the air conditioning was a refrigerator-sized portable unit whose effects could really be felt only within a few feet of the air outlet, but this was the last required provincial paperwork so we gamely just sweated it out. Conversations picked up between our group and other waiting families -- a Finnish couple and a family from Texas whom we'd seen at our hotel earlier. One thing that struck me was that when the Finns spoke to each other it sounded very different from Mandarin but was just as alien to me... another reminder that we were all strangers in a strange land.
Each family was called down the hall to the Magistrate's office in turn until it was finally AJ's turn -- but I had to stay in the waiting room because I wasn't going to be an actual parent. While I sweated quietly, AJ & Miri sat in the Magistrate's office where the same crew from the SWI we'd just left at the other location handed in their part of the paperwork. AJ then handed over her required papers and answered a few formal questions before giving something of an oath that she would provide for the baby's needs and ensure she got an education in the States... and then there were some thumbprints (and Miri's inked footprints) on some new papers, and then an official stamp on a specific document, and all of a sudden the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region officially considered the Pipsqueak to be part of our family.
We returned to the hotel in high spirits for lunch and some free time. The S and B families invited us to join them in the hotel pool (the good one, not the green & fuzzy one) but we weren't in our room too long before Miri conked out in Mommy's lap... followed shortly by Mommy herself. I woke AJ just long enough to help the two of them stretch out on one of the beds, and then quietly occupied myself at the computer while they slept. I couldn't help but notice that even when she was asleep, AJ would not let go of her daughter...
The scene was quiet and peaceful... and then the Pipsqueak woke up. As I said in a post years ago, "Omigawd, you would've thought the room was populated by a flock of banshees... being chased by howler monkeys... carrying megaphones." We had no idea how such a small person could produce such a big noise, and there seemed to be no way to quiet her.
Somewhere between luck and desperation, we found the solution: pick her up and carry her. Do not stand still for over 15 seconds; do not make a motion to put her down; do not attempt to sit while holding her; do not pass Go; do not collect $200... AJ and I spent the rest of the afternoon taking turns walking around the room with Miri in our arms, switching off when back/arms/knees/legs gave out (sometimes all at once). I also made an interesting discovery as I went to wipe a bit of drool from the side of the Pipsqueak's mouth and she slurped on my finger for a moment... and then bit me! Turns out the kiddo was teething while adjusting to all the changes, something I was not jealous of despite the pain in my lower back.
Finally, just as AJ and I were becoming truly desperate for a break, Miri fell asleep -- just minutes before we had to all get back on the bus for a scheduled (and necessary) shopping trip. This soon became a hallmark behavior of the Pipsqueak, who spent the rest of our time in China dozing off just as we were either scheduled to go somewhere or just as we arrived somewhere.
We got Little Miss Crochety onto the bus for what turned out to be the wildest ride of the trip. Our hotel was in an area with lots of wide roads, but we were headed into the city center where there were far fewer linear feet of asphalt than there were linear feet of cars. Despite the crazy dense traffic, our driver was intent upon getting us to Walmart as quickly as was humanly possible.
Oh, yes-- I did indeed say Walmart. We had flown halfway around the planet to a communist country to go shopping at a Walmart. Welcome to my world...
In any case, our driver seemed to think his vehicle was Harry Potter's knight bus and drove accordingly... and then it happened. A taxi whose driver must have taken the same training course as ours decided to make an illegal U-turn in the middle of the busy multi-lane road and came to a complete stop directly in front of us. Our driver didn't see it, and I was about to yell something when he did see it and literally stood on the brakes. I don't know where our vehicle's excess energy was translated to in the universe, but we actually stopped inches shy of the taxi. Correction: the bus stopped; its contents continued moving according to Newtonian law. By the time everything inside the bus was stationary, Papa S had migrated violently from the rearmost seat on the bus to a backwards-facing position in the aisle just a couple of feet behind the driver, bouncing off Lisa on along the way with enough force to also knock her off her seat. Amazingly, he only had a small cut on his leg, she only had a bruise, and all the flying baby bags and family members had settled into their new positions & locations around the bus without further damage. I don't understand Mandarin, but I had no trouble understanding the few choice words Lisa had with our driver... and the rest of our trip proceeded in a far less terrifying manner.
At least it seemed that way, until the driver made the 90-degree turn into the entrance for the underground parking garage used by Walmart and the rest of the very large building it was located in. My first impression was that the ceiling was a whole lot closer than it should have been... and then it got even closer. That's "close" as in the air conditioning unit on the roof sticking up about 9" higher than several unavoidable pipes. With Lisa in the lead, we all got off and walked the rest of the way through the garage to the Walmart entrance, leaving our driver to figure out how to back out of the place with a steadily growing line of increasingly annoyed cars & drivers behind him.
As the only non-Asians in Walmart, it was hard to not notice the curious glances (and occasional outright stares) from other shoppers but we simply pretended to not see and everything was fine. Lisa pointed us in the general direction of strollers & baby clothes and then set off with Papa S to find some first aid supplies. We all met up at a display of strollers and quickly picked up three of the same model. We then picked up some clothes for the kiddos (which could not be done in advance because we had no way to know the correct sizes) and diapers (the size of which AJ guessed wrong), and then took a little time to see what Walmart looked like in China. (Note to the curious: It looks very much like any other Walmart until you reach the supermarket section.) The checkout area was a chaotic tight squeeze, and that's where we learned the hard way that we should've brought our own shopping bags.
We stepped out into the mini-mall on the first floor of the building, purses & baby bags filled to the brim, then passed through a curtain of heavy plastic strips onto a pedestrian shopping street. I had been growing accustomed to seeing massive outdoor TVs on the sides of buildings wherever we went, and this mall had one of its own, at least 20 feet in the air and measuring about 35 feet across. We walked under the archway formed by the TV to the street, where we found our amazingly unscathed bus waiting to take us to dinner.
Dinner was at a restaurant tucked into a downtown neighborhood, where we were ushered past the regular local dinner crowd into a hot & muggy private room in the back. The hostess turned on another one of those big portable air conditioners, turned on the TV mounted high in one corner, and left us for a few minutes. Dinner turned out to be varied, tasty, and filling... and the Pipsqueak was back to her usual curious and expressive self. To paraphrase what I typed into our original travel blog later that evening, I had fun watching AJ try to eat while simultaneously trying to feed Miri, trying to keep Miri from grabbing anything in a 2-foot radius, trying to not end up wearing Miri's food, and trying to stop Miri from sticking non-edibles into her mouth. (Yes, I did help my sister out!)
Up to this point, we had both been wondering about a gap in the otherwise detailed itinerary set up by the adoption agency. Every inter-city flight was specified but somehow it showed us in Nanning one day and Guilin the next with nary a vehicle listed. On the way back to the hotel, Lisa explained that we would all have to be downstairs in the hotel lobby by 10:00am with all our luggage for the five-hour bus ride to our next hotel in downtown Guilin. Having just survived a couple of crazy bus episodes and knowing that the kiddos' last long-distance bus ride had been the 4-½ hour trip from the SWI to Nanning, we all exchanged nervous looks but those were the arrangements, so that's what we would do.
Back in our room, AJ and I discovered that all the new baby clothing & diapers took up even more space than all the official gifts we'd given away in the morning... so much for "extra space" in the suitcases! We managed to cram everything into the suitcases, carry-ons, and Big Red Bag (now officially named that by unanimous consent). All that food-flinging at dinner had left Miri tuckered out and mellow, so she and Mommy spent a little quiet bonding time together before lights out.
AJ & Miri both fell asleep quickly, but after taking some photos & videos of the neon-clad nearby buildings I lay awake in bed for a while and went over the past couple of days' events. We really did not have a chance to tour around Nanning and I felt a little regret at the missed chance. I was also feeling some of the old familiar melancholy from our Foreign Service days, knowing that it was unlikely I would ever return to a place where something very special had happened in my life. Even so, the occasional mini-snore from the crib beside AJ's bed was a happy reminder of the reason for being there in the first place; my melancholy melted away and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
Next post: AJ & I "celebrate" Mom's 76th birthday with the Bus Ride From Hell....!
No comments:
Post a Comment