Well, we had said that we would play it by ear in terms of what activities we would and would not participate in. Thursday was one of those days. I wasn’t exactly feeling up to snuff so we decided we would have a quiet day and just rest up. The rest of the group did take in the Panda Zoo and a trip to an Ink Painting shop. The group was kind enough to pick up a small stuffed panda and an ink painting for us. The ink painting is actually painted on the veins of big-leaf Banyan tree leaves, which are the city tree of Chongqing.Friday was the day that we finalized our Chinese paperwork. Samantha is now officially and forever ours. Then it was off to the airport and Samantha’s first plane ride. This was another basically uneventful flight with excellent service from our local guides. The only thing that we would have preferred would have been to have an earlier flight, but given the paperwork that had to be finalized I don’t think that we could have done any better. Our flight didn’t arrive back into Beijing until 7:00 pm and it was almost 8:30 by the time we got to the hotel and checked in. It was another hour before our luggage, along with the bags that we had stored here, made it to our room. We decided not to bath Samantha and just got her settled and asleep, which at that took until almost 11:00. We then got our luggage unpacked and sorted and finally made it to bed ourselves.
I’ve included a few shots that we took while in Chongqing to give you a flavour of what the city was like.
Today has been pretty good. Samantha woke up once early in the night and we gave her a small drink of water (thanks Joanne and Sandra for your words of advice) and she went promptly back to sleep. She then slept until 6:00 when she started to fuss. Shirley made a small bottle of formula and fed her while she slept and she was good until 8:30. Of course Shirley and I were now awake and took advantage of this time to get showered and take care of some things. I took off in search of more water – something you get used to here since none of the tap water is drinkable, although the tap in the bathroom in this hotel says drinking water. What I hadn’t taken into consideration as I left the room is that today is Saturday, and shopping would have a different time schedule. Starbucks doesn’t open until 8:30, the grocery store doesn’t open until 10:00, nor does the other mall across the street. I did find a small grocery store which was no bigger than our typical corner store, so did manage to find some water. What I also found along the way was a KFC and Dairy Queen – we already know where the McDonald’s is.
The only appointment that we really had today was with a photographer to get Samantha’s picture taken for a Canadian visa which she’ll need since she will be traveling on a Chinese passport. Our guide had also arranged to have a couple of tailors to come in with some fabrics. One tailor came in with silk so we have ordered a couple of dresses for Samantha. The other had some wool fabrics so I felt compelled to order a suit. Shirley passed on both.
One of the things that we hadn’t gotten yet, but will need tomorrow is a stroller. Shirley and some of the other girls entrusted the babies with their fathers and went shopping. We had originally thought we would just buy a cheap one and worse case throw it away at the end of the trip. She didn’t find an appropriate selection that she liked, but found a nice little stroller that, although probably more that we had originally wanted, is quite nice and we plan to take it home. Life back in the room was quite uneventful – basic dirty diaper, couple of bottles of formula, cereal, some play time, walks around the hotel, etc. Lots of smiles and only a few tears. All indications are that Samantha is adjusting quite well to her new family – not going into the bonding discussion since it will be quite some time before we are able to tell whether bonding has occurred, not occurred, or really ever was an issue.
For now we’ll just give you a glimpse of what our darling daughter looks like when she smiles. It took a while for it to come out, but we're seeing it more and more often as the days go by.
Then again ... there are times when she's just had enough of daddy and his camera.
