Patrick Hao woke up at 2:40 A.M. Mary was able to get him back to sleep without much fuss. He got up for good at 4:15 A.M. Mary got out of bed with him at 5:00 and along with Cindy fed him a bowl of rice cereal. I got out of bed at 7:00 A.M. I was in/out of sleep because of Patrick’s idea of playing. This mainly includes banging any hard object on another hard object to produce a loud sound. Followed by laughter at a high decibel level. We got showered and dressed and then had to wake up Lucas Ming. We’re all envious. We are all very tired from the lack of sleep.
We went down to the breakfast buffet. We were amazed. First by the sheer amount/diversity of food. And second by the fact that there were all of these American couples with little Chinese babies. To this point there were only a handful of Americans in the hotels that we have stayed at. And last, it was nice not to have to respond to any of the many crying babies in this room. Because it is the rare occasion that our boys cry when there is food around. Ha!!!
We met Jason at 9:40 A.M. so that we could walk over to get the visa photos and the boys’ physicals. The last time we took official photos of the boys they were bawling the whole time. Today was a little better. The photographer was much quicker and therefore able to get pictures before the crying started. The physical was another thing completely. We walked into this clinic with a lot of waiting people but Jason walked us through to the Adoptive Medicine clinic. There were three stations for each of the boys to go through. In the first they measured their heads which started them screaming (we are very happy that we can share this with the boys home country). This is also called the surgical area. They check to make sure that all of the body parts are in the right places. A woman who we believe was a doctor checked the boys and then a man who must have been the head of the clinic showed up. He pulled aside Lucas Ming’s diaper and grabbed what there was of his testicles. Lucas was not completely hysterical until this point. Guys, you can imagine what came next. The next station was to measure and weigh the boys. This is the easy part, unless you are starting out with two crazed kids, one of which who has just had his gonads squeezed. The last station was my favorite. They checked the boys hearing. In order to do this they have the kids, who are screaming at the top of their lungs, sit on their parents laps for comfort facing away from the examiner. Next they have a bevy of objects that make noises of different tones. They play a couple keys on a little organ and see if the child responds by turning his/her head. After the child doesn’t respond to any of the sounds because they cannot hear them above their own screaming, they ask the parent if the child can hear. Then they record the results. Now we are done. Except now we have to pay 500 Yuan (approx. $60) per boy. What took the longest during this whole process was putting shoes back on two hysterical children. **A year after we got home we found out from an otolaryngologist that both boys are completely deaf in their left ears. So much for the high teach testing they did at the clinic**
As a side note. There is a single mom from Michigan staying at the hotel who was adopting a three year old boy. We have not seen her yet because she has been ill with stomach problems. We feel very badly for her. Not because this is the best city to sightsee in and she is missing all this but because this is supposed to be a great and happy experience and she cannot even sit upright. We hope that she is better soon. She was going to bring along a friend of hers (who has nine children) as a travel partner. The woman could not go at the last minute so she brought along the only person who was available to travel, the friend’s eleven year old daughter. This little girl was adopted from China when she was two years old and she wears hearing aids in both ears. She is filling in while the single mom is ill. So we are keeping an eye on her during our walk to our appointments. We start talking to her and find that she is not really eleven, but a thirty year old graduate school student. She is very bright and personable and doesn’t seem to be intimidated by anything. We are impressed. In talking with her she tells us that the country of her birth is not all she thought it would be. But she is not sorry that she came. The little boy took to her like they had been friends forever. I know that her parents are proud of her and that the single mom she is traveling with is very grateful to have her along.
Mary and Cindy took the boys back to the hotel and Jason took me over to the US Consulate to pay the visa fees. They gave us the option of using cash or AMEX. We are getting a boatload of points and might as well get some more. Well, I know that a lot of you know what is coming next, I got into a discussion with the consulate people. I promise that I was trying to behave…I gave them my card and they were charging each of the fees separately. During this, they took the cash that Jason had for the single mom. On one of my receipts they put the other woman’s name. I asked to have the transaction cancelled and redone to reflect my name. Apparently this is not a transaction that they are taught. By the way, all of the employees in this section are Chinese citizens. The clerk and our facilitator tried to convince me that both receipts would be good for tax purposes. I explained that I didn’t really care about this. Mary and I had spent six months filling out paperwork and I wasn’t going to start cutting corners now. I was seeing us at immigration at LAX and them saying that we cannot enter the country because one of the visas was not paid for correctly. Finally I told them they were going to do this my way and I wasn’t leaving until they did. I was expecting the Marines to storm the place at this point but they didn’t. When we walked in there was nobody else waiting to conduct any transactions. Now there were four people waiting. An American citizen asked if he could just pay for his transaction. I turned and told him he could, when they were finished with mine and it was correct. Unlike my cousin Steven who runs into someone he knows anywhere in the world, I have this ability to make friends in any language. Part of the problem was that the clerk did not know how to conduct this transaction and he did not want to lose face. Finally after about twenty minutes we got this done correctly. Needless to say, I will probably not get an invite to the next black tie gala.
Meanwhile, back at the room Mary and Cindy were having a hard time getting the boys down for a nap. That might have something to do with getting their privates squeezed and the trauma that followed. Finally Patrick Hao took a nap and after Mary took Lucas for twenty laps around the twenty-seventh floor in a stroller she too took a nap. I played with Lucas until Cindy offered to take him down to the play room for a while. Patrick and Mary woke up and Cindy and Lucas came back to the room and we fed the boys.
At 2:30 P.M. we met with Jason and the other couple in our group for a tour of Guangzhou. Our first stop was the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. It was built in the year 537 by the Liang dynasty. This is a very beautiful landmark. We had the boys blessed by a Buddhist monk, in front of one of the few female Buddha shrines. This was a five minute ceremony and the boys squirmed a bit but not too badly. It is very hot again today so we are happy that there is some shade here. Our next stop was a government run porcelain shop (sales stop). We were told before hand that we COULD negotiate on the prices here. Mary found two porcelain statues of Rams (the boys birth sign). So I negotiated a price that we could live with. It didn’t hurt the negotiations that everyone is amazed by the boys and their antics. Our final stop was an art museum. This museum was formally the Chen family temple. There were some beautiful relics and a lot of newer art work that included a brass sculpture garden and embroidered paintings.
