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| all the bags ready to go |
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| waiting in Guangzhou |
Shaun was not a good passenger on the first flight, he cried,
screamed and fought us most of the way to Beijing. The only time he was calm was when we were
feeding him.
In Beijing he did fine other than he did not like to have
shoes on. Getting through Beijing airport
is terrible. You have to pick up all of
your bags and get them on a cart and move to another terminal. Robin got instructions from a lady and they
were wrong. They always tell you to turn
left. We bumped into another family that
was traveling to Seattle and they showed us to the elevators. It was about a 10 minute walk to the
international terminal. My luggage cart
was so loaded and Robin was pushing the stroller. We asked the information desk for directions
and were told go 100 meters and turn left.
When we went what seemed like 100 meters the men’s room was on the left. We started backtracking and found 2 others
from our flight and several other Americans all looking for the place to check
in for our flights. Turns out there is a little sign painted on the floor that
a guy noticed and it advises you to go through the security line and check in
on the other side. We went that way and
found the correct counter to check in for our flight.
Check in went smooth then we were off to Customs and
Immigration counters. At Immigration we
bumped into another family from our travel group and ended up having dinner
with them since we all had time before our flights.
We made it to the gate and only had about 30 minutes to kill
and then it was time to fly again.
Seating could have been better. I
had the window, Shaun had the isle and Robin had the seat across the aisle from
us. So daddy had Shaun duty for the long
flight. Overall he was a great passenger
on this flight. He slept some, ate,
slept a little more. He would not watch
TV so keeping him entertained was fun at times.
He head butted me a few times, slapped me, drooled on me, cried some and
screamed a few times. But compared to
flight number 1 he was great.
He does not like being belted in so on the landing approach
to Seattle I just held him. They asked
me to seat him and I said last week he was a lap child so we are going to do it
this way. In Seattle we made it through
the first step of immigration quickly and then they took us along with the famous
brown envelop over to another counter that only had 1 agent working and he had
a line of immigrants in wheel chairs. He
informed us that he had to take care of wheel chairs first and there were 3
others ahead of us after that. Finally
we had our turn and they processed Shaun and he became a citizen of the US. He slept through the entire waiting and
process. The agent was very nice just he
needed help at that area.
We had several hours to kill so walked around a bit, sat a
little, called friends etc. Finally it
was time to fly to Boise. Shaun was not
a good traveler on this leg either, he hit and screamed unless you were feeding
him Cheerio’s. Thankfully this was a short
flight.
We met up with Andrew, Kim and the girls. It was so good to
see everyone and to have 5 of our 7 kids in one place finally. Shaun took to Andrew, Kim and the girls
quickly and even warmed up to their dog.
He had so much fun playing that he stayed up until 10 pm and we had to
force him to bed then.
His first night of sleep was fairly good and today he has
had fun spending time with family. |
| Robin with Shiyan, Laura, Andrew and Shaun |
I have to say that in many ways this has been the most
difficult adoption trip we have ever made.
It was hard leaving our other kids behind. The boys all have their own routines so we
don’t miss them as much but we missed the girls terribly the entire trip. Robin has been sick with a bad cough since the
day before we left for the trip. I had
the stomach thing in China and many from our group were also impacted by this
stomach thing, I have never had anything like this. Shaun has presented several challenges, his
coping mechanisms seem to be eating and anger.
He has hit at us, slapped us,
head butted us, etc. He can be totally
unresponsive at times and does not like English. Often it seems he would have preferred to be
with anyone other than us. It is
difficult when you are trying to love a child and he would rather be with
anyone that speaks Mandarin. He will
reach for waitress to hold him he strains to listen to anyone speaking his
language. Then there are times when you
get that laugh and smile and you know it is all worth it. The anger is getting better, the laughs are
more frequent by the day. We still have
a few more flights to make it home from this stop over and we pray that he does
well on these.
On the positive side, the weather in China was nearly perfect. It was warmer than expected in Zhengzhou but
overall good. The smog was clearer than we ever expected. We had an excellent travel group and made
some new friends. The weather in
Guangzhou was great, it has been the rainy season and had rained daily for
weeks but during our stay we only had a few sprinkles. We got out of the country before the
earthquake hit, we had no major flight delays or issues. So overall a lot of blessings in there
too. We are so thankful for the
blessings and answered prayers from this trip.
Today we have enjoyed time with Andrew and Kim. We went out to see some sites and have enjoyed being together.
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| Andrew, Kim and the girls |
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| Us on Table Rock overlooking Boise |
Thank you to each of you that followed the journey and for
those that prayed for us during this trip.
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