Gift Giving..... the Chinese Way!

One of the things we will need to be prepared to do while in China is hand a gift to every Chinese government person we meet with along the way! That means.... the orphanage caregiver that brings Grace to us, the Registration officials, the Notary Officials, and the Passport Officials. Our agency gives us a list of items that we should purchase (not to be deviated from!) and the total number of gifts we will need to have (we will need 9). They also tell us not to worry about the gender of the person who will receive the gift.....if we give a man perfume.... he'll be just as happy because he can take it home to his wife. If we give a woman a compact tool set....she'll get points with the husband when she gets home from work! The other items on the list are American made candy or chocolate, a nice pen, quality stationary, cosmetics, official sports caps and T-shirts, and scarves! The next rule is - all items must be given in a red gift bag! I've bought all the red gift bags in Wallmart to date and am waiting for the next shipment! I've been accumulating a few gifts - a scarf, a bottle of perfume, and a couple of Chicago Cub hats (again, from Wallmart....their variety of sports stuff is OK - I checked with the agency to see how "official" - "official" meant!) I am being especially careful to buy things that are not made in China (or to remove the tell-tale tag....like on the hats!) as I think this would defeat the purpose of presenting a special "American" gift! Just as I'd never show up at your house for dinner without a bottle of wine....I guess every culture truly has their gift giving mores!

Another step!!

Many of you have asked me if we've heard any more from China....and do we know yet when we are going???? Here's the latest.....

Believe it or not, after 4 years of waiting, we've actually been holding up the process a bit at this point! Once you get the child "referral" (all the info about YOUR child), and all the zillions of pieces of paper are signed, notorized, and sent to the agency.....the agency issues a Lettter of Intent (to adopt). When this letter is documented in China, the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) in Beijing sends a Letter of Acceptance to our agency in Colorado. The agency sends this all important letter on to us . We sign this LOA, as it is called by the ever present assortment of acronyms.... send it back to our agency..... and they send it back to China. I actually explained those steps in an earlier blog entry, but this is a refresher course in case you weren't paying attention!! (Don't worry, there's no quiz at the end!)

Once that LOA arrives in China, the CCAA will send your travel orders within 2-4 weeks. Once you have those travel orders....things really start happening fast! The travel department at our agency contacts the U.S. Consulate's office in Guangzhou (a city in southern China) to make an appointment for us. At this appointment we present the child and make it "official" that we are going to take her out of China with us as our daughter! Once that Consulate appointment is scheduled...arrangments such as flights and hotels are made at lightning speed and we will be on our way to China within weeks!

So....now that I've taken a short story and made it a long one.......our family could not travel until August, so we asked the agency to hold onto the LOA. We didn't want it returned to China right away because we needed to slow down the process by about a month. (Rachel is in a play at UWP that ends Aug. 8th so our target date to travel is any day after that!)

Our agency emailed me yesterday with the news that we are going ahead with the next step! They feel it's time to return our LOA to China..... so their staff in Beijing will be delivering our LOA to the CCAA office this week! That means that between 2 and 4 weeks from now - we will know when our travel date is !! Then I can officially kick it into high gear and attempt to finish all the projects on my "List of things to do before we go to China"! We can then start the count-down to the exact date when we will hold our new little daughter for the first time.....the end result we've all been waiting for!!!

OUCH!!

One of the many things on my "to do" checklist to prepare for our trip was to get our immunization shots for travel to China. We knew there would be quite a few shots that we each would need so a family outing to the doctor's office seemed to be the best way to get this done! Hepatitus A and B (very serious diseases that affect the liver) are still prevalent in China so shots to prevent those diseases went in the right arm first. Typhoid (contracted from contaminated food and water) was the next vaccine.....into the left arm (as this arm would end up being sore!). We made sure James baseball throwing arm was not affected in this process!! The next disease we needed to worry about was Malaria which we will actually take pills to deter from contracting. We will take 1 pill a week for 6 weeks (before, during and after the trip). The biggest OUCH was the price tag that came with all these immunizations....over $1,000....but obviously staying healthy is worth it!

We're sending a little "care" to Grace in a package!

Recently we were given the info we needed to send a care package to Grace at the orphanage in China. The adoption agency told us that often the orphanage finds out that a child is being adopted with the arrival of a care package from their new family! As I go through my day, I often imagine what Grace is doing right now - sleeping....maybe playing, eating breakfast, getting dressed....Next Monday (if not a few days sooner) she will be opening a box full of toys, clothes, candy, a camera, and her first look at her new family! The coolest thing we put in the box was a book I made for her (with some help from Copyworks) with photos of each of us: Mother, Father, Big Sister, Big Brother, Grandpa, 2 Grandmas....our animals - Oreo, Sherman, Nickle and a picture of our house. I used the computer to translate these "titles" into Chinese characters and pasted the Chinese name next to each photo. I had each page cut to 8" x 6", laminated, and all the pages put together with a spiral binding. The front cover is this picture of Grace on the blog - with the Chinese words for WE LOVE YOU! The agency gave us a "cover letter" for the box, written in Chinese, that asks the Nannies at the orphanage to give her the gifts and explain to her about the new life she will soon have with a new family. The disposable camera in the box is for the Nannies to use to take pictures of the orphanage, Grace's friends, caregivers....anything to document her life in China. Since we won't be going to the orphanage to get Grace, these pictures will be the only ones she will have of her "beginning". Someone from the orphanage will be bringing Grace to the city of Xian to meet us. The cover letter makes our request that they take these pictures and bring the camera with Grace when they meet us in Xian.

Please say a prayer for this little one....a prayer that God will speak to her heart and let her know that this change is a wonderful thing in her life....that she won't be frightened of our white faces and hair that is not jet black.... that she won't mourn too long for the world she is leaving...... As nervous and anxious as we are to meet our daughter, I keep reminding myself that she will be even more uncertain and scared. Hopefully, our "care" in a package will introduce Grace to the concept of family... and show her we are already loving her!