McNaughton's China Trip

After our mid-morning nap, we went to...

Wal-Mart Supercenter!! Let me tell you it was a sight to behold. There were 74 check out registers, read that again -74!! Every one of the them was cued up 7-10 people deep for the 2+ hours we were there -- on a normal Wednesday morning. Hmmm, there must be something to this captialism idea -- just a thought.

Most of the guys noticed one could buy a motor scooter for less than $200.

After afternoon nap time we went on a little stroll through the neighborhood. I think it's a pretty easy game to play spot the gringo in this picture. People are not shy about staring long and hard, but we'd duck into these little mom and pop stores and check out the tchatkas.

Then we had bath time with duckies we bought at Wal-Mart.

And a dinner with our group, mommy got a big smile from baby girl. Note the I love Grandma bib!!

Time for bed.

Hi again.

This morning we went to the local adoption office and did the adoption registration and applied for the passport. Then we went over the notary man and had to have all the paperwork notarized. At this point we're done with all the local provicial paperwork. We will pick up birth certificate and abondonment certificate on Friday and the passport on Monday, 4 Sep. On Monday afternoon we'll be in Guangzhou to do the U.S. paperwork at the Consulate.

So for the next 5 days we'll have some extrememly important bonding time with Sarah. Kids - we showed her your pictures and she reached out to touch the picture. She's not really prone to reach out for stuff yet and when you try to hold her hand she'll pull it away more often that not. We're learning her little signals and just enjoying getting to know her. When she's awake, she want to be held and for us to be standing up, anything short of that usually gets some crying. She can sit up on her own very well and kinds of scoots around on the floor but doesn't crawl. I've held her hands to have her walk, but if I put my hands under her arms she'll let her legs go limp so I'll pick her up.

We met the orphange director today, nice lady. She said Sarah does in fact like to be held all the time, that she doesn't like strangers and hates doctors in white coats. Luckily she was one of the most healthy in the orphanage, reportedly having a slight cold only twice.

I have some pictures but they are still in my camera and someone is borrowing our transfer cord, so I'll update this entry later.

Nap time is over...got to go.

Hi everybody,

We've got Sarah! She's sleeping now and we are going to bed too (we don't want to give her to much of a head start on us). But we wanted you all to meet her. Here's a few pictures, one of mommy when they called out her name and Shellye went to pick her up, then one with daddy and one with mommy and daddy.

She holds out her arms to each of us when we pass her back and forth. She had a squished up banana and rice with milk for dinner that daddy fed to her with a spoon. Then we went back to the room and she had a bottle and went to bed. She is so sweet.

Hey,

I'm very tired so this'll be short. Todya we started in Tienamen Square. Here's a picture of Shellye and me by the monument in the middle of the Square and a shot of us with the Chairman (and I don't mean the CJCS) outside the third (outermost) gate to the Forbidden City.

Here's a shot of us after we passed throught city and went out the back where the Emperor's residence was.


Then after lunch we went to the Great Wall. Here's us at the place where we started up, a shot of one of the many steep, steep parts and us near the end as we made our way back down.

We're leaving in the morning to fly to Nangchang to pick up Sarah. Please continue to lift us up in prayer along with the other families traveling here.

We took a tour of the old city today, an area called Hu Tong. It's this labarynth of little alley-like roads with family houses sharing a common courtyard. Old city. Here's a picutre of Shellye and me in our rickshaw before the tour. Afterward we went up into the old Drum tower where the drums were beaten to tell the city, among other things, what time it was. Across the plaza was a bell-tower with a 63-ton bell (behind us in the picture).

We went back to the hotel and then went out to eat at this little chop-house for lunch. Very yummy. After a 30-minute power nap we were off to an acrobat show that was recommended to me by a guy I know in the Embassy here. Here is a picture of the front off the theater. We've never seen anything like it. Just when you thought they couldn't do anything more incredible they'd wow us again. The folks we went with said it was similiar to Circus Solei in terms of the talent performing. There's just no way to describe it in words on a blog.

After the show, that's when the high-adventure started. The same guy who told us about the show also recommended an "authentic" place to get Peking Duck. We had the name of restaurant written on a piece of paper and we showed it this cab driver. Thirty-minutes and $4 later (cabs are cheap!!) we were in the general area and we were supposed to walk down these little alleys to find the place. It wasn't the picture of personal security but we finally found it. If the word "joint" exists in Chinese, this place would have had its picture in the dictionary definition, loud, smokey, greasy, packed -- but with great food. We had a "reservation" for a general time period which meant -- well, basically, nothing. But luckily the four us showed up at the same time as this other group of four so we shared a table for eight, our new best friends -- a German dude, his Chinese sister, a girl from Vietnam and this Chinese guy named George -- I'm not making this stuff up. Here is a picture of our table, the duck oven (which I'm not entirely thankful I saw) and some poor ducks waiting to get into the oven.

It's actually the morning of the 27th as I write this are were taking off in a few hours to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tienamen Square. Will keep you posted.

These are pictures of Brian's birthday supper and the two nice girls who served us. We got some surprisingly good sleep last night and we're off to tour the old section of the city today.

Oh, Mom and Dad, if you're reading this Happy Anniversary!!! We left a little too early to call you on the 24th, but we sent a card from Bruce's house.

We're here!!
We woke up at ten minutes to four in the morning in order to get to the Wichita airport by five. We loaded the plane to Chicago only to get off a few minutes later because Chicago had bad weather. With the promised weather updates at seven and eight o'clock come and gone we had to re-book from Wichita to Denver to San Francisco to Beijing. For the wait and the trouble we were treated to first-class tickets from Denver to San Francisco and business-class tickets from San Francisco to Beijing. Shellye was VERY happy. I've added a picture of Shellye enjoying her upper-deck 747 business class seat and a picture of us when we arrived in Beijing.

While waiting in the Wichita airport we met a young Vietnamese woman and her sister going back to Vietnam for their father's funeral. It was an appointment from the Lord and we were able to talk with Catherine about what the Lord has in store for those who die believing in Him. We promised to pray for her and her family.

We're going out for Brian's birthday dinner since he turned 40 on the day we arrived. More later.

Hi family and friends,

We're going to try to update this blog during our China trip rather than try to send out a bunch of emails. We're in Denver now and leaving tomorrow to drop the kids a Uncle Bruce's house. I'll send an email out to everbody with this URL. Let me know if you could not access.