May 22 trip to Zoo

Quick trip to the Zoo with Alex. We heard

"bakoola Bakoola" "hollar hollar" alot.

(Don't cry, it's ok). He loves the van trips though.

May 21 2010 Botanical Gardens and Amusement park

Sensory overload for poor Alex. Our daily trips were short each day. The first was to a Botanical Garden and way too much stimulation for Alex. he decided he didn't want to walk so we took a 4 person bike. Our guide Michael drove the bike. Note* he can't drive a car and we let Michael drive the bike. Apparently children in foster care do not get out much, Maybe only 1 time a month to the orphanage visit.

city walks Shijiazhoung

We spent alot of our days walking around the immediate vicinity of the hotel. Shijiazhoung is the capital of Hebei. Since it is not as westernized as some cities-like Beijing-we had a hard time so we stayed close to the hotel when we were not with our guide.

May 20 outing to the mall, grocery store

So we knew we were going to spend a lot of time for the next 10 days in the hotel so we figured we'd go to the store. How hard would it be to find a few things we needed. We could recognize packages even if we could not read and there are some translations. Anyway decided to wait for Michael our guide since alot of translations were-um-interesting.

May 19 2010 Gotcha day

We finally met Shi Fuxing at the Civil Affairs office in Shiajiazhoung, Hebei, China.
He went right to Baba and as you can tell from the picture had Chicken Pox. Poor kid gets a new family and he's not feeling well. His foster mom had his good luck bracelet on him, sent his favorite stuffed monkey, a pciture of the two of them, and cookies-Chinese version of oreo's! The day was a whirlwind with appointments but everyone was very helpful and nice.

Ready to Travel

We're as ready to go as we will ever be. We leave Sunday and arrive Shanghai Monday Pm. We continue to Hebei Tuesday and will meet our son Wednesday. We'll be there until we leave to Guangzhou for our appt. 6-1-10 and arrive back in USA on 6-6-10. See you then!

Travel date to Alex

We decided on Alex for FuXing's american name. Provided all goes well we leave on May 16 and meet him on May 18. We will be in his province for 10 days, Shijiazhoung, Hebei. Then we're off to Guangzhou for the American Consulate app. We end up in Beijing on June 3 and return home on Jun 6.
We are excited and extremely nervous.

Our friends, 3D's, M&M's, Kristen and (that elusive) David and Kim and little princess Brea, stopped over last Friday for Pizza and to get our minds off the chaos. I promised I'd work more on the blog to keep everyone up to date.