MeiLi was mourning a bit this afternoon. Mary is comforting her. It's afternoon nap time. After that we will go for Dinner. We are waiting here in Kunming for MeiLi's Chinese passport to be processed and delivered to us. That takes a few days. I have more time to write now. Karah has begun to be jealous a bit too. She is teetering between becoming the "Jie-jie" (elder sister) and

being the "bao-bei" (treasured baby of the family); sometimes she wants Mary to hold her at the same time Mary is holding MeiLi. This is all to be expected. Karah told me it is OK for me to also call MeiLi my bao-bei, but I told Karah she will always also be my bao-bei. Karah & MeiLi walk around holding hands. I'll try to get a picture of that.

After visiting the flower market, we went to a Jade market. We bought both Karah and MeiLi a nice keepsake necklace, not very expensive. The necklace has thier Chinese year of birth characters carved on jade; Karah's is the goat and MeiLi's is the rooster. After that we went to McDonald's. It was interesting. I stepped up to the counter and said "Qing ge wo liang ge da french fries" The young man taking the order understood and gave me 2 large fries for the girls. That was just a snack. We then came back to the hotel to rest up a bit.

Today, we woke up & had breakfast in the Hotel at the buffet. MeiLi has a very healthy appetite. Karah has been a very good big sister helping to feed her and teaching MeiLi how to interact with us. We have actually had a smiles but I have not been able to get a picture of her smiling yet. I have one of her talking I'll post here. We went to visit the flower market. I would have liked to spend half the day there. The local families working there were very friendly and curious. I was able to tell them that we are from the USA and where my girls are from (Chongqing and Honghe), & how old they are. MeiLi seems to fit right in. Karah knows how to tell her some things in Mandarin like hold my hand ( wo wo de shou) . MeiLi understands Karah's body language and is communicating well with us but I doubt she understands the Mandarin words. She seems to be content and interested in what we are doing.

Last night went well. We made another harrowing trip to WalMart to get needed baby/toddler supplies. This Walmart is hard to describe. It's like the center of a shopping mall and has other stores all built around it. It is 3 stories and has a hard to find entrance on the second floor, then multiple exits. We started out at the hotel and then several families with babies filed down the narrow alleys & streets with the babies. I had MeiLi in a back carrier. There is no apparent right-of-way for pdestrians so you have to be very careful. The Walmart also has ramps between floors to push the shopping carts up & down. It seems very dangerous if there is a lot in the cart. We bought two bright pink Walmart shopping bags (they don't give you bags for free) and Mary put MeiLi baack up on my back as we left the store. So I had MeiLi on my back and a pink walmart bag full of supplies in each hand. We had seperated from the group so Mary & I walked back to the hotel; we sort of got lost for about 20 minutes but we finally managed to get back to the hotel. I had to cool off (I'm no spring chicken and this is over 6000 feet in elevation). Aftera bit of rest we went across the street and found a restaurant that has good western food. I got a hamburger, Mary got pizza, MeiLi & Karah had spaghetti with ham & cheese in it. It was very good. We were seated in an upstairs area which had the windows all open with no screens. This is a sub-tropical area that is called the city of eternal spring so the temperature is very nice. In the restaurant the vines halfway cover all the windows so it seemed like being in the jungle. After dinner we came back to the hotel and bathed the girls together. They played with some plastic toys we bought at Walmart. The girls & Mary retired in the King size bed & I sleep on a cot. We all slept very well. MeiLi woke up once and cried but Mary comforted her quickly & it seemed she was just thirsty. There was a thunderstorm right about the time we went to sleep so we got a good light show and it poured rain.

Mei-Mei is with us!

This is Tim writing..We have MeiLi! It was a very emotional day for all of us and the other families. MeiLi is now calm in the hotel room. She is accepting food and drink, and is playing well with Karah. She does not speak Mandarin or understand it. She has been saying a few words in her own dialect which is called "Mile" (mee-lay). We met the orphanage director and the nanny who has been taking care of MeiLi. They told us that MeiLi was actually an orphanage child but the nanny took her home with her at night and was her foster mother. We have no smiles yet but she seems to be settling in fine. I can't really describe how I feel, finally being able to hold her and kiss her cheeks. I'm letting Mary do the initial bonding right now so I will put up more photos later. Words just can't describe this. Thank you Lord that everything has come together for our daughter to finally be with us.

We are getting ready to go to sleep tonight. We had an interesting jaunt down the street to a 3 story Walmart. The first floor was mainly raw meats and vegetables and if you have ever been in an Asian Market you would understand that it was stomach turning. The second level was dry groceries which wasn't too bad and the top was regular household and clothing sort of stuff. It really didn't have as much as I had expected. I was able to buy the girls sweaters (since our baggage was too heavy before). And we got another suitcase to bring some souvenirs home. It was a job to get to the store and back again. The road was threatening and so we had to walk down to an underpass to get there... it was like spokes of a wheel so we had to keep peeking up to the top to see if we were at the right street... we did finally made it back, and ordered room service... then Karah fell asleep... so I guess hers goes into the frig. Tomorrow is the BIG day and we have already been warned that it will be fast and long. I guess that since two areas are coming from a long ways away, they have to get it all done tomorrow and get back. So we had better get to sleep like Karah so we will be ready for it. -Mary

Karah Climbed the Great Wall!

We arrived in Kunming. We are now in our room at the Grand Park hotel.

I'm feeling quite stressed at the moment for several reasons that I will not go into but everything is OK with us. Tomorrow is our forever family day when we meet MeiLi!

Today we visited the Great Wall & the Summer Palace. It's been very fast paced.
Tomorrow we fly to Kunming!

Great Wall Visit

北京
北京
北京 北
Today we went to see Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. Really we just walked through it about 1/2 mile. It is so grand in scale that it's hard to get good pictures. It was warmer there than by the lakes & trees of the Hutong area we were at yesterday. We met our group today also & are getting to know everyone. We came back to the hotel and went swimming for awhile. Now, back at the room, Karah is napping & we are relaxing.

More Hutong Moments

Here are a few more photos from yesterday in the Hutong area of Beijing. The young lady with Karah is helping to guide us. She is a local university student. Her name is "Sunny". We really appreciate her help and Beijing hospitality.

Karah seems to really like her a lot.

Oh one more thing, I'm not sure what was going on in this picture I took today but I think this guy got caught letting the air out of bicycle tires and they were making him pump them back up. They just don't put up with things like that in China :-)

Today, Karah woke up at 4:30 AM so we all woke up slightly after that.We got our showers & organized our room a bit. We then learned our way through the breakfast buffet and I learned from the cook that that ketchup is called “fānqié jiàng” (番茄酱 - Can’t have hash browns without them :-). Our friend and guide William is with us and will be traveling to Kunming & Guangzhou with us too! He was our BLAS guide for Karah’s adoption too so it is very nice to work with him again. He introduced us to a university student who is helping to guide us; her English name is “Sunny”. I have some pictures of her here with us. Today she had breakfast with us And she went with us and guided us through the “Hútòng” area of Beijing by one of the old city gates. It was just casual walking and sightseeing. I chatted with the locals a bit too which was fun. My Chinese is understood but makes them laugh because my grammar and tones are so bad. Then we had lunch at Pizza Hut right here by the hotel. Now it’s about 4:30 PM as I am writing this and Mary & Karah are napping. More adoptive families arrive today and tonight and then tomorrow we will meet them. The weather is very nice. It was cool for most of the day & warmed up a bit this afternoon but not hot at all. No rain in sight yet.
. For my friend Mike Foo in the US:
Mike I want you to know this is a “proper” hotel with and ironing board and
Iron in the closet :-)

We are in Beijing!

We are at the Marriott Beijing West Hotel. The flight was 10 hours to Tokyo, 1.5 hours layover & then 3 more hours to Beijing. The streaming movies made the trip go by faster, at least for me.

Karah did very well. She slept probably 3.5 hours but Mary & I have been up non-stop for the entire trip. It's late & I still need to do a few things before going to Bed. So "Wan An!" ( good night).

Tomorrow we travel to San Francisco & then step on the plane to Beijing. I feel exhausted, trying to turn over the household to my grown sons. Make sure you water the garden, the pasture & the orchard; please check the mail, feed the animals; give them the contact info for us and our itinerary. In the middle of getting our paperwork printed off the main house computer, we had a power outage, due to a fire about 2 miles away. Our neighbors were evacuating their livestock. People were calling our house for concern. The power came back on but the computer is dead. I don't have time to troubleshoot it so it will remain that way till I come back. Thank God, despite all the turmoil, we seem to be nearly ready to leave. This will likely be my last post until I reach our hotel room in Beijing. The laptop is going in the carrying case. Please keep us in your prayers.

Final Preperations before leaving for China

With three days left till departure, we are in a daze with all the preparations. Thank you to those who have posted encouraging comments. The biggest challenge has been to get the finances for this. We have received checks in the mail from family and friends to assist. Thank you so very much. The second big challenge is to keep our baggage weight at right around 40 lbs, given all the things we must take. At the bottom of our blog here, you can check the weather for the 3 locations in China we will be at. Also, I will be using AOL Instant messenger in China. The IDs we use on AOL/IM are " kenaniah1 " and " kenatiml ". Keep in mind the time difference in China. There is only one timezone for all of China. We also will be checking our normal e-mail for those of you who have the addresses. We have another member of our travel group posting a blog at http://builtbygod.blogspot.com/ for those of you who may be interested. One week from tomorrow and we will have MeiLi!

First Stop - Beijing

北京-紫禁城- 长城- 颐和园

Sept. 3 (Wed night) -We arrive in Beijing & we wait to join up with the other adopting families.

Sept. 4 (Thu) - Settle into Hotel, get used to new time zone, meet other families, venture out into the city.

Sept. 5 (Fri) --- Visit Tian’an men Square and Forbidden City.

Sept. 6 (Sat) --- Visit the Great Wall and Summer Palace.

It will be fun watching Karah experience her own culture. She's five now so she will remember a lot from this trip.

Flight Paths