Guangzhou

We flew to Guangzhou today, it was a OK flight, about 5 hours. It was chilly when we left Urumqi, but when we landed here in GZ, it was warm and muggy!! It isn't horrible, just warm especially after being in Xinjiang where it is cool now. We came from the north-west part of China to the south-east coast area. We saw our friends the Skiles out and about with thier new son Zak. He is around 2, very cute and very tiny!! He comes from a more southern area where the people tend to be smaller. Tomorrow we will probably meet up with others from our group, it is a free day and we are going to go to church with the Skiles down the street from the White Swan. I thought Christianity was not really acceptable here, but they have a church in GZ!!
I will post some pictures tomorrow, and give you an update on our plans!! Love you Rorey!!

More pics last day in Urumqi

View from the top of red hill
These are the stairs I said no to!
Sha Mei and Baba rode the bumper boat!
bridge at red hill park

Last day in Urumqi

View from our window
Lunch of noodles with beef
"Very famous"noodle restaurant workers
Family pic at Red Hill Park
Sha Mei on top of the "red hill"
Today is Friday and we are flying out of here tomorrow morning!! It has been a very special time here where Sha Mei was born and started her life, but I am homesick....mainly Rorey sick , and ready to move on to the next part of the trip. Tomorrow we fly to Guangzhou, where we will have our American Consulate appointment, and we will get Sha Mei's visa for her passport, which will allow her to enter into the US. Today we didn't do anything in the morning, we waited for Jessie to go and retrieve Sha Mei's passport and then she helped us to get all of our paperwork and money ready for Guangzhou. After that was done we walked to Red Hill Park which is in the middle of town about a 20 minute walk from our hotel. It has a big "mountain" right in down town Urumqi!! Riley rode a carnival ride there and Rick and Sha Mei rode the little bumper boats. She is in LOVE with Baba. Then they climbed the big hill. I went part way and then waited for them to come back down. I have had enough stairs for the next 2 years!! Everyone was staring at me and doing the double take! Strange, white skinned, tall, big nosed, American

lady standing on the pathway alone. I seemed to draw a lot of attention!! When we got back Jessie took us to a small family restaurant one street behind the hotel. It was very delicious ....noodles with beef and vegetables. "Very famous" that is the catch phrase here in China!! The workers where very interested in us, Sha Mei, Riley and his blond hair, and asked Jessie all kinds of questions!! I will post some of the pics from today and also some from tonight of our view from the hotel!! Love to everyone! Especially you Rorey!!

We love you Rorey

I'm writing this post for Rorey, who is our wonderful 5 year old son who stayed home with Nana and Papa in Illinois. We love you so much and miss you alot!! Sha Mei knows you are her brother and points to your picture and calls you ge ge......big brother. She is very cute, but very strong willed! Sound familiar Rorey? One week from today we will be coming home to see you! I can't wait to give you a big hug!! Love you buddy!!

Xin Sha Mei

This post is to explain Sha Mei's name, as more than one person has asked me. The first name
is actually her last name, Xin......which all of the children in her orphanage have.... It means
"new" and comes from the first part of her provice name, Xinjiang. Her name Sha means desert.. or sand. Which is very good for this area because there is alot of desert in Xinjiang. Her
next name Mei means rose. So her full name is New Desert Rose. We think it is very pretty,
the orphanage director chose her name and we told her it was very good.

Even more pics!!

Heavenly lake with snowcapped mountains in the distance.
Very old monastery at Heavenly lake

Crazy people ride these up the mountain in summer
Houses of local minority

More pics of heavenly lake

Our guides Jessie and Jing with Sha Mei!!


This picture is for Sue Reid....there is your backpack at Heavenly lake!!

Day trip to Heavenly lake

Today we started out at 10:30 to Heavenly Lake, which is located up in the mountains near Urumqi. We drove nearly 1 1/2 hours to get there. Once you arrive at the "park" you have to take a small bus up the twisting, turning, near-death cliff mountain road. The kind that when you look over the edge from the vehicle your life flashes before you kind of mountain road?? You know what I'm saying?? I don't like to drive these in a car.....I really didn't like it in a bus!! But obviously we survived. Once you finally get to the top of the mountain then you walk up the rest of the way....about 15 minutes, to the actual lake. It is a beautiful sight with mountains on both sides of the water and also behind. There were snow covered mountains in the distancce, and they have already had snow this fall. We then took a long winding trail to see a smaller lake and the water fall and stream that come from Heavenly lake and head down the mountain. It was very beautiful. We went down, down, down stairs to get to it, so unfortuantly we had to go up, up, up stairs to get back!! WOW Ok, the great wall was worse, but this was pretty bad also!!
I'm still coughing from my slight asthma problem that only kicks in when I'm getting too much exercise. Add in the fact that we were like 6000 feet up, breathing in cool air, I couldn't breath really well while up there. Can you CIAR girls overnight me an inhaler?? Just kidding!!
Sha Mei walked most of the way, but fell asleep on the way back in the van. At the top of the mountain they have an area for the local people....can't remember starts with a K....anyway they
sing and dance on a stage there, I'll put up a picture of that also. As we headed back down
we stopped at the resaurant and had the Nang bread...."pancake bread" it was very good, they cook it in a big stone oven and stick it to the sides of the walls of the oven. Also we had some mutton soup.that was very good also.

More pics

Here are more pics from our day yesterday. We were not allowed to take pics at the museum.

Anyone who is wondering yes these are dried snakes. Also seahorses in the jar!! Apparently

they make tea out of them and then drink it. Some sort of medicine!! I'll take my western

pill popping anytime!!!

Pics from Grand Bazaar

Rick couldn't get our computer to work, so he put our pics on to the hotel computer. Hope they like them! These are of the Grand Bazaar, fruits, clothes , pomegranate juice which Riley had to try.....tart to say the least!! Riley also had to have one of the traditional hats seen in the picture. His is black and white.

New room, Bad computer!!

While we were out today at the mummy museum the hotel called and said they wanted us to move to a new room. We said why?? They said they had repairs to do on the floor we were on and it would be noisy. So after we returned today we started packing everything up and the bell boy loaded us up and moved us to a new room on the 21st floor. The only problem is that this room doesn't like our laptop so we can't put any pictures up!! I can use theirs to blog without
pictures. I know all you guys really want is the pics, so we will have our guide Jessie try to help us get it fixed tomorrow.
So today we first went to the Museum of Xinjiang History. It was a very modern beautiful building with displays of many interesting things. They have areas to show many of the local minorities including Uygers.....who actually make up about 51% of the people here. They had exhibits of ancient relics, clothing, houses, jewelry, musical instruments and more. I think about 10 minorities were represented in the displays. There are actually many many minority groups here. I think she said around 48??? here in Xinjiang province. We also saw the mummy exhibit and had a museum guide who spoke English fairly well. It was very interesting, as these mummies are not the type found in Egypt for example. The mummies here are naturally made from the dry weather, and because they were buried in sand. They were very well preserved!! They had clothes on, hair, fingernails etc. Riley liked this and Sha Mei seemed to also. When we had finished at the museum we headed to the Grand Bazaar which is a local market here in Urumqi. First thing we did was eat at a traditional Uyger restaurant. I had rice with chicken, which I shared with Sha Mei. Rick and Riley both had noodles with mutton and mutton kabobs. Sha Mei can put down the meat when she is hungry!! She was eating our meal, and Rick's mutton. Our guides asked for ours to be "not spicy" so it took a little longer for us to get our food. I forgot to mention we have a local guide today and tomorrow.....Jing. She is from here in Urumqi and is very nice and speaks very good English. You may see her in our pictures when we ever get them on here!! We also have had about 20 different types of hot tea while we have been here. Today at the Uyger restaurant we had a local tea, and I could tell it was different from the others we have tasted. I must be getting the hang of it!! After eating we went thru the bazaar and saw all kinds of nuts, fruits, dries fruits, all for sale. We did buy some raisins...Sha Mei seemed to like them very much. Xinjiang is very famous for it's grapes and melons at this
time of year. We also saw clothing, jade, carpets, furs, Chinese medicine items.....very interesting!! Many very odd things that they make tea out of and drink!!! ICK is all I can say!!
We went to the market this evening and are back in the room for the night now. Hopefully we can get some pictures up tomorrow!! Love to everyone!

Earthquake

I just heard on the news(CNN the only English channel here) that there was an earthquake in Tibet. I didn't catch when it was, but we are fine and didn't feel anything. Just didn't want anyone to worry about us! We are quite far from Tibet, even though it is right under this
province of Xinjiang. We are off to the Grand Bazaarr today and then the mummy museum.
Riley is very excited about that. I'll post pics tonight!! Love to all.

More Urumqi Pics

Oh yes did I already mention the word princess?? I wanted a girl and I got one! She is constantly wanting her picture taken and stopping traffic posing every 10 feet!! She also loves to take the camera and take pictures herself!! Did you see the great one of me??....She took that.

Also we went swimming today after we got back from our adventures. Last night she wanted to go really badly, and was laying in the floor pretending to swim because we were not responding to her wishes!! Rick called Jessie and had her tell Sha Mei that we would go swimmimg today.

Jessie told us this morning that she also told Sha Mei that she should go to sleep with her new Mama and Baba and should not cry. Sha Mei responded with ...yes I know that. She is something else, just like her two brothers!! Of course we wouldn't know what to do if we had a quiet, shy, obedient child!!! LOL

Hey Skiles' if you read this leave me a comment with your blog name. I can't find it. I know the password....it's easy. Hope all is well with the three of you.

Day out in Urumqi

Today was a free day for us, normally you would stay close to the hotel and let your child get more acquainted with you. In our case, since she is doing so well and she is old enough to understand what is going on we decided to go out shopping with our guide Jessie. Sha Mei needed a different pair of shoes, because the ones she had on when we got her were boots. They are very nice new boots, but when we get to Guangzhou it will be hot weather and she will be wearing some dresses and shorts. We also needed some taller socks for her to wear with her boots while we are here in Urumqi. Jessie took us to a big department store where we bought her a cute pair of shoes and some longer socks. After that we walked all around several blocks from our hotel and looked at all types of people, shops etc. Then we decided to try and find the book store. After walking for nearly 15 minutes and asking about 4 different people we did find the bookstore and purchased 2 word books for Sha Mei with chinese characters and pinyin chart.

After this we were getting hungry so we stopped at a very small family restaurant a block from our hotel. Jessie said they had traditional Xinjiang food there including mutton. (which Rick had asked to try) It was very good, and Sha Mei ate a lot of "rice with meat." Jessie thought maybe her foster family had made this type of food for her.

Notice the pin striped size 4 Levis jeans? She was pretty happy with her new clothes.

Urumqi Info

This post is for Kim, Becky, Dianna and Vickie!!! Kim.....I asked your questions to the director(that was the women in the pictures) She said that two of the children are still there. She gave me their names also. Secondly she said that the women in the picture was Drew's nanny . That she would have been the nanny for 6 children.....the six boys in the picture. She was very happy to see Drew and said he looked well. Becky.......I gave her all the pics from you of the weekend and also of your three children together. She was very happy to see them and said they looked
very well also. I asked her to show them to the foster mothers. Dianna.......I asked her about Sha Sha , and she said yes, the girl with a vision problem?? I told her that she had a new diagnosis and that she can see quite well in dim light, also that the bright light blinded her and that she was partially color blind. She seems very surprised that Gillian could see so well, and was very pleased to know she is well. Last but not least, Vickie.....I gave the director the gift for
Graces' foster mother, and she looked at the picture albulm and was so surprised at how big she looks! I told her she is very healthy and well. That made her very happy.
Our guide Jessie told us that the director chose Sha Mei's name and we said that we liked it very much. She seemed fond of Sha Mei, and was very nice and pleased to hear about all of the children.

Night number One

It's morning, Rick, Riley and I are up. It's only 7:00, so Sha Mei is still asleep. I can not believe how great she did last night!!! I gave her a bath, which she didn't really want.....but had great fun once she got in. She learned the word hair while she was in there because she didn't like it when a hair would float around in the water!! Once we came out of the bathroom the boys were in bed asleep so we sat on the floor and played with her panda bear beach ball. I turned on the TV, and started flipping htrough the channels. She saw a show she wanted to watch......Just do it. Some of you may have seen this before, where the contestants run through a obstacle course and usually end up falling in the water?? She loved it, and has obviously watched it before!! She would yell out everytime someone started to do the course"just do it" in English!! When I saw her yawning, I motioned for her to get in bed.......and she just got in bed next to Riley with her stuffed animal and blanket from Nana Sandy. I was on her other side on the rollaway bed. She closed her eyes and went to sleep in about 2 minutess......that was it!! No crying ........ nothing!! She slept all night, even though I had to move her back up to the pillow two times...she moves around alot ! We are meeting Jessie at 8:00 for breakfast, so I better get ready!! Love you Rorey!! Can't wait for you to meet your sister!!!!

More Pictures

I forgot to mention that She Mei had like 6 layers of clothes on today, and we so far have only gotten 1 layer off of her, but soon we will be getting in the bath tub, and figuring out just exactly what she is wearing!! Also the curly part in her hair was just barretts with fake hair attached. She has very pretty dark hair, it is soft and has gotten fairly long. She was doing a dance in the last picture here, and the director says she loves to sing and dance!!