Best and Worst

I thought I'd post Meghan and John's top 10 likes and dislikes about China:

Meghan's Likes:

1.  Getting Maggie
2.  Guangzhou Safari Park
3.  Victoria Peak, Hong Kong
4.  The Tram ride up to Victoria Peak
5.  Sha Mian Island where we stayed
6.  Shopping
7.  Working for Sherry (a local shop owner)
8.  Experiencing new culture
9.  Seeing the city at night from a plane.
10.  Our welcome home party

Meghan's dislikes

1.  Jet Lag!
2.  Weird Food
3.  Getting sick (caught a cold)
4.  The bad train ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong while sick
5.  Long flight over and back
6.  Hard beds
7.  Missing friends
8.  Poor public Hygiene in China
9.  No English TV
10.  Polluted air

John's likes

1.  The culture
2.  The language
3.  The shops
4.  The industry (shipping and factories)
5.  How they view respect differently than us (they use it way more than we do)
6.  It was cool to see a big city
7.  The food (the fact that they had American food there)
8.  The currency (the exchange rate concept)
9.  The landscape
10.  It was cool to see how different government is compared to the USA

John's Dislikes

1.  Chinese food is really different than what we eat in the US
2.  Being in a big city can be stressful
3.  Shop keepers harping on tourists to come into their shops
4.  Time change, they used military time
5.  Waiting for so many things (Maggie, planes, appointments)
6.  Jet Lag
7.  The long plane ride
8.  Not completely knowing if you were getting a good deal or not because we were tourists.
9.  Not being able to understand people (not knowing Cantonese)
10.  Not knowing if Maggie was going to like me.

Making Progress

 Maggie is definitely making progress.  She is sleeping until 5am and loving the cats instead of screaming and running to me every time she sees them.

Found my tupperware!

Matthew loves to play with Maggie and she loves to have her shoes on at all times!

A tub of beans provides tons of fun!  I remember that this is the age of texture.  She loves running water, beans, bubbles etc.  

We saw the cleft palate team yesterday and are scheduling Maggie's surgeries.  The doctor wants both done by the age of 2.  First will be lip repair and ear tubes, then 2mo later will be the palate repair.

Early Photos and Video

This is early video taken at the orphanage.  They gave us a RW DVD when she came to us.

Very cool!  

Jet Lag

We are all still on China time, or as my Dad says maybe we've reached Hawaii by now.  A couple of 3 am shots on 2 different mornings.

I cracked up when I came upon this sight.  Maggie sharing a bowl of cheerios with Shawn while having her shoes on over her footie pj's.

Now its my turn.  What can I say.  She was happy to play with the texture of the cat food and really wanted her shoes on.  I was desperate for a little time without her wrapped around me at 3 am.  So there you go.  Happily she went back to sleep at 4:30.  We're getting there!

Day 15 and 16 (the longest day of my life)

After taking the train to Hong Kong we stayed at the airport Mariott.  I did a dance when I went into the room and found they had "American" sized double beds.  We all had a nice bath and rested up for our big flight the next day.


Dec. 31 we took a shuttle to the airport and got on our flight to Hong Kong at 12:50 our time.  It was 11 hrs to San Francisco and the flight was full!  I was in good company having a baby.  Maggie made it with only two melt downs!  We arrived at 8am San Antonio time ready to start the day again (past 12 MN Hong Kong time) and had a 6 hr layover.  We slept in the SF airport and boarded a FULL plane to San Antonio.  Maggie had a meltdown and a couple of poops on this flight creating a comical situation for Shawn and I.  This small plane had one bathroom and no changing station.  Oh goodness!  We made it however and were so happy to be home!  

Maggie is eating our chicken and rice meal.

We had balloons waiting for us!

 Signs too, thank you Tammy!

 Its good to have my baby home!

Thanks to my Dad and wife Nancy and my brother and his family for picking us up!  Also, they set up Maggie's room while we were gone.  (The night before we left we discovered we couldn't use the crib we'd saved all these years as we couldn't find the hardware, we ended up making an online purchase at 9pm)  My parents picked up the crib and assembled it and set up all Maggie's room. 


I thank Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior for giving us the health and life and breath to do this!
I thank Great Wall China Adoption for dedicating their careers to helping make this possible for us and others!
I thank Meghan John and Matthew for coming and for being champions with Maggie and helping us in a thousand ways! 
I thank Helen Wong our guide in China for helping us in above and beyond ways!
I thank everyone who prayed for us and have supported us!


I will continue to post to this blog because it is fun and because Maggie will be having surgeries etc.  

Day 14 Part 2

Today is also John's 13th birthday.  We got a tip from a family who went to the safari with us that the Japanese Restaurant in our hotel is really good.  Since they serve steak (hard to come by) we decided it would be an excellent way to celebrate with John.  

 Walking to our restaurant

 We practically drooled over dinner as he made it.

Maggie is entertained by the chef preparing our food.

Tried the bean sprouts but ultimately decided on a bottle instead.  We'd had a big day and she was tired.  Maggie and I left early to go to bed.

The hotel and a local shop keeper whom John and Meghan had befriended sent a cake to the room for John's birthday.  We finished out the evening by packing since we take the train to Hong Kong tomorrow.

Day 14 Part 1 Guangzhou Safari

Today we venture to the much anticipated and famed Guangzhou Safari Park.  This is a complex of 3 parks actually, an amusement park, the safari park and an international circus act which performs in the evening and a hotel.  We just went to the Safari Park which is a 45 min bus ride away.  

When we walked in we came to the Dragon Snack shack and ordered 2 hot dogs and fried rice and got 2 hot dogs and 3 sprites!  Language barrier has been something else.  

Maggie looking at a baby Chimpanzee!

Elephant show narrated entirely in Chinese but very cool.

Tiger show.  The safari park must have a huge breeding program.  Not only were there many tigers here, during the train ride there many more.  Plus many babies in the nursery.

The Panda exhibit was a once in a lifetime experience.  They have 12 Pandas and their "cages" are amazing.  They are literally 2 arm lengths away from you.  These guys were being fed and were playing.

Feeding the giraffe was cool for the kids, Maggie was asleep during this part.

All three got to pet baby tigers.  Sometimes they let you feed them we just couldn't stay for it.

Maggie woke up for the safari train ride and really enjoyed it.