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Okay here goes. Whenever you see a reference to Iris that is the name of my friend who is adopting the baby and Howard is her husband. Thursday February 19th. Left Philadelphia on the first leg of our journey to Minneapolis. Almost as soon as we got off the plane we ran into a couple from Canada on their way to Omaha. They had a 4 month old girl they had adopted in China a month ago. They gave us a wonderful positive report about their experience and said they were actually surprised that they were sad when it was time to leave China. The husband gave me his business card and asked me to e-mail him when we got back. This was an experience that would happen over and over again to us that we found there was a special bond among all the adoptive parents and each one was willing to give helpful advice and support. The flight from Minneappolis to Hong Kong was 14 hours long! They periodically fed us food during the flight and lots of water. (Did these people know I was a part of the dieting list serv?) They played a couple of movies during the flight "George of the Jungle" and a Chinese movie with English subtitles. I finally fell asleep during the last couple of minutes of the flight. Before we landed we had to fill out an immigration entrance card reiterating information on the passport and stating where we would be staying in Hong Kong. We were waived right through customs by some very stern looking officials. The Regal Hotel where we are staying is right at the airport. All we had to do was wheel our luggage across a skywalk and we were in the hotel. When we got to our rooms there was a message from Holt (the adoption agency) to be sure and call them and let them know we were there. Really neat the message was actually written (recorded) on our tv screen. Saturday February 21st. After Breakfast we had an orientation session with the Holt representatives. Five other families are a part of our group. One family brought 2 sets of grandparents with them and 2 of the mother's are single parents. The 2 single mother's each requested older children so one mother is adopting a 5 year old and the other mother a 3 year old. It was so sad that the 5 year old had just been abandoned by her family. China has a one child policy. There are severe penalties including possible loss of ones job and medical benefits if a family has more than one child. In China all families want sons to carry on the family name so little girls are abandoned and in the case of the 5 year old the family had a son so they dumped her off at the orphanage. Our baby Mandy was 13 months old and abandonded at birth. Holt told us that when we went onto mainland China the Chinese people would immediately consider us to be part of their family. We were not to be alarmed if people would pick up our baby and walk away with it because they would return the baby to us shortly. The old grannies are very concerned about babies being warm enough and do not believe in pacifiers so if they see a pacifier they will rip it out of the babies mouth. In the afternoon we went on a tour of Hong Kong. We went to the top of the peak that looks over Victoria Harbor, then went down to the Harbor and rode around on a sampan to see the houseboats. They are currently trying to get all the boat people off the Harbor due to the pollution. The water is so bad they currently need to pipe in water from main land China. The toilets are supplied with sea water so you have this strange greenish looking water in the toilet all the time. We drove past the house where they filmed "The World of Suzie Kwan" and "Love Is a many Splendored Thing" (old William Holden flick). The most surprising thing about Hong Kong is only 1/16 of the land is actually populated. Most of the island is dedicated to large green parks. The space where people live is extremely congested.
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