MARY'S TRIP TO CHINA
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Please bear with my stream of unconscious typewriting. Lots of times I put unlike things together because something occurs to me and I want to tell you about it before I forget. Monday Feb.23--Today we fly to Wuhan in the Hubei province and are to get the baby tomorrow. The flight is on China Southern Airlines and is a 1 1/2 hour flight from Hong Kong. The stewardess on the flight was wearing a beautiful white satin apron over her blue uniform. We had to fill out a health and quarantine certificate with the following wording on it. "During your stay out of the People's Republic of China you may have been exposed to certain dangerous infectious diseases without your knowledge. In order to secure your and other peoples health and prevent the spread of diseases, please bring along this card to any nearest Health and
Quarantine Bureau when you develop any symptoms such as fever with rash, fever with jaundice, diarrhea or vomiting within 14 days after your arrival in China. Then you may enjoy a favored medical service with high quality." (Hint this will be very important later in the story!) We were served lunch of a croissant, Quiche with lox, egg salad sandwiches, and fried chicken nuggets. A Chinese lady with excellent English helped us fill out the health forms. After we landed, Tracy our guide from Holt in Mainland China, met us at the airport with a van to take us for an hours ride from the airport to our hotel. During this part of the trip we did see a lot of countryside with rice
patties and rural parts of China. She gave us the itinerary for this week which would involve all the paperwork and adoption papers that would need to be completed for the Chinese government. Then she gave us the big surprise that we are getting the babies today. Well the whole bus went hysterical with cries of laughter and sobbing. Iris is crying and saying I can't believe after all this time I am going to actually see my baby today. Tracy said, "I knew if I told you before, you wouldn't listen to the schedule for the week." When we arrived at our hotel we were told we had 10 minutes to get ready and we would be transported to another hotel where the Chinese officials were and the babies were being brought from the orphanage. Everyone at this point is frantically pulling diaper bags, diapers, formula, baby bottles, etc. out of their suitcases. We had to bring all the supplies for the babies with us from
America. Just before we are leaving the hotel the manager hands Iris a little red box with a silver necklace for the baby in it. It is tradition in Chinese society for grandparents to give such gifts to babies and since these are all orphans the hotel was presenting the gifts to the babies. Iris looses it again and is in tears. The hotel is only 20 minutes away but I think for all of us it seemed like hours. We were escorted into a large formal room with a long table in the center and high back chairs lining the walls of the room. First the lady from the Chinese government appeared and gave a long speech (maybe it wasn't that
long it just seemed like it at the time) about how glad they were that we were adopting the babies and how they hoped that their Chinese culture would not be forgotten and the children would some day come back to visit, etc. Probably it seemed long because Tracy would have to translate every sentence. Then the
caretakers from the orphanage entered the room with the 6 children. The babies were frightened by this new environment, particularly the 3 and 5 year olds. One of them started crying and pretty soon all 6 were crying in unison. A note of pride here, Mandy was the last one to start to crying and the first one to stop.
(to be continued)
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