First Field Trip

Nothing says appropriate Fall Field Trip like a 9:30 AM visit to Pizza Hut! Susanne and I are still scratching our heads on that one, but Nate's first field trip was a great day. In addition to the Pizza Hut stop, the loyal troops of Ms. Masemore's Perry Hall Christian School 1st Grade Class also visited the local playground on steroids and Lohr's Farm.

Nate has since shared with many people the insights he gained on the art of making a pizza pie that day. "First you take the circle..." It is amazing how well he is able to communicate in the tangible world, and yet how hard it is for him to give his emotions any verbalization.

We were very curious to see how Nate was doing socially in his class. Susanne reports that we have ourselves a ladies' man of sorts. The girls in his class are very kind to him.

Susanne and Nate were joined by Jessica and Ella for their pizza brunch. Nate insisted that Ellla sit next to him on the bus, only to be joined by three other lady friends on the 5 seat bench in the back row.

What can I say? Nurture 1, Nature 0.

-Chris

Apple Pickin'

Hi Everybody! We haven't posted in a while, but boy have we been busy. We had a great day a few weeks ago at Larriland Orchard. Who knew apples off the tree were that juicy? Nate had a great time picking - had to slow him down more than once. As it was, we came home with about 20 pounds of apples. Forrest Gump comes to mind...."Apple sauce, apple pie, apple crisp, apple surprise, apple jelly, apple dumplings, ....." You get the point. Happy to report not a single one went to waste...

The boys had a great time in the straw maze, too. It was a big competition to see who could bring me back little markers I had left at random points.

-Chris

To Each His Own

Last night was my Mom's birthday, so we all ate dinner together. My dad had gotten a rotisserie chicken for the main course. A few minutes into the meal, Nate looks at my brother with a bewildered expression and asks, "where's the chicken's head", which prompted the response, "we don't eat that in America." Ugh!

----Susanne

AWANA

Nate earned the Sparks clubber of the month award last night. He has learned 3 Bible verses. I thought that I would use the special needs labels for him to cut down the verses to a more manageable size for him, but we haven't had to do that.

He has studied John 3:16, 1 John 4:14, Psalm 147:11.

John 3:16 is really put into God's perspective when you hear someone saying it in broken English and you realize how Nate has come from a totally different side of the world and was exposed to very pagan beliefs and activities. WOW!

Kit made us proud when he proclaimed privately to us that he had worked hard on his verses too (he has earned 2 jewels already), but that he knew Nate had really worked hard to learn his Bible verses in English. Yeah! He got the principle of rejoicing for/with others.

Here is a picture of Nate and his proud moment.....

Susanne

Big Trucks

I took the boys to the Big Trucks Day at the Public Works Musuem on Saturday. If ever an event was made for boys, it was this one, girls were a rarity in the crowd. Here are a few pictures.

----Susanne

Baby Cakes

Our family always likes to get together on Sundays for the Ravens football games. This year we have 2 new additions to our football group. Nate and Caleb. Caleb is our nephew and he was born in June, actually he was born on the same day that Nate was adopted.

Yesterday Nate and I were sitting on the sofa with Caleb. I was holding Caleb in my lap and Nate was astounded at how small Caleb's feet were. I was trying to tell him that he used to be that small and his hands and feet were tiny like that when he was a baby. Nate was adamant that he was never that small. It dawned on us that he has probably no concept of himself as a baby. I doubt he had pictures of himself as a baby. He may have never really seen a picture of himself at any age. He loves to look at pictures and is always excited when I get a picture of him to hang up around the house.

It never ceases to fascinate me when you get to talking to him. We are so blessed here in America and we are so blessed by our families. Imagine what that is like to not ever have considered yourself to be a baby, to have no photo history of your life.

Thank you for your prayers for his reading. It is getting soooooo much easier to do his homework. He got half of his words right on his first spelling test. That is a victory to us. Spelling is all about sounding out your words and he was able to get some of it right.

Our next new step for Nate is that the Children's choir is singing on Sunday in church. He likes music and art so I am excited to see what he does up there in front of everyone with the other children. He was singing his song in the shower last night, it was so cute, singing in a singsong voice, you know that one you use when you know the melody but not the words. It was a hoot! He was trying to sing "I Will Worship". Kit and I sang along with him before bed to help him learn the words. We will have to keep you updated after church next Sunday.

----Susanne

Cathing Up!

Life is full throttle around here, but things are going well. At the moment I am shirking my cleaning duties just so that I can update all of you on life here at the Harding house.

Blessing #1

Zach was calling Nate by his Chinese name the other day, it is very lyrical so it is fun to say it with the right tones. Nate replied, "I'm not Xi Wei Feng, I'm Nate". We have worked so hard to help him understand that he is part of a family, and to realize that he was given an orphanage name, the Xi is what all the babies in that orphanage were named. He is getting that he belongs, he is part of a family. He had told me recently that in his foster family, all of the children were referred to by their full names. I know that is cultural to some extent, but within families you don't call people by the whole name, that is a more formal, acquaintance practice. In my opinion it sends a subtle message, but that is just me.

Blessing #2

We have some results from the MRI. Nate has no blebs in his stomach or intestines. This means no internal bleeding worries for us. His thigh has a very large bleb in the muscle. We will be going to see a Vascular specialist at JHH in Oct. to find out our options for removal. Chris and I think it is growing. Just the other day I had to explain that he had a "sick" leg, that is why the one is so much larger. He had no idea that it wasn't "normal" to have a size difference. You could see the light go on in his head, no wonder he was mad about the MRI day and having to see all of these doctors. Depending on the type of procedure maybe he can have his scar fixed as well. He did tell me he would like that to look better. I don't blame him at all, it is terrible.

Blessing #3

He is overcoming his shyness and we haven't had a tearfilled silence episode all week long. He is also understanding that to look at Mom and Dad during correction or directions is an okay thing to do. That has been another cultural standard we have found ourselves dealing with. Teaching Nate (and ourselves) that God doesn't want us to "save face" when we are wrong, but he wants our humbleness and repentance.

The more we teach Nate about life through a biblical worldview, the more God teaches us about His desires for our life through that biblical worldview.

Prayer Request: I would ask for you to pray for Nate as he learns his letter sounds and and the names of the letters. We are teaching this while at the same time he is learning to read in the first grade curriculum. If he gets the names and sounds under his belt, I know the reading will only get easier for him. Pray for our patience and understanding, it can become easy to forget the enormity of the task for Nate and to just become frustrated with the fact that he doesn't remember the sound you just said 20x in a row.

----Susanne

Come On Let's Go School

These are the words we heard this morning as Nate stood in the garage for 20 mins, waiting to leave the house.

You may be asking your self..."I thought you said you were going to homeschool?" You would be correct, but things have changed once again as they so often do around here.

Last Monday I went to confer with the first grade teacher and Principal at the school. We started out talking about how best to include Nate in the classroom every once in a while (field trips, special days, lunch one day a week), to having him come in for an hour every morning and so on. The next thing I knew he was signed up to go to school for the first 3 days all day long. We want to see how he is able to follow along and we will reassess next week. What a wonderful blessing to find a school and people who are willing to work with you and have a desire to see Nate do well.

I was really nervous about leaving him yesterday, but the secretary was so sweet and went in to check on things for me before I officially left the campus.

All of the boys said that they had a really great first day. Nate told us he didn't understand anything the teacher said, but isn't that why he is there? We are hopeful that he will do well in the classroom environment. I am still willing to homeschool him, but I think it would lack a little something for him language wise if it was just the 2 of us, if the other boys were at home with him it would be a different story. I think he is glad to be back into a routine and to be doing something that is somewhat familiar to him.

I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

---Susanne

Hershey Park

To celebrate the end of summer and before we head back to school we took the chance to go to Hershey Park. I love this place, all that chocolate in one place, heavenly.

We started our day with the Scrambler, bad choice, the line wasn't too long, but the loading and unloading of the ride about sent Chris over the edge. Nate was probably wondering what was so great about this place since the boys were hyping it up so much. Next we took on a speed roller coaster, not one with hills and dips. Tough guy Nate was so pumped up about the roller coaster that he was ready to take on a bigger coaster with dad. Bad decision, the next coaster ruined him for the remaining coaster rides of the day. We did coax him on to the Wild Mouse, but that wasn't such a smart plan either. Can this ride really be safe when Mommy has her head buried in the lap of my 9 year old brother and she is yelling, is it over yet?

Time to try the Ferris Wheel, this was also one of the first places I really noticed Nate speaking full sentences. We practically ran to the giant wheel when Nate said...mommy, I want to go on that next! Another highlight of the day was the simple pleasure of the Carousel, that ride is such a trademark of being a child that it was a lot of fun watching his joy as the horse went up and down.

The worst parts of the day came when we realized that we were no longer up for the Parent of the Year Award, when we discovered Kit was walking around with a fever of 103.2, and then the fact finally hit us that these rides aren't for people who drive minivans, have a job, pay the bills and are responsible 30something adults. Neither one of us have ever been motion sick before, but the 2 times I was sitting on the curb with my head between my knees led me to believe I might have met my motion match.

By the last ride of the day, the boys had talked Nate out of his roller coaster fear and back on to one last ride for the day, he loved it! This was one of those days that you think about when you are planning on adopting an older child, you get to see everything with fresh eyes and a new enjoyment.

School starts next week...we'll keep you posted.

Susanne

Hugs and Kisses

Now that Nate is getting more and more verbal with his English, we have been able to ask him a few questions. Lately we have been trying to find out more about his foster family.

I have learned that he has never had a birthday cake, his younger foster brother had had 2 cakes, but he has never had any. His foster parents always called him by his full Chinese name. Now, I know this a custom in China, but you call an acquaintance by their full name and someone that you are familiar with by their first and middle name. He also told us that he didn't get hugs or kisses from his foster parents. I would imagine that statement isn't 100% true, but it must not have been the norm to be hugged and kissed. I am sure that they loved him and I know that they took good care of him, but I am really struck by these revelations.

So many of the things that I learn about Nate and his prior world amaze me when I view them with a biblical worldview. God really does fill the hearts of his people with a love that surpasses the love of the world. Adoption is a true picture of how we were adopted into God's family. He calls us His, He is intimate with us on a first name basis, He holds us in His hand, and shows us that love is truly an action. Amazing Love...

-----Susanne

Are we speaking the same language here?

A few weeks ago, Nate was having one of his episodes where he chooses to withdraw from everyone. He will get upset about something that is seemingly no big deal and then he just shuts down. We are taking the approach of letting him know that no one is upset and he can join us anytime that he wants. We aren't going to let him wallow in his sorrows for too long, usually 30 mins. So Chris went out to talk to him and tried to explain to Nate that he didn't want to be lonely all the time.

Lonely isn't an English word that Nate knows, so Chris looks it up in our English/Mandarin dictionary. So Chris tells him that is isn't good to be "don do", too much, that would be sad, "you don't want to be don do" is the exact quote.
Nate just looked at him strangely and said "No don do". Obviously Chris has the wrong tones on this word and he is saying something that doesn't make sense.

A week later Nate and I are in the bathroom getting ready for bed, Kit was the first kid in there and had left his underpants hanging out on the floor. Nate points to them and says "Kit's don do"!

Translation: Chris told Nate "You don't want to be underwear!" You're right Dad no one wants to be underwear!

----Susanne

Are we speaking the same language here?

Hope it isn't 3 strikes and you're out!

What is black and blue and red all over? Nate's eye after he fell off of his bike and hit the handlebars.

Thought I would post a picture of the damage for your viewing enjoyment!

Camping

Crabbing off of the pier!

Hanging out at the campsite

Setting up the ole' pop-up with Aidan Castlebury

We packed up on Wed night and headed down to Cherrystone on the Eastern Shore of VA on Thursday morning. The boys were completely ready to spend a few days in the great outdoors. They had a great time digging for hermit crabs, crabbing, paddle boating, swimming, and playing at the playground. Chris and I enjoyed the time with our friends and the lack of household responsibilities.

Nate wants you to know that the bathrooms were yucky.

I think his favorite thing was dinner on Friday night when he ate 3 ears of corn.

Kit's favorite thing was looking for the hermit crabs.

Our least favorite part was the storm that blew threw on Friday night, we were all set to get our dinner really cooking, when they warned us that it was coming. We sat in the car for a little bit and watched it come across the water and a few tents nearby blew away! Glad that wasn't us.

---Susanne, Nate, Kit

What's in a Name?

Nicknames...everyone around here has one...

Uncle Tonya, CG, Tonya

Sus, Bean, Susie Q

Chops

Bird

BoBo

Everyone that is but Nate. The boys and I explained the concept of nicknames to him, he decided he wanted to make up his own nickname. What is it you ask? Quack

Why Quack? I don't know! But for the moment it is sticking as evidenced by the following story.

This morning the boys were stacking bean bag chairs up, then running the length of 2 rooms and diving into them. Nate especially thought this was a hoot. The line was forming in the kitchen and each participant would chant for the runner as he made his way into the family room. Nate's turn and what do I hear 3 little boys chanting? Quack, Quack, Quack!

Olympics

Well, we all wore our Beijing Olympics shirts yesterday. Nate has no concept of the Olympics and those of you who know us well, know that we are Olympics crazy around here. I know the Downeys remember our fascination well, and we will always appreciate their '96 games impersonations. :)

Last night we sat down to watch and we had told Nate that he would see China on the TV. He broke my heart though when I realized he had his solemn face on. I was able to get him to say that he was sad for China. I just held him and told him that I could understand that, our prayer is that God speaks Chinese to him when we are speaking English in those times. He did perk up after a little bit once he saw the drummers and heard them speaking Chinese.

At one point I said "you are Chinese" in Mandarin and he responded with a smile and "Yes" in English. That made me smile to hear his English answer to a Chinese question and it shows me how far he has come. Awesome!

---Susanne

Down the Ocean Hon!

How do you like that Baltimore expression? I am not a Baltimore Hon- think beehive hairdo and cat-eye glasses (in case you were wondering). I have been called Hon many a time before by total strangers. Anyway- I digress!

We went to the beach this past week for 5 days. Nate loved it, what self-respecting boy doesn't? His favorite beach task was to dig as big a hole as possible, not so much wide as deep. A few times he would bend down and you couldn't find him. I thought he might be afraid of the ocean but he thought it was fun to play in the surf and run up the shore line as the waves would break. He and Kit had a grand time sitting on the boogie boards in the surf and letting the water carry them away.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Susanne

1st Trip to The Dentist

No cavities..yahoo!

Nate is such a Champ, you could tell that he was scared, but he prides himself on being tough and he just sat in that dentist chair and took it on. The x-rays showed he hasn't lost any teeth yet, we are so glad that we get to share that experience with him, since there is so much that we have missed in his life. The hygienist gave him a thorough cleaning because his teeth are so stained, I think it is from all of the tea that they drink. His teeth are actually white now. I am so happy that his teeth are in such good shape, one less thing that he has to go through.

As we left, Kit asked him if he liked the Dentist? He looked at Kit with this incredulous face and said "No" as if it was the silliest thing he had ever heard. Kit couldn't believe it, "but you got a new toothbrush!"
Susanne

At the Name of Jesus...

The boys went to VBS this week at my Mom's church. This is the 2nd year I have had the fun job of being the worship leader, the kids love it and I love it. We play the music loud, sing, dance, do our actions and have fun. Well, by mid-week we noticed Nate getting in to it.

My favorite moment came yesterday when this sweet little boy, who is not speaking English yet, started to sing...at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. What a powerful testimony to God's power. This child who likes to make little altars out of blocks, bow down to them on his knees saying Xiexie (thanks), speaking a Biblical truth. It was awesome and it made me cry!!!

Susanne

Say What Doc?

We had our follow-up appt. at the International Adoption Clinic this week. We consulted with this group during our initial review of Nate's paperwork. I can not say enough good words about the doctors at Johns Hopkins in the Child Health Building. We had a lot of blood work drawn (most of which has common back negative, still waiting on some of the longer tests), a PPD shot, an X-ray to make sure the metal plate was removed from his broken femur (the medical records were a little hard to read) and a visit to the dermatologist. All of this in one building on the same day, we loved it!! Not sure what he thought about it though!


While at the dermatologist we discovered his "special need" had been misdiagnosed. He has something called Blue Rubber Bleb Nevus Syndrome, who thought that up? It is fairly rare, so we felt like we were in good hands. The doctors see a few other patients who have this and are doing fine. The major concern at the moment is that we need to get an MRI to look at his enlarged thigh (it is probably a big bleb) and his stomach and intestines. You can have the blebs inside and you want to make sure they aren't bleeding. We are waiting for the MRI to be scheduled because the doctor we saw will be there as his anesthesiologist.

What a great area we live in here in Baltimore, Nate has so many medical resources available to him 20 minutes down the road. What a blessing! We will keep you posted!

----Susanne

Progress

Only my family really knows this about me...I have a huge pet peeve over noisy eaters. I mean it drives me insane if someone smacks their lips while eating. Well, sweet little Nate was one of those eaters. Yes, I said was, because that is past tense...I noticed today that I didn't have to remind him one time to chew with his lips closed!!! Yahoo!! So now he has learned to sit up at the table (not go under it), chew with his lips closed and to ask to be excused....baby steps my friends!

Sus

Chinglish

Nate's vocabulary now includes the following words...

apple (what a good mommy I am teaching him such a healthy thing)

cookie(what a good mommy I am teaching him such a tasty thing)

googles (you can't swim with out them)

America America!

Alright, this little guy must think this country is full of a bunch of people who eat way too much and have way too much leisure time on their hands. A holiday weekend will do that for you. Friday we went to see Kung Fu Panda, didn't really get any reaction out of him about it. I thought he would show some excitement since it is set in China. I know....it's a cartoon version of China, but that is some good animation! Then we had my family over for a 4th of July cookout and lounging in the pool.

Yesterday was a day filled with 2 parties, one on the river and one at a pool. Both had lots and lots of food. What must be going on his little mind? He was head over heels excited at the party on the river, he had what must have been his first boat roads in a paddle boat and a canoe. He really didn't hesitate to jump in to the water and have some fun with all of the other kids. The time in/on the river really brought him to life and you could just see his happiness. We asked him if he liked America while we were out paddling around, and he answered a "yes" in his sweet little voice. I am not sure how much water exposure he has had before, China has lakes, but if he lived on the mountainside it might be a new experience for him.

At the 2nd party he got a kick out of the line dancing. You could tell he was interested in it and would probably have given it a try if we had a little more time to persuade him. Uncle Rich carried him over to the dance area and I tried my hardest to get him to give the Electric Slide a-go, but he just laughed and laughed and laughed about it. Then it was a game, he would race back to the chair and wait for you to pull him out and try again. Good bonding time!

I am enjoying each experience with him to see his reaction, sometimes it is exactly what I expected and other times it isn't, Nate likes to keep you on your toes!

Sus

Let's Go O's

Wednesday night we took Nate to his first Orioles game. His initial reaction to the inside of the stadium was a "WAH", that is Chinese for WOW, followed by boredom for the following 2 hours. The boys of summer just didn't hold his attention. He probably is not at all familiar with the sport, and it is frustrating to not be able to explain that rules to him. In this family he will grow to love the game as much as everyone else does. Nate did enjoy the peanuts, hey this is authorized throwing of your trash on the ground. I hope we didn't confuse him, since we had an initial showdown about not littering. I look forward to the time when we can explain that littering takes away from others enjoyment of God's creation, and it shows a lack of stewardship for what God has so graciously given to us in his beautiful creation. In the meantime enjoy crunching those peanut shells Nate my boy!

----Susanne

Fascinating Discoveries

The following are things that have elicited a WOW response from our newest son.

• ice that falls magically from the refrigerator
• cold air when you stand on the vent
• helicopters and airplanes
• the Alban Cat complex with all of their machinery sitting on the lot
• Johns Hopkins Medical Campus as we drove by this morning, I think it was because of the construction around there or he just has a great love of Western medicine.
• raw cookie dough
• electric pencil sharpener

-----Susanne

Speaking English

Nathaniel's first english word, spoken of his own accord on the parking lot of Target this morning was........CAR!

Go figure, a boy that loves cars, has spent time playing with them this morning and has run out in front of several cars would speak that for is first word.

---Susanne

Homeward Bound

Our morning began bright and early when we all had to be on the bus at 5:45am. Very painful, Zach didn’t exactly jump out of his bed and we had to prod him along to get up and dressed. It was our least crazy airport trip, no gate changes or any confusion. The gate was downstairs in the holding pen, very 3rd world, no loudspeaker announcements, just a woman with a bullhorn and a horde of people waiting to get on a bus to shuttle out to the plane. 5 families from AWAA were on the flight, one poor family had to deal with a sick child. Little Levi got sick, out of every which opening on his little body as they waited to go through security. By the time the Pinkman’s left for the USA he had a fever and was still ill. We watched their plane sit on the runway for over an hour and I felt their misery for them.

Before we landed in Beijing we were stuck in a little bit of a holding pattern. No biggie, Zachary was squealing with the need to use the bathroom though! Got all of our bags, one of the boys in the group had a lost piece of luggage so we waited to figure out that situation. Zachary wants you to know it was a lost sword that he had bought in Guangzhou. No big deal, we have to wait until 6:30pm for this next flight.We all check our paperwork and figure out that we must head off to terminal 2, schlep all of our luggage on to the hot sticky wasteland of a bus. Compared to the beauty of the terminal (prepared for the Olympics), we were in the low rent part of the airport. Guess what, wrong terminal got to go back to Terminal 3. Let’s put our luggage on the elevator to go down and out. I get on with the kids and some luggage. Chris waits for the next elevator, puts the bags on and is holding the door with his elbow, the door shuts anyway. Mr. Ugly American comes to town and kicks the steel doors as he yells out in frustration. Then he comes barreling down the escalator, calling for all hands on deck. All the adults scattered to the 4 different levels. Finally, Linda ended up finding the luggage. Haul it all back on the stinky sweaty shuttle bus and ride back to the mecca of Terminal 3. So much for thinking that we will have hours and hours of boredom as we wait for our 6:30pm flight to Dulles.

The flight is almost over, I think we have about an hour to go before we land. At this point we have been up for about 25 hours. Sleeping, if you can really call it that on the airplane doesn’t really count as sleeping. Compared to the food on the China domestic flights the food offered on this United flight has been delicious. Ahhh! Good airplane food, we missed it so. The other part of inflight service we were loving was the ice in the cups. Ahhh! Just divine! No business class this time, but we were fortunate enough to be bumped up to “economy plus”, a little more leg room then the normal economy. Not too bad though, we are just ready to be done.

Oh yeah….they are getting ready to tell me to turn this thing off!!!!! I can feel that we are heading downward. Yeah….Baltimore here we come!! 40 minutes until arrival, that is about 30 minutes earlier then the original timeline. See you all soon!

---Susanne

The End of the Road

Here I am on our last night in China. It has been a true adventure for our family. We saw so many sights that are unique to China and have marveled at God’s creation half a world away from our home. We have also experienced many emotions over the past 2 weeks. With all of the wow factors we have been a part of, I can’t say that I am sorry to be leaving. Tonight I have spent a good 2 hours repacking our bags! Difficult to do in the 3 square foot space I have available in the room and 4 boys running about. I can’t wait to have them run free in the yard.

Today was a low-key day for our group. We had a group picture this morning, several families here have 7,8,9 people with them, a few have 3 people, you can imagine it was quite the picture. In our free time we shopped a little more and went swimming again. For lunch today we had some McDonald’s burgers, just the burgers, sick of everything else they have to offer. You know it is bad when Kit tells you, “anything but McDonald's, it keeps giving me gas.” Nathaniel has found his first love in French fries, he didn’t like the burger though. Every time we walk past the bench with Ronald McDonald sitting on it we have to stop and take a picture of Nathaniel.

This afternoon we headed to the American Consulate to do our swearing ceremony. To be honest, I don’t know what I agreed to… I kept thinking, wait I might have changed my mind. I can’t handle this, are you sure about this God? I think maybe you got the wrong gal here Lord. I know….Moses and I have a little something in common. After dinner we headed straight to dinner. This time when Nathaniel picked a pricey item, I put my mommy foot down and tried to explain in my best pantomime, that it was too much. My new mantra throughout dinner is Country Mouse. Remember the story: City Mouse, Country Mouse? If you don’t the idea is that the country mice don’t know how to act in the city. We’ve got ourselves a country mouse folks. This little farm boy doesn’t know not to run in the street or to not pour his tea in his saucer and slurp it out of there. Elevator buttons, bells and escalators are all new to this little guy and I can’t wait to get him home where we don’t have an elevator that he can press all of the buttons so that we stop at each floor.

I’m longing for my bed, doing laundry (as sad as that is, it is true!), eating a dinner that I like without paying money for it and waiting for ever for the food to be served, playing outside and a routine.

Thank you for all of your prayers. We have appreciated them and needed every single one of them. Keep praying for us dear friends as we have many adjustments to still make. Pray for Nathaniel as he grieves the foster family he lost, we found out today that he had 4 older foster siblings and 2 younger foster siblings. No wonder why he is so angry at times.

See you all soon!
----Susanne

Lows and Highs

Hey everybody! Time to wrestle the reins back from Susanne, who has been a blogging champ lately. There was a lull in the action today – just a day for some of the paperwork to be processed at the American consulate here.

This morning Susanne and I were both feeling discouraged. We knew that we were in store for some rocky times when we decided to make this jump, but we also thought we would have a honeymoon period of sorts, at least while we were in China. There have been so many encouraging things the past week (one week! Wow!), but plenty of frustrations as well.

Thanks for your prayers – today was probably our best day yet with Nathaniel. As Susanne reported, we are making a habit of calling him “Nathaniel Weifeng” now. Kind of a mouthful, but he’s getting it.

After a heart to heart and some praying, Susanne stayed behind in the hotel with Nathaniel, waiting on an administrative phone call. The other three boys, Mom and Dad, and I walked to a local park.

They do parks right in China – beautifully landscaped, bridges, lakes, peeing children…
Yes folks, peeing children. Totally legit in China. To the point where a child being potty trained will walk around in tush-eating shark attack survivor pants – no cloth over the derrier.

The park was Africa hot – the highlight was eagle-eyed Joshua finding 3 mini frogs. This is on top of the frog he found yesterday. Said frog was a covert guest of our 5 star hotel last night, evidently. Josh made sure he was doing OK – found a baggy and put a touch of water in it, made sure there was a little passageway for air at the top. Frog #1 was set free on the way to the park. When we asked Josh what the frog did after getting his freedom back, he reported – “He looked at me.” This made me laugh out loud. Frogs 2 through 4 are in their little Joshua-created ecosystem in a mini water bottle as we speak.

The real blessing of the day was the time Susanne and Nathaniel had back in the room while we were gone. The looked at pictures and watched a bunch of home movie snippets on the computer. Nathaniel laughed and laughed at goofy videos of the boys dancing to the Cars soundtrack at home. It reminded us of how he hasn’t really seen the real Hardings yet. Just the slightly stressed, crammed in, too long in a foreign country Hardings.

This afternoon we caved in and did a bunch of souvenir shopping. Up to this point we had largely avoided this. The boys all got “chops.” I used to think this referred to chopsticks, but instead it is the name for a personalized stamp, carved with your name or anything else you might like. The stamp itself is made of jade, with an animal carved into the top. These things are to China tourism what the hermit crab is to Ocean City. OBLIGATORY.

Susanne bought herself a silk dress, tailored and all for less than $30. I scratched my itch for buying knockoff name brand stuff, too. You all can play “guess the knock off” when you see me. For all of you “Way of the Master” trained peeps out there, yes, I guess that makes me a thief. There I said it. Finally, what trip to China would be complete without the purchase of cheap plastic swords? Not this one.

This evening, many of the families in our travel group commandeered the area in front of the elevators on the seventh floor for a talent show and pizza party. A sweet night of real Christian fellowship. All the kids got up there and did silly things, and everybody ate it up and applauded while we ate overpriced Papa John’s. ($20ish per pizza) Color me biased, but little Kit was a big hit with his dancing exhibition. The kid can shake his booty, and he doesn’t care who knows it. Joshua pulled out his secret talent of competitive arm-tooting, much to the delight of the ladies in the crowd. Zachary boldly offered up his Kyle Boller imitation / schtick. Poor Kyle…people taking pot shots at you in the off season from half a world away. We couldn’t convince Nathaniel to get up there, although the stinker did sing “Happy Birthday to you” in ENGLISH (!!!!) to me at bedtime tonight. Don’t know if he memorized it from hearing it tonight at the talent show or if it’s taught in school along the lines of Frere Jacque or whatever the heck that French song is. Kudos to Candace Keck (who reminds us so much of Brenda Castlebury, it kills us) for this awesome idea.

It has been such a blessing to be in the company of these families. You could not have asked for a more genuinely Christian group of people. I get choked up when we are together as a group to see the love of Christ so tangibly displayed in their lives.

That’s all for now. Thanks to everybody who has been checking up on us. We still need your prayers! Satan would like nothing better than to attack our family and somehow interfere as we, in Joshua’s words, introduce Nathaniel to the “one true God.” For the longest time we were not able to read your comments, but now we can, and it’s a joy to see them.

-Chris

Prayer Request

Okay friends, here is a new one for you.

I think Nathaniel has been in a foster family that worshipped buddha. We have found him doing some kind of prayer chant a few times. Chris prayed with him last night that Jesus would just chase away the false spirits. While Chris was praying this, Nathaniel started letting out angry screams during the pray, so please pray that God would wrestle this little guy's heart away from the false idols of this world and mold it for Him.

Susanne and Chris

Name Change

After being with the entire group for a few days we realized that we were the only people who were speaking some Mandarin with our older child and using his Chinese name. We also realized that he was the only older child not even bothering to try to speak english. So we thought it best to make a switcheroo. Which was interesting because he did try out some english last night with us in the room. Baby steps, baby steps!

---Susanne

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

Guangzhou is HOT! It was 99 degrees today, the sweat rolling down our backs and heads was one of the first clues of the temperatures. Kunming is considered the ideal temperature, so I don’t think Nathaniel Weifeng has ever experienced heat like this before. His head was dripping eater any time we were outdoors. Yes, we had a name switch, more about that later.
This morning our group went to a temple that had been turned into a museum. The wood work was extraordinarily beautiful. Did you know that there are people in China who sleep on wood beds and use porcelain pillows? The wood is supposed to be good for your bones and the porcelain is cooler than a nice soft pillow. How could you even sleep like that? After the museum we headed over to a tea house, we really thought it paled in comparison to the experience we had in the Kunming tea house. We tasted monkey tea today. The leaves are so high up in the mountains that they monkeys have to pick it. Our group decided if you need monkeys to pick it, it isn’t worth drinking. It was terrible; the only way to get it down was to slug it back. Kit thought it was so bad he wouldn’t finish it, and no one was willing to drink it for him so that his cup would be empty. We are only really talking about 2 Tbs worth of liquid, that is how bad it was.
We spent the afternoon at the pool today. It was so nice, although this pool is rules out the wazoo. You can’t do anything that remotely resembles fun. 2 of the moms were wearing swimsuits with skirts and they were questioned if they were really wearing swimsuits. The pool attendants stand at the edge of the pool and are quick to tell you if you are breaking a rule.
This trip has been so much fun for the boys; they have really enjoyed playing with the older boys. They are very nice young men. If we aren’t sure where the boys are we only have to look for Tanner or Hayden to find our boys. We are with a really fun group of people. We have enjoyed eating together as a group, although we are a little intimidating in size. We had 28 people at a restaurant tonight and it was obvious we had overwhelmed them. Zach, Josh and Kit had to wait the longest for their dinners, they did remarkably well considering I had been finished my meal for a good 15minutes before they were served.
We are going to have to retrain Nathaniel on restaurant behavior when we get home. He takes the menu and just selects what the wants. This is easiest for the moment because he can’t communicate with words what he likes. Tonight he picks a pasta dish with lobster sauce and seafood. I questioned whether or not he would like this. One of the ladies in our group is fluent in Mandarin so I had her ask him if he liked seafood. He said yes. I should have gone with my gut instinct. He didn’t eat one single bite of that seafood, he liked the pasta. Never one to let good food go to waste, Chris decided he was going to try the squid that was on the plate. Yes, squid and octopus legs were the seafood! I have pictures of each of the men eating these little critters. The consensus was that it was rubbery. Joshua’s response to us trying to convince him to eat it…”no thanks, I’ve eaten a rubber band before”. Sensible me didn’t try it either.
I don't have the pictures downloaded at the moment but I will try to get them on our next post.
---Susanne

Paperwork and More!

After a short nights sleep we were up and atta ‘em early. We had to be in the lobby at 9am. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the families at breakfast. What a beautiful thing God is doing here. All 12 families have adopted special needs children; it is an incredible thing to see that children who had been discarded are valued for who they are, no matter what! We loved seeing all of the children, it was also a relief to find out what every one else has been struggling with, we felt like it was perfect for everyone else and just difficult for us.

Off to the baby visa pictures and medical examinations for all of us. Our guide, Amy, took us to a grocery store so that we could make some food purchases. I am really excited to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich tomorrow for my lunch. Yummy!
Back to hotel to get ready for our paperwork party, over 2 hours of filling out papers, so much fun. While I was slaving away Chris, the boys, Ron and Linda went to enjoy the pool. I was jealous. Can’t wait to go swimming tomorrow.

Stay tuned for tomorrow.

Susanne

Prayer Requests

Family and Friends thank you for all of our prayers. As we have progressed through this process we can update those requests for you.

Please pray for Weifeng to attach to us.

Please pray for him as he grieves for his foster family of 5 years, he loved them a lot.

Please pray that God would work on his heart to become soft and obedient, his will is strong and he doesn’t appreciate having his freedoms being restricted.

Please pray for his spiritual development, I think I may have found him doing some kind of false god prayer a few times, I will be interested in listening to what he has to tell us about it when he can communicate.

Please pray for his English to develop, he doesn’t seem to have a desire to try it out.

Chris and Susanne

Farewell Kunming

Time to move on to the big city of Guangzhou. I spent the morning packing up, Chris, his mom and dad took the kids back to the park. Did I mention that I am over living out of a suitcase? I can’t find anything that I want; when I want it or need it.

While getting ready to take a hike to McDonald’s for lunch, the boys were playing in the room. Crash, boom, bang..Weifeng wiped out on the nightstand and split his eye open? I am glad that I brought a medical kit, cleaned it up, iced it and bandaged it.

2 o’clock rolls around, time to leave for the airport. On the way there we made a stop at a local tea house. What a fun experience! We sampled 4 different teas, each to be enjoyed a different way, one you had to slurp to get the flavor and one you had to “chew”. The kids liked the tea baby; you put it in a cup and poured water in to test the temperature. If it was too hot, the baby would pee pee out water. You’ll never believe it, the water was hot, and he pee peed on us! Oh man Weifeng’s cut is bleeding!

We still had time to waste so we went to the flower market. This place was huge and overwhelming with flowers. They are so inexpensive that it is considered an insult for a man to give his lady flowers. Julie and Bernie bought a bunch of lilies and a bunch of gladiolas, I think it cost abut $4 US. Isn’t that amazing? Susan told us they would sell out of their flowers and have new ones in the morning. Oh man Weifeng’s cut is bleeding again!

One of the best parts of the day was seeing Weifeng experience the airplane for the first time, even the airport was full of new adventures. I now know the Mandarin word for airplane cold; I also looked at 50 or so pictures that he drew of the airplane. As we touched ground all I can tell you is….man, Weifeng’s head is still bleeding.

Uncle!!!!!Ever been in a medical clinic at 11pm in China? We have!!! 4 prescriptions and US $221 later we are back to the hotel for some sleep. No stitches needed, only steri-strips. They won’t take your child back from you will they?

Let’s hope there are no new injuries or illnesses tomorrow.

----Susanne

Stone Forest

Today we drove about 2 hours south of Kunming to visit China's Stone Forest National Park. It took at least an hour to get out of the urban environment. The cities here are huge in a way we just don't see in America.

The drive was a little painful, but so worth it. First of all, we got to see something closer to the "real" China. Beautiful countryside, terrace farms, poverty blending into intermittant prosperity. This is the type of environment Weifeng has been in with his farming foster family. We found out today that he did not have oxes or pigs at his farm. He wouldn't tell us what they grow there.

---Chris

When Chris says terrace farms, what he really means is people farm on the side of these huge mountains. It is done by hand, we even saw an ox pulling a plow, what hard work to make a living. We saw men on bikes with baskets full of chickens attached to the back, men and women with basket yokes hauling their produce around town to sell.

Stone Forest was worth every bit of the long drive, all around you were these huge rocks growing out of the ground. At least some of the area is used to farm, as we went down the hillside at one point we were surrounded by fruit trees and rice paddies on either side of us. My words can not do this place any justice. The pictures will have to speak for themselves.

Of course no day trip would be complete if it wasn't done Harding style. At one point the boys all followed this path up the hill that twisted and turned through rock caves and outcroppings. After the adults all caught up with the kids we turned back around. Josh decided to climb a rock and surprise Chris, so as Chris passed by, Josh jumped. Jumped right into another huge rock and kacked his head. It was a tiny wound, but the deep red blood running down his head was enough to freak him out. Chris being the nice daddy offered to carry Josh down the rest of the way. As our merry little troop lead the way back to the cart Chris missed a step, turned his ankle, dropped Josh and was left lying on his back, all four limbs in the air like a dead bug. Oh yes, my friends, those loud Americans are in town. Josh got more scrapes on his elbows and knees and Chris hobbled back to the cart we were using to tour the park.

After convincing everyone we didn't need the doctor, we headed to a local restaurant. This place had adventure written all over it. The first room they took us to smelled like a men's room, no thanks, next room had hay all over the floor. This was good, it hid the dead flies littering the floor and the smell of the hay masked any other smells. We had a hard time eating the feast that was presented to us, but at least a few of us went for it to be polite. I just kept telling myself not to think about the lack of atmosphere and went for it with gusto, I even used my chopsticks for the whole meal. Zach and Mitch both threatened the possiblity of throwing up, but it never happened. The duck with the head still on it as part of the serving presentation was the coup de grace of the meal.

Back on the bus to a tiny village that was famous for needlepoint work. We saw some of the most beautiful embordiery pictures ever, they looked just like paintings. Every one in our group bought something from this shop. It will be a nice momento for Weifeng as something from his province.

Bus torture continued as we headed back to the hotel. All the adults were ready to jump off of the bus by the time we got back to the hotel, sweet relief. As we all headed out to dinner together we reflected on what a nice day we had had. That all went down the pot when we whipped out that Harding flavor as we paid for our dinner check and Josh vomited on the floor of the restaurant. Kunming never saw us coming, but they might be glad we are going today!

We leave for Guangzhou tonight at 6:30pm. I have heard that it is more western and I am looking forward to that!

Till tomorrow-Susanne

Green Lake Park

We had our morning free on Tuesday. Our merry band of travellers decided to venture out a few blocks and find Green Lake Park. After risking life and limb to cross the street in 3 different places we found one of the entrances to the park. What a beautiful treasure! We strolled along the walkway and found colorful boats, ducks twice the size of US ducks and dancers. There were 4 different types of dancing going on in a small section of the park. We saw traditional couples dancing, women with fans and parasols, women with clinky finger cymbals and our personal favorite the women who were dancing the Chinese version of the Macarana. We laughed so hard at the thought of that.

At one point the boys found a huge gaggle of geese, they all climbed out of the lake together, I bet it was 40 geese, then followed a worker down the path as he hurried them along. Where these geese were going in such a hurry, I've got no idea.

The highlight for the boys was "Happy Town", with its fake Mickey and Minnie images plastered all around. It was like Chinese Chuck E. Cheese, except a worker had to plug in the machine each time some wanted to use it. The game of "skill" the boys wanted to try was called Pet Goldfish you had to scoop the fish out of the water. Folks, I am talking real life goldfish with buggy eyes. No way are you playing this one kids. Josh asked if the reason they couldn't do it was because of the eyeballs. Well, yes Josh, but how about the fact that you can't take a fish on the airplane? The best part of these rides was the tinny sounding, loudly blaring, synthesized Christmas carols that played as you rode your little heart out. Isn't this awesome kids? Forget Disney World, we've got Happy Town!

Actually, it was fun to see the surprise and excitement on Weifeng's face as he tried out these things for the first time ever.

After lunch, our guide, Susan took us to see the places that our children were abandoned. This was a touching moment for both families. Weifeng was abandoned near a highway underpass. The area had a ghetto feel to it. The picture below doesn't do it justice. Susan hurried Chris for safety's sake as they left the bus to get the pictures. I can't imagine the desperation that this woman felt as she left a precious baby in the rubble and stench of this place. It was not a pretty location: rundown, trash on the ground, and the smell was horrid. If it was downtown Baltimore you would have been terrified for you life. Natalie was left at a hospital, her mom Julie told us that the courtyard there was filled with children and their parents standing around as the parents decided if they were going to pay for the hospital care. It is done as a prepay program. America is an awesome place.

We were also able to visit a cultural museum that displayed the handiwork of many of the local minorities. Yunnan province has the largest percentage of minorities. Very beautiful pieces were kept there. It was a little stressful as you can well imagine with 4 boys in an important place. The guides were not bothered by it, in China they don't restrict too many freedoms of the children. You would never dream of touching anything in a museum, but they said it was okay. I couldn't really let in on that one, I still made the boys abide by not touching. I have found such cultural differences to be very eye-opening as a parent. We have some training cut out for us. Please pray for us as we teach him to rein in some of his freedoms.

Our next stop was an hour or so out of the city, at the Minorities Village. Absolutely beautiful, lush, green, verdant, it made you feel like you were at Epcot with all of the landscaping. It had several arches of parasols lining the main walkway. Gorgeous!!!! We got to see the houses of several different ethnic groups and the guides for the park were all dressed in traditional garb. We really enjoyed our visit, until it started to rain, and then we had to hustle back to the bus for the long ride back. Our guide, Susan, started to panic that the Fiorelli's baby would get sick if we were caught in the rain.

Another day down here in China, I am missing you friends and family as well as my iced tea and the sheets on my bed!

-Susanne

Until tomorrow- Susanne

A Visit to the Orphanage

We woke up Tuesday morning feeling refreshed. We are blessed to be staying at some very nice, Western-style hotels. They all seem to include a very nice buffet breakfast.

Everywhere you go, the shops and restaurants seemed to be overstaffed by a factor of at least 2. How do these places make any money? Guess you gotta find a billion jobs somewhere.

One nice thing about this is people really have time to help you. There is a waiter who has been working at every meal we've eaten in the hotel restaurants. He, like so many people here in service industries, has an Americanized name - "Jack." A very striking looking guy - probably some mix of ethnicities. From the first meal down there, he seemed to have a tender heart towards Weifeng and our situation. He has become a walking English-Mandarin dictionary for us.

He has also helped us choose some appropriate food for Weifeng. A bowl of rice noodles with carrots, green onions, soy sauce, and rice vinegar was a big hit. He also scarfs down fruit like the Harding boy he is. We were touched to see him immediately pick up a fork and a knife to cut his watermelon in an effort to fit in. We have asked - this boy had never used them before in his life.

The first thing on the agenda was a trip to Weifeng's and Natalie's (the 14 mo little girl of the Fiorelli family, whom we are on this adventure with) orphanage, the Kunming City Children's Welfare Institute. This was a privilege - typically families are not allowed to visit their child's orphanage.

First we met with a woman who was the second in command. She was also the orphanage representative on gotcha day, bringing the two children to the Civil Affairs Office. It is our understanding that she is in charge of international adoptions.

We had the chance to ask her a lot of questions about Weifeng's background. With 600 children assigned to the orphanage (a mix of residents and children at foster homes), we weren't sure what level of knowledge she would have for this individual boy.

• Where had he been living? About an hour away, with a farmer's family



• How many foster families had he been assigned to? Just 1 (gulp.)



• How long had he been there? Many years - we think 5. (double gulp.)



• Is there anything that makes him scared? "Gui" (goo-ey - 'ghosts') - we laughed



• What are your favorite colors? blue and green



• How much schooling has he had? 3 yrs, two preschool yrs and kindergarten



• How many siblings did he have in his foster family? 2 sisters (unsure of ages) and a younger brother

The orphanage director came in and spent some time with us, as well. The Fiorelli family told us she has the reputation of running a very tight ship. I will say this: the orphanage was spotless. It was huge, well furnished, fairly modern. There was an overall hopeful feel to the place.

We saw the infant room, which I think made all of sad. There were about 20 babies in there with 2 nannies to look after them. We saw a toddler room, rooms full of rows and rows and rows of cribs or beds. Weifeng spent some time in school there, so we saw some school rooms. We only took 1 or 2 pictures inside the facility. We were told when and what we could take a picture of, if we would take a picture of the wrong thing, we would have had our film card taken away. The same holds true for pictures you take of any uniformed men. Can you imagine losing all of the pictures you have taken on this trip?

After the orphanage it was trip to WalMart and KFC for lunch. I found WalMart to be a very intimidating experience, 4 floors of store, couldn't find the clothing section (did we mention this boy is big? Much bigger then we expected?) and no one spoke english. The fruit section of the store smelled heavenly, the dried squid in a bag section made me ill. I also saw some beef tongue hanging around in this section. I can't even think about it, it gives me the heebie jeebies. We learned at KFC that even though you think you are in line someone is going to come up and butt in front of you because you aren't standing on top of the person in front of you. This perturbed me so you better believe I was breathing my hot breathe down the neck of the guy who butted in front of me, ain't nobody getting in between me and my greasy fried chicken!!!

Chris and I ended up venturing out in to town to get the boys some coats and to get Weifeng some pants. Chris tried his hardest to bargain down the ladies at the store, but to no avail, they wouldn't bite.

Our last adventure for the day was out to dinner at a western restaurant called BlueBird. This experience can only be described as exhausting. Think of when Tarzan was brought out of the jungle and into civilization. Every thing is foreign to this little guy, table clothes on the table, going under the table, not touching everything on the table, not playing with the silverware. We are taking the perspective that he is a baby Harding and we will have to train him just like the other kiddos. You can pray for us to keep this in mind as we spend more and more time together.

I'm going to include a few pictures for your viewing pleasure!

---Chris and Susanne

Adventures in Town

I don't think we have talked to much about this but we are an oddity around here! I have never been stared at more in my life. It is a very open and common occurence, it is nothing for someone to walk by you, stop, turn back around and watch you. It can become very overwhelming. It really feels strange now because we have this Chinese boy with us. I think it is curious to them why we are walking around with this little guy. A couple of times Chris and I have been worried that someone would try to take him away from us. We are convinced that the guy in WalMart yesterday thought we were telling him we had found a lost little boy!

The other big thing about leaving the hotel is the traffic. There are no traffic laws. The stop light out side of our hotel is not functioning, the traffic never stops, it is a continuous flow. To cross it we find a big group and try to hustle as quickly as possible. The pedestrian does not have the right of way. Cars are going one way, scooters are going both directions on either side of the street and the bikes are going where ever they want to. Crazy and death-defying all at the same time. The horns never stop either all night long. I have heard 20 beeps just sitting here typing.
I was convinced yesterday that we were going to see someone get hit by our bus, his back was up against it as we drove past. Crazy, crazy, crazy!

Dinner Anyone?

Hot Wheels----who knew this was the way to little boy bonding? Within 5 minutes, Josh had Weifeng playing cars with him, back and forth, back and forth.

The Hardings are hungry! Hey, Susan said there was a KFC within walking distance, only 8 minutes. Let's go for it! Wow, the concierge has a map to show us how to get there, and he said it is only 8 mins also!

A few little problems with this plan...

1. We can't read the street signs.

2. The people we asked for help, don't speak English and our Mandarin is very limited.

3. There is some kind of street construction going on around here and there is this gigantic blue wall all around it. You have to walk a very far distance to get around it and you can't see over it!

These 3 problems combined equal 1 hour walking tour that doesn't equal up to dinner. Oh, we stumbled upon the KFC only to find that it is closed, as in reconstruction, as in dirt, lumber and the like inside the windows.

I just want to get back to the hotel, but Chris somehow talks to this Chinese lady who starts leading us around. How do we tell her to stop!!! We don't want to follow you!!!

All of this leads to us back at the hotel and a dinner in the hotel restaurant. Why didn't we just do that at the start of the night?

We still all love each other even though it was touch and go there for a few minutes with a hungry belly.

This poor kid must be wondering what he has gotten himself into!
---Susanne

Gotcha Day!

....the continutation....

After a few hours at the hotel for lunch and freshening up we were off to the Civil Affairs office, it was about a 30 minute ride. One of the officials from the office was on the bus with us, I had to tell the boys to be on their best behavior otherwise she may tell us"no baby for you".

We had thrown all of our gifts together in a big bag before we left. Our guide told us she would just let them pick what they wanted, no wrapping or fuss was involved. It seemed a little gauche to us to just rifle through the bag, but at least they got what they wanted. This lady got first picks since she was very important. She took some Wockenfuss candy, I was a little envious of her.

We drove up to the building, which was not very official looking at all. We were sent in to a room with a conference table and some couches. You could just feel the anxiety in the room, we were getting teary-eyed as we waited and there was just a nervous energy all around us. Susan said the children would be there in about 5 minutes, so we waited and waited and waited some more. The doorbell rang and we all said "they are here", Josh being Josh said, "who's here?". I love that kid, we all had a good laugh and relaxed a minute.

Before we knew it they were coming through the door, Weifeng led the way. He was holding the picture album we had sent him and carrying his backpack. You could tell he was so scared. He just had this solemn stare the whole time. We got down on our knees and hugged and kissed him, he probably thought we were crazy as we tried out our best Mandarin through a bunch of sniffly tears. We learned how to say "I love you", it is "Wo ai ne", but I keep saying "Wo ai nar", which means "I love there". Oh well, I never claimed to be an expert! As we introduced his "dede" and "guhguhs" they each came and hugged him. We put him on our laps and treated him as if he was a baby as we held him. This is a very different experience from getting a baby. You could tell that he was uncomfortable with our touch, but we didn't let that deter us. He is ours and we want him to know that with all of his heart. As he sat there, tears started to roll down his face. Josh was faithful to deliver him tissues from my purse. I was glad to see the tears because we knew that he was sad to leave his foster family and he wasn't keeping it inside.

We are so grateful to Chris' mom and dad. They have been such a big help. Chris' mom did the filming for our gotcha moment, so we were free to focus on Weifeng. A very touching moment came when Chris's dad got down on his knees and gave this scared little boy a hug and a sweet kiss on the cheeks.

Finally, Chris' mom pulled out a coloring set for all of the boys and he allowed himself to get involved in coloring. He even got off of the couch and picked out a color for himself. Wow! Progress so quickly!

After mounds and mounds of paperwork that Chris filled out, and signing our names over and over again, we sealed our commitment to him with a red fingerprint over our signatures. It was official, we are now a family of 6!

They rushed us out of the building and told us we were off to the passport office. We had his picture taken for the passport and followed Susan from place to place as she told us the next step. We really didn't have to think at all, she took care of it all for us. Good thing, I don't think we would have been very coherent. As we came down the steps to pay the bill they were turning off all of the lights, boy, when they say 5pm is closing, they mean it. They kept telling us to hurry, hurry, hurry. In America if you were still transacting business they would lock the doors and just let you out when you finished. It was an odd feeling.

Back on the bus, and back to the hotel. Once we were here we asked Susan to come to the room and tell Weifeng for us that we loved him very much, we would take good care of him and we knew that he missed his family very much. We wanted him to know that we understood his feelings for them and that it was okay to cry and be sad. My sense was that those few words really lifted a burden for him, Maybe he felt relieved to know that he didn't have to put on a fake happy face to make us happy, we were okay with his sadness.

That is our story of Gotcha Day! Stay tuned for the dinner trek coming in the next segment!

Anybody who is tech savvy - Kevin Krack are you out there? - email us and tell us how to resize an mpeg to a lower file size. Blogspot will only let a maximum of a 100mb file, our two gotcha videos are 150ish and 320ish. (2 mins / 4mins respectively)

-Susanne

Butterflies & Jitters

Our big day finally arrived yesterday! We had every intention of blogging some thoughts and pictures yesterday evening, but it was't meant to be. Susanne and I collapsed in sheer emotional and physical exhaustion last night at 10:30, shortly after tucking in our four arrows in bed.

I'll back up a little to set the scene. Sunday night, after two days of full throttle Beijing touring and the physical exertion of climbing the Great Wall, we had the treat of going to a beautiful theater in Beijing to see the "Flying Acrobatic Show." It was one of those vacation decisions where you just go for it because, hey, "When's the next time we're going to be in Beijing?"

The show was awesome, everything you would expect it to be. At least the 50% of it I actually saw between doing touch and goes with my head as I fought off sleep the whole time. Kit slept through the first half. Joshua slept through the second half. Only Zachary and Susanne, blessed with hummingbird metabolisms, were able to gut-check it through. Joshua stumbled out of the theater looking punch drunk, fighting off tears, with onlookers laughing.

So we get back to the hotel, race to get our check in luggage out in the hallway by 10:30, log about 4 hours of sleep, get up at the crack of dawn, and head off to the domestic terminal at the Beijing Airport. Our guide, Sheri (pictured above with us in the lobby of our Beijing Hotel), had arranged for a friend of hers to meet us and the Fiorelli family at the terminal to help us navigate the check in process. She was great, although she didn't speak any English. We wondered what security would be like, but it ended up being a little more low-key than ours in the USA.

We had to wait a couple of hours for boarding. The boarding pass said gate 47, so off we went on a half mile hike down in to the depths of the airport. When we got there, the signs didn't match our flight, and all we saw was a bunch of busses parked outside the gate. Off we went again, deciding that the LCD signs were telling us that gate 23 was what we wanted. A half mile later (think of the old Huey Lewis video where the family is trapsing around the beach with all their earthly posessions), we're at gate 23 with not much confidence. We had stopped at two customer service desks where speaking English was not on their service menu. An Asian man who ended up being from Oklahoma (wacky) assured us that we had the right idea.

Cue Huey Lewis...as we chatted away, excitement building, one of the endless airport announcements (that we would have missed unless the Oklahoman was there) told us that they were boarding our flight out of gate 47. We logged another half mile, this time at a quicker pace, and scooted through gate 47 to board a mystery bus to our mystery plane a mile or two away on the tarmac.

Now we find that we had exchanged our 767 at gate 23 for a beat up looking old 737 for our 3 hr flight to Kunming City, home of Weifeng's orphanage. This flight was Harding style, which is to say crammed in the back like sardines. Southwest's marketing hype about having more seat space actually turns out to be true.

At least we would get breakfast, right? You know how flight attendants typically get right on the drink order as the plane is still climbing out, followed up by a snack or food in the first 30 minutes of the flight. Not so much in China. I was having flashbacks to survival school, prepared to eat whatever was put in front of me. My training failed me.

Orange juice -good. Congee (watery rice with all flavor painstakingly extracted) - not so good. 1,000 year old egg (their name, not mine) - 'nuff said. Watery yogurt - edible. Some sort of breakfast sandwich with mystery meat - mixed reviews.

I mention this not so much to complain, but to let you know how desperate we are for Western food. Kit's assesment of the breakfast sandwich: "I guess I'm eatin' a hambuhguh for breakfast," with a little shrug of the shoulders. Susanne resorted to the survival school technique of staring at the chicken sandwich ad for Mcdonald's in her copy of People. Yes, Christian friends, Susanne has a little weakness.

God has used the food issue to teach us how overwhelming a change Weifeng is facing as he joins our family.

We arrived in Kunming, took a bus back to the terminal, grabbed our luggage, and met our Kunming guide, Susan. Her smile and excited greeting reassured us as we headed off to the apex of our adventure.

Our hungry and tired band of travelers were off in a shabby but strangely homey bus on a rainy day in the "City of the Eternal Spring" to meet the main character of our story.

Gotta wait till the next post for the big stuff....Felt like I have to get the details recorded, or they will wash away with time. I will give you this Sneak Preview: God is faithful! Things have gotten off to a great start!

-Chris