catching up!

                          We expected Adalynn to be a little delayed, not the case. She was bored with all of the baby toys I had brought her, so we went to some store and paid like $30 US for the only toy we could find that we thought she would like. I am pretty sure the price went way up when they saw us! I thought stuff was suppose to be cheap in China!

Wow! It has been a full week home, and we are adjusting. I am back to blogging after getting shut down while in China. We had signed up for a Virtual Private Network before we had went to China. Since facebook and blogger are blocked in China, the VPN, makes it appear that we are posting from San Francisco, Miami, or NYC. It worked fine until my last post with the Jesus Reigns etching in the Great Wall. Then even if we changed our city location we were shut down within seconds. Making us very grateful to live in this free country, even with the faults and short comings. We are blessed, we appreciate the freedoms and the rights that we have.

I have so many adventures to share with all of you. We can't believe how exciting and enjoyable our trip to China really was, and the great friends that we made while there.

Taken at the Zoo.

 Here is Shari's little Hannah. I love her ornery little personality! This photo sums her up, standing on the NO TOUCHING sign!

 Adalynn's 1st McDonald's experience. She loves to dip her french fries in ketchup, but, she had trouble swallowing her chicken nuggets.

                                               At  a museum, in Lanzhou.

I will also share more in another post about how it is going on the homefront. But, it is going much better. Since Matt went back to work Adalynn and I have been spending all of our time together, and she is tolerating me very well! She loves to play with me, I can carry her. Occasionally, she even lets me rock her. If anyone has seen us out and about, you probably know that she is pretty anti-social. Which we are grateful for, she is definitely not a "mommy shopper" like Eli was. She prefers me and is irritated if anyone so much as looks at her.

Jesus Reigns!

Before I begin, I will here is a picture that we took at the Great Wall of all places. Yes, Jesus does Reign. China is a spiritually dark place, this sign is a glimpse of light in the darkness. Today we toured a Buddhist Temple. Right before we entered we met this Chinese man pictured above. He came up to us, and said, in his best broken English. "Do you know? Have you heard the good news? God is ALIVE in China, the God that gave us Christmas." Yes, friend, we told him God IS alive in China, and He has always been here. This man was evangelizing even at great risk to himself.

We met another woman pictured above, her name is Helen and she is a Christian, and so is her mother and sister. We asked her how she came to believe, and she said it was through missionaries! Yes, God is here He is everywhere.  

 

 Here we are outside of the Buddhist temple. We are so thankful for these new friends.

 A Buddhist monk praying.

 Here is our sweet little girl, our precious chosen child, that was likely born a Buddhist, and abandoned because of the superstition that came with her birth defect. Our group plans to have a prayer and re dedication time for our children, to dedicate them to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to cast out any "spirits that have been spoken over them."

 As we entered this temple, we could feel a dark spirit there. It really is hard to explain. But, it feels like the absence of Hope. It is heavy, it is demonic.

 The people bow down and worship this god, they put money at his feet, and then they go on about their day.

 A solemn moment watching these people bow before a god who is not real. There shall be no other gods but, the One True God.

 

 I really can't understand worshipping something like this.

 Lighting candles as prayers.

Night life in Lanzhou

Lanzhou is quite the city at night, and we thought it was lively during the day. We met up with the Magnuson's and went out to dinner. This area was really developed with big tv like screens everywhere. There were people dancing, and dog socializing session. Lights, music and excitement evewhere!

Oh how I was longing for this!! PIZZA HUT! Of course, it was a cultural experience unlike anything back home. But, I don't think pizza had ever tasted so good!

Adventure

Tuesday was quite the adventure. It was declared a "free day" by our guide, who said we needed to rest. We were told that this city was safe so our group decided to go out exploring Lanzhou. This city is pretty authentic China, much more authentic than I figured we would be able to experience on this trip. So we walked and walked and yes we got lost. But, that is beside the point. It was an amazing fun and culture filled day. We are quite the spectacle, as there are no other Americans here, and I am guessing it is rare for these Chinese people to see any of us. We definetly got the attention of the locals, and yes a bit of criticim again for not having the babies dressed as Eskimos.

We found a school on our adventure, and we were surprised to see so many little girls, with the strong preference for boys here in China.

We were able to stand at the gate as the grandparents picked the kids up from school, one little boy came up and spoke to us in very good English, he told us he had been in Australia before. The kids seemed really happy, This is a happy culture.

Kind of creepy. This woman came up and even took off her mask to crticize us for the way we had Adalynn dressed.

They kind of celebrate Christmas here, but, there is no reason behind the season for them. This is probably the scariest Santa I have even seen.

Here we are at the Apple store. The guys were trying to get some kind of adapter. It took 2 Mandarin phrase books, and an ipad app to communicate, that they did not have the item.

Here we are at a mall...

Lunch, now that was an adventure. We decided to try something reallu authentic. We ate in a Muslim Resturant, they cooked the food up by the window. It was some kind of meat on a stick, it said beef, but, it wasn't beef, and some kind of spicy bread.

Lunch was a fun experience, we have a very adventurous travel group.

Matt loves all of the construction here, above is a brick man hole.Below is a man waving as we take his photo.

 More school children.

 A wallpaper and decorating store.

 This is how ladies take their kids potty, right there on the street by a tree. These are babies. I am pretty sure Adalynn is used to this but, we are doing diapers.

A common sight in all of the countries we have been to.

It's Official!

 Yes, she still hates me, but, really how could I not love this face. As cute as this coat is we have still gotten a lot of Chinese woman all upset because they don't think she is warm enough. It's cold here, but, not that cold, they think babies should be dressed like Eskimos!

 She does not like anyone to touch her other than Daddy, she was not loving the fingerprinting.

 Yes, she is screaming because I am in the picture.

 The Magnusens!! Amber, Jesse, Jamin, Emet and Baby Glory!

 Photo with a nany and the orphanage director.

 

Adalynn loves to eat!!

 

Yesterday we was the day we officially adopted Adalynn..or at least I think it was, we are so grateful to our guide, because otherwise we would have no clue what is going on. We were at a Civil Affairs office in China wher we filled out paperwork, had an interview asking if we still wanted to adopt Wu Yuanke, YES! We did fingerprints and pictures. The best part was meeting up with our friends Amber and Jesse Magnusen and their boys. (If you don't know this incredible story, you can look at a previous posts) We adopted our Ethiopian boys together and here we are in the same province in China getting our girls on the same day!

What an adventure, after the civil affairs we went to the police station. Then we had lunch at a great restaurant, our guide did not eat with us, thank goodness we had Jesse and Amber, who speak some Chinese. Because, there is NO English spoken here, and oddly enough the universal language of charades doesn't help much.

However, dinner last evening was a bit more of an adventure. Our 3 families decided to stay in and eat at our hotel.First, we had trouble even explaining that we were there to eat. They put us in a room by ourselves, and showed us pictures of the food. Matt had a Mandarin translation book, but, it didn't help us get any water, however, when he found the word for beer, the whole room of Chinese people burst giggled, and came back with beer. Even though we are really tired of authentic food and are craving Pizza Hut, the beef noodle soup we had was very good and so was the "meat" whatever that was. Hopefully, it wasn't the sparrow intestines that were listed on the menu. We have all given up on manners when it comes to the chopsticks. The Chinese servers did go get the hotel manager that speaks about 3 words of English to help. We could tell that they were really amused with us! No matter nwhat, we had a lot of good laughs!

Adalynn still doesn't want anything to do with me. Though she has let me feed her a little bit. We were happy that she refused to go to any of the Chinese orphanage people. She seems really attached to Matt. I wasn't expecting this at all, but, I WILL win her trust and love. I just don't know when. Fo now we will keep her as happy as possible while she grieves.

Adalynn is happy when we are out and about, but, HATES our room, and spent many hours screaming yesterday afternooon. She loves to imitate, and brings Matt his backpack telling him she is ready to go.

We gave her a bath last night..which she hated, don't blame her since water here is only luke warm.

She eats well. The only way she seems able to drink is through a syringe or a spoon. I really wish I would have brought a syringe over 4cc. But, it's working and she seems competely familiar with this method.