Home Sweet Home

We're home!  It was a 23 hour day full of travel but we finally made it home.  Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes while we were away.  We had an absolutely amazing time and loved every bit of the experience.  The adjustment to the time change has been a little challenging as we were all up at 3:30am and now everyone is sawing logs at noon but hopefully our bodies will adjust over the next few days.  The trip was nonstop and actually a lot busier than I had anticipated.  Hopefully over the next few days I can get caught up on pictures and updates from the last part of the trip.  Can't wait to see you all soon!

Party of Five

Yes, we are officially a party of five :)  Since I am a little behind on posting I wanted to catch you all up on the past 2 days.  Yesterday, we decided to take an optional tour of the Shaolin Temple.  This is a very famous temple in China where kung fu was started.  You might be more familiar with it from the movie, Kung Fu Panda.  We got to enjoy a kung fu show, tour the temple area and see the pagoda forest.  The weather was not cooperating and we had a few little issues with our tour guide but overall it was a good time.  One moment we will never forget.....Did you see the picture of the little boy with split pants?  This is very common in China.  The babies don't wear diapers and walk around with their little tushies hanging out.  And when they need to use the restroom they just squat and go wherever...including the steps to the kung fu theater.  Let's just say it was a blowout moment :)  One we all are still laughing about.

I still cannot get over how the Chinese people are so fascinated with us especially now that we are carrying around a chinese baby.  Some just stare completely confused while others smile and approve.  In Beijing, it is more common to see Americans visiting and touring but in Zhengzhou not so  much.  Last night at dinner a man just stared at us the whole time.  I can't help but wonder what thoughts they are having.....what do they think of the one child policy?  Are they happy to see these children being adopted and moving on to a better life?  Are they ashamed?  And finally, you have to wonder if they themselves have abandoned a child and when they see us it stirs up emotions.  I guess we will never know. 

Today, we finally had a day to rest!  We slept in and enjoyed our breakfast without being rushed.  Afterwards, we went for a walk to a local park and enjoyed some kite flying and the kids got to take Maili on some carnival rides.  And of course, Ethan was once again mobbed by the papparazi!  He asked if we ever come back to China can he shave his head :) We have really enjoyed getting to experience the local culture and the Chinese people.  They are all so friendly and eager to practice their english.  We were waiting outside of a local shop the other day for our bus and the family who owned the shop immediately came out, gave us seats to sit on, and wanted Lauren & Ethan to teach their daughter english.  It was so cute to see the kids trying to communicate with each other. 

At the end of the day, we received our notary papers for the adoption.....Maili's birth certificate, abandonment letter, and finding ad.  It is customary in China when a child is abandoned that they post an ad in the local paper to see if they can track down the parents (which never happens) but they feel it is their obligation.  It brought tears to my eyes to see her little picture at just a few weeks old with the description of where she was found like a classified ad in the back of the paper.  What a story she already has.  I can't wait to see the plans that God has for her.  She is doing absolutely amazing!  We fall in love with her a little more and more each day.  She has incredible fine motor skills and is so content just unbuckling and buckling her cute little china doll shoes.  We're going to purchase them in every size to bring home!  She smiles constantly and loves to be held.  If she had to pick who gets to hold her, I would say Daddy would be the winner.  But overall, she has attached to all of us and of course we are a little attached ourselves :)

Next stop.......Guangzhou.

"Meeting Maili"

So I'm sure some of you have been wondering where in the heck the Taylor family has been and why are they not keeping up to date on their  blog?  Well, if you read the last post you'll know why.  It has been a crazy couple of days!  We jumped off the train in Zhengzhou at approximately 12:25pm on Monday.  And when I say jumped I mean jumped......2 adults, 2 kids, 5 suitcases, 4 carry ons, and 2 bags of souvenirs we had purchased all jumped off that train in record time.  George had warned us that there was not a lot of time between stops so we would need to be quick.  So off we went.  Cindy, our local rep in Zhengzhou, was waiting right there as we got off the train and whisked us through the crowds of people to a van.  I can't even begin to describe the amount of people, cars, mopeds, taxis, buses, bicyclists, etc that were on the roads.  Absolutely crazy!!!! And no such thing as following traffic signals.  People just drive wherever whenever.  Keith was able to catch a lot of it on video and it is truly unreal!  So as we got in the van, Cindy told us that we were headed to the hotel and that Maili was there waiting for us!  This was not at all like we had imagined.  No time to unwind, get settled in to our hotel room, nothing!  We rushed to our room and within 10 minutes she was at our door.  Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of her right when they handed her off to us as we really wanted to just savor the moment and not overwhelm her with all the paparrazi photo taking.  She was absolutely beautiful!  She did fine until the nannies handed her off to us and then the tears began.  She cried a very quiet cry as we held her and tried to console her and within about 10 minutes she fell right asleep in my arms. When she awoke 2 hours later she had 4 smiling strangers staring at her :)  At first, she took it all in with wide eyes and then we got her to smile.  And she hasn't turned back since!  She has the sweetest personality.  So quiet and soft spoken with just the cutest little smile.  She lights up the whole room.  We are all so in love with her and so far she is doing well with all of us.  Today, we traveled with the group to the registration office to make the adoption official.  Welcome to the family......Maili Grace Taylor

Are Those Chickens in Your Goat Ranch?

Sunday, October 9, 5:30am "Got tickets?"

Today we woke up bright & early to catch a plane to Zhengzhou.  All of the families made it through the ticket line except us.  You see, we decided to go against the norm and stay separate from our group at the Westin in Beijing ( we are suckers for the heavenly bed or maybe we're just a little high maintenance).  Since I travel a fair amount for work we decided to take advantage of my go-zillion Starwood points that I have accumulated to pay for a majority of our hotel stays since we are required to book two rooms in each hotel that we are staying (Chinese hotels only allow three people per room no matter your size or age).  It had really worked out just fine except the local agency rep forgot to include us in her numbers when purchasing the airfare tickets to Zhengzhou.  Oops!!!  No worries though, George got us booked on the next flight out and we're just an hour behind the rest of the group.   We feel like we're on the Amazing Race :).  

Detour #2- 12:20 pm "Go with the flow........."

We were able to board our later flight from Beijing to Zhengzhou but 30 minutes into our  flight time the pilot announced that we were turning back to Beijing due to weather conditions getting worse in Zhengzhou.  It turns out that there was dense fog which was made worse by the local farmers burning corn husks. This is the time of year for the corn harvest and ALL of the farmers burn the husks after the cob has been removed by hand. It was interesting to see this process along the busiest of roads in Beijing.  You could see hundreds of yards of corn just lying on the sidewalk and huge piles of husks next to them.  Even in Beijing we experienced very smokey skies because of all the burning going on (in addition to the thick smog).  The terminal inside the Beijing airport also had a smokey haze.  Yeah, that's what you want to see inside of an airport and around planes.......smoke!  

So...........we picked up our luggage and got in the long lines to try to re-book our flight.  All of the flights to Zhengzhou were cancelled for the rest of the day and the first available flight out was Monday evening at 10:20pm. BUMMER!  The airline was required to provide us a hotel for the night so we went with the flow and jumped on a shuttle bus to the hotel.  From  the looks of the shuttle bus I told Shanna that it was very likely that the hotel would probably resemble a goat ranch, at best. Boy did I call that one!  You wouldn't believe the scenery surrounding this "hotel". There were wild chickens running around and it looked like a war zone around there. We couldn't help but laugh at the situation.  When the bus pulled up to the hotel I told the driver not to worry about removing our bags from the van. As luck would have it, our driver didn't speak not one lick of English.   Since I can only say enough Chinese words to order off of an extra value meal at McDonald's we had a rather comical exchange as I played charades to try to tell this driver to take us back to the airport (using my arms like wings and making airplane noises, to boot). We were then approached by the one, yes only one person in the hotel that spoke broken English. He happened to be the hotel manager and he REALLY wanted us to stay at his swank establishment. I started off trying to let him down easy by telling him that our flight was very early the next day (little white lie) and we needed to stay much closer to the airport. He was insistent that we were very close to the airport and all would be fine. Finally, I had to fess up and call his baby ugly..."Sir, you're hotel is not nice and I have traveled too far to stay in your goat ranch for the night" (I added the goat ranch for your whimsical benefit). He smiled, chuckled and relented knowing that we weren't " goat ranch" kind of folk.  The reality of the situation was that my gut was telling me that this was not a safe place for my family. 

Did we mention that we're hotel snobs?

7:00pm "Just what the doctor ordered......."

But have no fear, the amazing George is here!  We seriously don't know what we would do without our beloved George. He swept in and saved us from the free range chicken goat ranch and put us up in a nicer hotel in the city. George felt so bad about our day that he sent three gentlemen to our room that were experts in Chinese traditional medicine and gave us the most amazing massages complete with a full body "pressure point" massage.   Just what the doctor ordered.  I bet we all sleep like a rock tonight!  George was also able to get us on a 7:00am train from Beijing to Zhengzhou.  We were excited about the 5 hour train ride since we had seen enough of the airport in Beijing (10 hours). We also new that fog, smoke or any other weather condition wouldn't keep that train from departing.  I wonder what amazing adventures await us tomorrow............picking up Maili is definitely one of them.  WE CAN'T WAIT TO MEET HER, HOLD HER, LOVE HER!!  

"Extreme Stair Stepper......"

So, we're trying our best to keep you updated.  Unfortunately, we are having technical difficulties with blogger along with limited wifi access.  I think it is blocked here.  Anyway, my awesome brother, Shane, is posting for us via email.  

Yesterday, we conquered the Great Wall! Or at least part of it :) It was absolutely amazing!!!! Unfortunately the smog/pollution is really bad and the view wasn't as clear as we would have liked.  Our guide, George, gave us about 1hr and 45 minutes to reach the top of the section of the wall that we were climbing. Wow!! Talk about a workout!  I can't even begin to explain how steep the steps were and how uneven.  Ethan practically ran the whole way.  The rest of us kept up pretty well and with no complaints.  It was so cool to see all the different people from all over the world. I think it finally hit me as we were climbing that we are in China.  The past few days have been nonstop activity topped with not a lot of sleep.  The kids are sleeping great but Keith and I keep waking up around 4:00am.

After the wall, we headed to the Olympic Village from the 2008 Summer Olympics.  The Bird's nest was an incredible sight to see first hand. I can tell you that the images on TV did not do it justice!  We also saw the Water Cube, Dragon Hotel and, of course, the Olympic Torch .  Ethan was quite popular with all of the young Chinese girls as we wandered through the Village.  That blonde hair, blue eyes and fair complexion instigated many photo opportunities from these young girls. The Chinese people are so polite and have always been respectful in asking "picture? picture?" before swarming our Goldie-Locked Justin Bieber phenom. Several of these girls snuck in a feel of Ethan's golden coif  before sending him off,  smiling and giggling the whole time. We figured we could pay for a large chunk of our trip if we started charging these girls to take a picture with Ethan. It has been entertaining to say the least. 

After spending some time wandering through the Olympic Village we then headed to a Chinese Acrobatic show in the Central Business District of Beijing.  Wow!  The stunts that these young Chinese acrobats performed were stunning!  Just when you thought that they couldn't do anything crazier than what you just witnessed, they would go a step further and blow your mind!  The acrobatic show was a great end to a very exciting and exhausting day. 

It took about an hour to get back to our hotel which was about 1.5 miles from the Chinese Acrobat Theater.  Yes, I said an hour to go 1.5 miles. This was "typical" Beijing traffic for a Saturday night- one big parking lot!  Next stop.....Zhengzhou.

Planes, trains, automobiles and rickshaws

Well, We made it to Beijing!  The 13 hour flight was actually not too bad.  The kids did awesome and are adjusting to the time change really well. When we arrived in Beijing we were greeted at the airport by one of our adoption agency reps, Cindy. We met up with two of the other families that are in our travel group and headed to the hotel. Our travel group consists of 14 families from all over the US. Including kids, the group is about 45 people in all!  Some of the families have been waiting 5 years for this time to come.  I think I'm still in a daze....here I am sitting in the lobby of a hotel in China, half way around the world, anticipating picking up my daughter in 3 more days, somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming.

Today we started the day off with a rickshaw tour of the oldest part of Beijing.... Hutong.  This is where the upper class lived back in ancient times.  We also got to take a tour of the inside of one of the homes.  Next, we headed to the silk factory to see the process of making silk from the silkworm and then on to a delicious lunch at a local area restaurant. After lunch, we toured Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  

Today was the last day of the Chinese holiday so the crowds were't too bad.  They have been celebrating the birth of the People's Republic of China which was actually announced on the steps of the building behind us on Tiananmen Square.

Ethan has become quite the celebrity!!!  The Chinese are fascinated with his blond hair!  Luckily we had heard that this would be the case and had prepared him ahead of time.  People would just come up around us and start smiling and pointing and wanting to take their picture with him.  We also got to experience our first squatty potty :) The toilets are basically a hole in the ground that you squat over to do your business.  Just a little challenging!  

Beijing has been amazing!!!  We are having such a great time soaking in the culture. So far it has been fairly easy to navigate. Most of the people at the hotel speak English and when we have been out and about we have been with our tour guides who have had everything set up for us.  We did however go out on our own tonight for pizza.  It was quite comical to see us trying to order!  Nevertheless, our pizza arrived just the way we like it.  Next stop......The Great Wall of China.

The Journey of a Lifetime

That's what we're calling it.....The Journey of a Lifetime. Our lives will forever be changed by the events that will take place over the next 2 1/2 weeks. But not only will our lives be changed but most importantly the life of one special little girl. I can't even imagine what her little mind has been processing lately.

We found out a few weeks ago that Maili was moved from the Healing Home back to the orphanage where she was originally placed when she was found at the age of 2 days old. She only spent 1 month there until she was moved to the Healing Home where she lived the majority of her little life. It breaks my heart to know that she was taken from everything she knows and is familiar to her and put some place completely foreign. And speaking of foreign....in a few more days she will become a part of our family, a group of people she has never seen before. Please pray for Maili and all of the transitions she has endured and will endure in the next few days. We are so excited to hold her in our arms and pray that she will feel our love immediately.

So, where are we? We are in Chicago awaiting our connecting flight to Beijing! I cannot believe the day has finally arrived! We arrive in Beijing at 3:00pm Thursday (their time) 2:00am Thursday (our time). Friday we will tour the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, take a tour of Hutong, and finish the day off with an acrobatics show. Saturday we take on The Great Wall :) Should be real interesting to see how we do all of that when you throw jet lag into the equation! Sunday we depart for Zhengzhou where we will officially be handed Maili on Monday (Sunday evening for you all). We'll be posting pictures and updates every evening.

On to some more news.....the past 7 days have been a whirlwind!!! We sold our house and bought a house all in the past week. Yes, you read that right! We are so extremely overwhelmed by how amazing God has provided for us. Every little detail has been perfectly planned out and timed by Him. So much better than we could have done ourselves. What a peaceful feeling to know that we can begin this journey without worrying about the house & move. So, here we go!!! Next stop.....Beijing.



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