Thursday, April 12, 2012

Adoption day of DangTong

April 12 2012

After breakfast (the boys only ate rice and orange, in spite of the huge buffet), we navigated through the snowy streets to return to the Civil Affairs office to complete the paperwork. In Heilongjiang Province (city of Harbin) all the paperwork is completed in one central location. This made it much easier for us all. It was one-stop shopping, so to speak. DangTong became quite the momma’s boy in the offices, refusing to leave my lap. The orphanage director and a few teachers were present, and DangTong did shed a few small tears when he saw them. However, when the director asked DangTong to come to her (he was on my lap) he flatly refused. She laughed and commented that he is bonding well with his momma. Because we were not allowed to actually visit the orphanage, we gave the orphanage director a large cash donation (in addition to the adoption expenses) to help the waiting children. She presented us with a written donation certificate, to show accountability. As I’ve mentioned before, DangTong is several years behind developmentally, and that stems from the orphanage being in a more rural area and lacking provisions. The whole adoption process took about an hour total. We will receive DangTong’s passport tomorrow morning, and head to Guangzhou (a five hour flight) to complete the U.S. consulate part of the adoption process. The rest of our trip will seem like the movie “Ground Hog Day.” We basically get up, eat, and kill time in the room. It snowed quite a bit this morning, so we can’t even take the kids out for a walk. I didn’t bring boots or warm enough jackets. I knew we were only here for a couple of days, and decided that winter gear would be too much to pack. Right now, David and John are playing DS, and the little boys are playing with the balloons I packed.





Thursday morning

It’s Thursday morning here in China, and I thought I’d write more of my impressions of the boys. Sam (Fu, KangChao) is like a typical six year old. He likes to play ball, shooting games, and computer games. He figured out the main electric panel that controls the all the different lights and the TV in about two minutes flat. As I mentioned earlier, Sam already tried to out muscle Ben. Luckily, Ben outweighs him by 10 lbs because Ben is not a dominant personality. Sam likes to wrestle and play physically, and he can be rambunctious at times. We already know that he has a great capacity to love, and we can tell already that he is going to fit in with family quite well.

DangTong (Leo) just explores everything. He takes things out of the bathroom and puts them in his backpack, then takes them out again. He knows how to sort the army men by color, and he likes to stand on the chair and look at the river out our hotel window. Leo carries around a water bottle (or crackers or candy), and offers it to each of us, one at a time. Dang Tong is much quieter and more cuddly. He likes to sit on my lap, and he is left-handed. Both the boys seem to be in great health, although DongTong has lots of pock marks on his face from what I presume was the chicken pox. So far, we’ve yet to see Leo eat anything other than candy or crackers. When his stash is gone, we’re hoping he’ll eat at least rice.

Today we will go back to the Civil Affairs office to make our adoption of DangTong final. Then we’ll go to the notary (which is similar to our court) and the police station to apply for his passport. In this province, we will be able to get his passport within 24 hours. We still don’t have a passport for Sam, which is why we will need to stay in Guangzhou a whole week. We need to wait five days for Sam’s passport to be issued from Jianan, then apply for his US visa at the consulate in Guangzhou on the 20th.