The Bowman Blog: Guangzhou

We arrived into the city of Guangzhou yesterday. It is here that the final preparations are made for Samuel to go to the US, culminating late in the week with his VISA approval from the US Consulate. All China adoptions go through Guangzhou.

This morning, he had a medical exam from the local Chinese medical clinic which included 5 immunizations, aka, shots. He survived to live and ga ga about it. He is currently playing with his favorite toy, an orange bowl purchased at the grocery mart (intended for food), on our hotel room floor. The bowl is multi-faceted in that it can really be played with in an infinite number of ways, many of them demonstrated by Samuel. It works as a collector of objects, drum, and also freakish sort of frisbee. For no extra charge, it also works in the bathtub. Oh, and this just in, he's now turned it upside down and is sliding it to and fro on the carpet, it's officially a toy vacuum cleaner too....oh, and now it's back to collecting toys.

Can you tell that our lives center around Samuel? That is the name of this game that we are playing over here in China. We sure miss all of our family and friends, but often remind ourselves that this is important bonding time for this little guy that we won't be able to re-create anywhere else.

Samuel did make 2 huge strides in the last 48 hours. After the gotcha, he really only got upset during bathtime and whenever we dropped him into a high chair. He overcame his fear of the bathtub (perhaps it was the orange bowl?) a couple days ago. And, this morning, he actually sat and ate from a high chair. It was good timing as the novelty of feeding him from Aimee's lap at every meal was wearing slightly.

Here are some pictures from the last few days with some commentary.

Can you find Samuel buried in the balls? If not, don't drive.

2 chinese-looking guys. (Note: this was not deliberate on my part.)

He's developed some understanding of boundaries and often uses this maneuver to see who's watching.

This is a special picture. Yisha (left) and Rita were our leaders in Zhengzhou, stepping our group through the process. They were super helpful and became great friends by the end of our trip. Rita was amazed that we already had 4 kids.

We slapped the red, white, and blue on him early. He wears it well.

This is a portion of our adoption gang at a local Chinese restaurant in Zhengzhou. None of the wait staff spoke English so we did a lot of pointing and charades. What did we eat? I have no idea. Only 7 of us puked that night. Kidding.

This was a sign found posted above a conference room at Wal-mart. I'm posting it in honor of some great colleagues of mine that are covering for me during my long absence. Thanks to Kelly, Jen, Wayne, Pete, Holly and Ken for making this trip possible! I did take my groceries into this room but somehow came out of it paying twice the price marked.

Samuel looking out of Zhengzhou hotel room window. For faithful blog followers of old, this pic might remind you of an Elijah pic I posted from our Shanghai days.

Zhengzhou had a nice park within walking distance of our hotel. Here is Aimee with a couple of adopting friends, Nicole and Heather.

Samuel likes to suck 2 of his fingers. The crazy thing is that he actually reverses them and sucks them opposite of natural. It works for him and I'm not messing with it.

Basketball courts are very hard to come by but I liked this shot of hoops mounted below a hotel. Dozens of guys were playing in the dark. I'd like to join them sometime this week. We'll see.

We stopped in a 'hole in the wall' restaurant across from the hotel. The food was great (a noodle dish and an egg/tomato on rice dish). We paid a whopping $2 for the whole meal. A great deal and Samuel made a friend as well.