Today, we legally finalized our adoption. Mia Isabelle Lynch is our daughter, now and forever! It hasn’t even been a full 24 hours since our family of 3 became 4, but already we feel like we’ve been together so much longer! Mia is beginning to warm up to me, with easy smiles, and a willingness to hold my hand. She still prefers Chris or Sydney, but we are making slow but steady progress. I am taking everyone’s kind advice to be patient, and doing my best to wait for her to come to me. As difficult as this is for me (all I want to do is cuddle, kiss and hug her!), I know it is more difficult for her. She’s been hurt in ways I cannot comprehend – twice. Her biological mother abandoned her, and now, even though she has been prepared as best as she could for this, it must feel like she’s been abandoned again by her ‘aunties’ from the orphanage. And it must have been difficult for those women, too. Clearly, they loved her, and cared for her extremely well. She is talkative, social, and beautifully mannered. She takes great pride in her hand washing abilities, which she likes to do all the way up to her elbows. It’s really more of a surgical scrub than a typical hand wash, but hey, I’m not complaining. She has willingly eaten whatever we have put in front of her. She carefully brushes her own teeth. If she wasn’t so tiny, and liable to fall into the toilet, she could do that independently, too. Her nickname at the orphanage was Aiyu (pronounced eye-yuh), and when we cheer her on for doing something we want her to do, she will say, “Aiyu, good girl!”. Yes, yes, Aiyu is such a good girl! I am forever thankful to the aunties for the love they have given, and the strong foundation they have laid, for the benefit of our family. A family they don’t even know, and will likely never see again. It is evident that she has been prepared, as she was so quick to recognize us, and brought with her the little photo book we had sent to her so many months ago. She knows the book by heart, and it is worn from use. The aunties also gave us another unexpected gift. They gave us two small photo albums with pictures of Mia at different stages, beginning as an infant through present day. These photos were the first thing she wanted to show Chris, who she is calling Baba (pronounced Bah-bah) which is Mandarin for Daddy. She is proud of those photos, as she should be. Those memories are priceless, irreplaceable, and for them, I owe the aunties a debt of gratitude.
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It’s been a crazy long, and stressful day! We went to the Civil Affairs Office this afternoon to finally be united with Mia. The office was chaotic – approximately 40 families were there picking up their new children. So many feelings were swirling around that room – overwhelming joy, anxiety, and naturally, great despair. The reactions of the babies and children were as different as the children themselves. Most were crying, some seemed happy, and several just looked shocked. We knew Mia, as soon as she and her caregivers walked through the doorway. She recognized us too, and was carrying the little photo book we had sent to her several months ago. The toughest part of the day came when her caregiver walked away from us. Mia started screaming, anger and sadness pouring from her little soul, as she cried out “Don’t go, don’t go!” She rejected me immediately, didn’t want to have anything to do with me – but fortunately, she was ok with Sydney, and she cuddled with Chris very soon after we got her settled down. As difficult and heartbreaking as this was to witness and experience (and let me tell you, this was ROUGH!) I kept hearing words from my teacher whispering in my heart, that there is always joy alongside pain. Her despair today was not only natural and expected, but an indicator of the strong bonds she had made with the only people she has ever known as family. It is obvious that she has been loved. Once we returned to our hotel room, we broke out the coloring books and crayons, looking for a calm activity that would allow her to warm up to us slowly. In no time, she was drawing, coloring, writing, and showing us her first tentative smiles. As I’m writing this, it’s a few hours later, and she is amazing us with her exuberance, gentle quick hugs, and easy laughter. We know that there will be more times of grief to come, as she processes this transition and adjusts, but for now, we are all enjoying the blessing of joy before us. And Sydney says: I was so excited to meet Mia, I could not wait. Today, is the BEST day of my life! When I saw her crying so hard, I felt bad that she had to leave the only momma she had ever known. Once we got back to the hotel and started playing, she got happy, and I’m glad of that. We made it to Guangzhou yesterday, but with all of the traveling, transfers and meetings we’ve hardly had a moment to breathe. I am stealing away a couple of minutes to write this, as we are scheduled to leave to hotel to meet Mia in less than an hour. I wanted to take just a moment to thank everyone who has posted, emailed or contacted us on Facebook. We are so overjoyed at this transition in our lives, and it means so much to us that we are surrounded by the love and support of our family and friends. We have had a hectic schedule for the past couple of days, and limited internet access, but we have read and appreciated all of your messages, even though we haven’t been able to respond as often as we would have liked to. Please keep the good vibrations coming! I promise to post again soon . . .
We arrived in Beijing on Thursday morning, after getting up painfully early to catch the first flight out of Xi ‘An. Chris had business meetings to attend this afternoon, so Sydney and I found the hotel pool, and just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. Around 5:30 in the evening, Chris’s work obligations were through, and his colleagues Jessica, Sabrina and Wilson took us out to a popular Beijing restaurant, where the specialty was roasted duck. For any of you who haven’t tried duck, let me tell you, it’s delicious!! The skin is crispy, and tastes a lot like bacon. The meat is tender and juicy, and has a consistency and flavor similar to beef. There was so much food! We had the roast duck, and stir-fried duck meat in these little “bird nests” of rice noodles, and steamed shrimp with a creamy sauce with just a hint of orange. Vegetables included steamed cabbage leaves, and the best vegetable dish by far was the stir-fried bamboo, with roasted seaweed. The seaweed was very much like roasted kale, only saltier, and more savory. Delicious! Sydney was such a good sport, and tried a little of everything on the table. On Friday morning, we met up with four of the other soon-to-be adoptive families, and we went on a guided tour of the Great Wall. Traffic here in Beijing is impressive, and even though we left the hotel after rush hour should have been over, it still took us almost an hour to arrive at the Wall at Badaling. The Wall is a site to behold! It is approximately 10 meters tall, and it snakes along the sides and tops of the mountains surrounding Beijing. To climb the wall is a test of balance and endurance – the stairs are small, unevenly spaced, and at certain areas VERY steep. In the photo above, you can see approximately half of the distance we climbed to reach the highest vantage point of the wall at this location. The weather was unexpectedly hot, our high today was 92 degrees F, when typical for this time of year is low 70’s. We were thankful to be Floridians (who are accustomed to heat), and for hats to shade our faces from the strong midday sun. The hike up was exhausting, and navigating the crowds at the lower portion was tricky, but we stuck together as a family, cheered each other on, and stopped for rest and water many times. An hour and a half later, after climbing over 1,000 vertical feet, we reached the summit! Today is our final day in Xi ‘An. Our guide, Callie, met us again in the hotel lobby this morning to take us on our final tour of this city. She has been a valuable resource for us here, though we have been surprised by how much English we have encountered. It seems to us, that at least in this area, the Chinese are very interested in attracting tourism. So, today we were taken to the Xi’An Beilin Museum. This is a preserved site of the temple of Confucius, and the building structures themselves are close to 1,000 years old. Trust us when we say that they have been preserved extremely well! This museum stores many ancient artifacts, but the most interesting to us were the Steles (pronounced stales). Steles are stone tablets, where the teachings of Confucius were carved by the hands of his disciples. We learned today, that his original writings were first painted on sheets of bamboo, but were then etched into stone as a more permanent record. Let me tell you, you can’t get much more permanent – the tablets vary in size, but most were 7-8 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and 8-10 inches thick! Oh yeah, and did I mention that there were over 3,000 of them?? By transcribing the teachings into stone, copies could easily be made by placing a sheet of rice paper over the tablet, and rubbing or brushing the paper with ink. The detail of the carvings are incredible, especially considering they were done by hand, using only a primitive knife. The site is more commonly called the Forest of Stone Tablets, because there are so many tablets, like trees in a forest. If there is one thing certain about Chinese history, there are layers upon layers of meaning in just about everything. We have thoroughly enjoyed exploring this area, and learning as much as we can about China’s history and complex culture, as we have been counting down the days until the time arrives when we will get to the real reason we are here – our sweet little Mia! Since we arrived in China, we have been keenly aware of each of the young girls we’ve seen. We are so curious to know what she will be like, and what will she think of us? We can hardly wait until next Monday . . . And Sydney says . . .
The museum was kind of fun today, because I got to take a lot of pictures. It was also a little boring, because my mom wanted to stay a long time, and know what every sign meant. We spent the majority of yesterday traveling from Beijing to Xi ‘An (pronounced She-Ann). So today, we got out and explored! Our guide arrived at our hotel to meet us this morning, and we walked to our first stop – the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Originally constructed in the year 652 during the Tang Dynasty, this pagoda is a monument to the origins of the Buddhist faith in China, when a monk named Xuanguang left China for India along the Silk Road. The pagoda is still an inhabited monastery, and a place for Buddhists to come to worship in the city of Xi ‘An. Like everywhere in China, there are lots and lots of people! One thing that was surprising (and a little strange) was the attention we were getting from the Chinese people. Several times today, someone would stop us, and want to have their picture taken with one of us – most usually, Sydney! The Chinese people were fascinated with her silky blonde hair! So, is this what it’s like to be a celebrity? All the attention was fun, and funny at first, but after awhile, it did get a little old. We were very proud of Sydney for being such a good sport about the whole business. To be fair, we’ve seen very few non-asian travelers so far, so we suppose we are a bit of a novelty. From the Big Wild Goose Pagoda,we made our way to the Terracotta Warrior archeological site in a taxi. We were amazed by how many people were there visiting the site today – as it’s a Tuesday, and not a holiday. Our guide told us that in the high season, there can be anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 visitors to this site each day. She told us that today was a lighter visitor day, but for us, it felt very crowded. Still, to us, seeing this major archeological find, was worth the inconvenience of the crowds. Here’s a photo of the major dig in pit #1: So far, 8,000 individual clay soldiers have been uncovered. We were told that the archeologists still working here believe that the tomb of the first Emperor is also on this site, but they are hesitant to uncover it. Mishandling, light and oxygen have already taken their toll on these artifacts. Until plans can be made to more carefully preserve these amazing statues, the Chinese are hesitant to uncover more of them. And Sydney says:
My favorite part of the day was seeing the Terracotta Warriors. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t take a picture with my camera, since they said not to use the flash. I also think it was strange that so many Chinese people wanted to take my picture, just because I look different than they do. How you look shouldn’t matter. |
Lisa LynchLisa is a world traveling mom that took the ultimate adventure Archives
December 2012
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