Doctors and Police

We crossed another major hurdle today in our adoption process. First, we traveled to Shamian Island, just a fifteen minute drive from our hotel, for Cali's immigration doctors appointment and her Visa picture. It was such a crazy process as the Doctors and nurses shuffled our entire group from room to room checking height, weight, hearing, heart, lungs etc. Cali did great and officially became our daughter.

Next we went to the police station, where we applied for Cali's passport. We spent over an hour in a very beautiful building lobby waiting with lots of adoptive parents from all over the world. In fact, Bob ran into a former co-worker who was adopting two six and a half year old sisters. It was amazing to see and hear about everyone's story and meet all these little girls and boys...it's such a small world!

To cap the day off, we went to Pizza Hut and had some American comfort food. Chinese food is fantastic, but it was really nice to have a familiar taste in our mouth. Cali didn't try the pizza but loved her white rice and banana.

Gotcha Day

(3/28)...after a three hour flight from Beijing to Guangzhou and a quick run by the hotel, we finally met our precious Cali Jean Xiaoqing yesterday! It was an amazing and overwhelming day filled with so many emotions for all three of us. We're so excited to be a family and are truly enjoying getting to know our little girl! She is a great little eater and sleeper and we're slowly discovering more bits of her personality.

This morning (3/29), we had a couple of appointments at the Civil Affairs office and officially became Cali's parents! We then headed to a mall to buy a few more baby things...it's so interesting to navigate through products written in all Chinese. Thankfully, our guides helped us in making our choices! Our agency and their local employees are fantastic and have everything very well organized!

Precious

Cali loves to eat!

It's GOTCHA Day...

So it's 4:00 am on Cali's Gotcha day and we cannot sleep. In an hour or so, we head to the airport to fly to Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Southern China to meet our little girl. We look toward our meeting with overwhelming excitement and anticipation! It's hard to believe that this long awaited day is finally here!

The Tourist

Our first full day in China was insane...we started our day coming off of just a few hours of sleep and sought fuel from our local Starbucks, only to find out that it doesn't open until 8 am...seriously? Sherry, our tour guide, had us on a whirlwind schedule which began with a walking tour of Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City, we then headed to the Summer Palace and The Imperial Garden. We took a break from sightseeing for a Chinese lunch and then on for some shopping at The Pearl and Silk government factories, which included very interesting demonstrations and facts about the products and production. We moved on for a brief viewing of The Olympic Village....Bird's Nest and Cube (due to some technical difficulties, our photos are currently limited). Our day ended with a visit to a Tea House with tea tasting and demonstrations and then, lastly, to a Chinese Peking duck dinner. We landed back at the hotel very tired from an incredible day, super intrigued by Chinese culture and history, and a little bruised from the intensity of the sale.

China Bound!

We're about to take off...more from Beijing!



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Getting it Done!

Well, we're finally at the three day countdown to departure and after several "discussions", some clothes purging, and a new pair of washable briefs, it looks like we'll get it all in! We can't quite get our minds around the reality of finally flying to China and meeting Cali so very soon. It's a crazy concept to leave here, just the two of us, and to come home a family of three.

We continue to pray for Cali as she makes the transition from her current home and nannies to being a part of our family. It's got to be so hard for a little one to leave the people who have been her family for the first eighteen months of her life. We are so grateful for their love and care for our little girl! We pray too that we will have insight and wisdom in to what Cali needs and how we can best help her through this transition. We're so excited to be her parents and anxiously await all that lies ahead!





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Itinerary and Whatnot

Official Itinerary...our sightseeing in Beijing includes Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Great Wall. We then fly to Guangzhou and have our long awaited Gotcha Day...we will meet Cali for the first time on the 28th...we have chills and tears and really no way to explain the excitement that we feel for this day!!!! We will be in Guangzhou for over a week; a little different than some families because Guangdong Province is Cali's province too. Every family adopting from China is required to leave through Guangzhou...we will be doing official paperwork, attending appointments, and chillin' as a family/sightseeing during this time. We will end our trip with a couple of days in Hong Kong.

We were running around today in this nasty Michigan Winter weather and both realized that we actually will be in tropical warm weather (Guangzhou and Hong Kong) fairly soon...it's so funny our perspective, normally we would be so psyched for days in the sun, but at this time, we just want to hold our baby girl! The vacation to an amazing place is just a major bonus. We ARE very excited to see where Cali is from and to experience her cultural background.




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Headed to China

Our Travel Approval has arrived!!!

We're headed to China to meet our precious Cali Jean Xiaoqing on March 24! We're just a little excited around here at the Griffin house...we've been running around making plans and scheduling flights, etc. We just can't believe that after all of this waiting, we're finally going to meet our little girl in about 28 days (a few days in Beijing first)...so freakin' sweet!


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