Nanjing
Home Our Adoption from China Family Photo Album Jaclyn's Adoption Story

The Start
A Flurry of Paperwork
The Long Wait
The Referral
The Second Referral
The Incident
On to Beijing
Tour of Beijing
Nanjing
The Day Everything Changed
The Adoption
Shopping Nanjing
Touring Nanjing
Leaving Nanjing
Guangzhou
The Long Ride Home
Epilogue

 

Nanjing

The Nanjing airport was new, very modern, well lighted and sparkled. The floors were shiny and bright. This was in contrast to the Beijing airport (and Detroit for that matter). For those of you keeping track, the Nanjing airport does have western bathrooms. The people in our group were the only ones on the flight that claimed luggage.

We waited for one couple that was flying in from Hong Kong, then we boarded our bus to go to our hotel, the Dingshan Garden Hotel. We had been kind of concerned about this hotel.  We didn't know the name until the last minute, and didn't find anything about it on the web.  Our fears were groundless, it was a very nice hotel, also decorated for Christmas. The room had dark wood furniture, a bathroom with lots of marble, CNN International on the TV, and a service bar with refrigerator. The key chain for the room key was in the shape of a large key and had to be placed in a receptacle near the front door to turn on the power to the room. After our bags were delivered to the room, we hurried down to the lobby.  One of the couples was going to get their girl today.  We were in the lobby when a little 2 ½ year old girl came walking into the lobby with 2 escorts.  They took the elevator up to our floor and went to our guide's room.  A little later (seemed like hours) they came out and walked to her new parents' room.  She was so brave! The entire group was in the hallway, beyond her new parents' room. The group was very quite, and had at least a half a dozen video cameras going.  So not to scare her, the group took only two flash pictures.  They walked into the room and the director of the orphanage explained to the girl, that this is MAMA and PAPA. We then closed the door so that they could get familiar in private.

Excited, exhausted, and nervous, nearly everyone in the group went to the bar.  The bar was small, perhaps 14 chairs. We rearranged the furniture into a circle and talked about what we had just saw while we sampled the local beer and enjoyed a huge bowl of hot cashews.

We went to dinner with two other couples.  One of the couples was from New York and the other from Arizona.  We had corresponded with both via the Internet before the trip. The couple from Arizona were our unofficial medical team, the wife was a nurse, the husband a Ob/Gyn doctor. It was comforting to have them in our group, although we hoped not to need their services.  I was, however,  a little concerned about the good doctor's enthusiasm for using his suture kit when I told him about my split toe. His wife graciously offered some iodine swabs which I gratefully accepted. The menu had some familiar things, but it also had duck's feet, eel and snake.

 Our language tutor had prepared several cards for us to help us communicate. Such things as "We are from the United States" , "We have adopted this girl", "Where is the bathroom?" . We also had the words for foods we liked and how to ask if they were spicy. Ginger made sure that some of them had shopping stuff on them.  

 The waitress saw the cards and was trying to look at them discretely over my shoulder.  I noticed and offered them to her. She quickly took them, then huddled in the corner of the dining room with several other waitresses, going over the cards again and again. Copies of these cards (in a Acrobat PDF file) are here.  

After dinner we explored the hotel and sent some more email from the business center.  They had Netscape, but the menus were in English and they weren't quite sure how to use it.  I typed up my message and then the attendant sat down, read my message, dialed in, and sent my mail.  I was a little surprised that he read my message, but figured that he was responsible to make sure that the computer wasn't used for any nefarious purposes.

 

 

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Copyright 2001 by George Keller. All Rights Reserved.