Day 11 (Aug 3) – Medical checkups
New hotel, new breakfast buffet. The older three kids’ highlight of the morning is breakfast at the buffet, where they eat until they are absolutely full (but then want snacks within an hour…funny how that works). This buffet is smaller, with slightly different cuisine - to match the new area of the country, we guess. This buffet is more difficult for Micah’s allergies, but they have an omelet station where they make the omelets to order. He was able to eat that with some fruit and juice, as well as some food that we brought with us. The food is very good at this hotel, too. We saw our Beijing friends at breakfast – with their new baby! He’s 11 months old and is very busy! They seem to be doing well, adjusting to having their first child.
After breakfast, we went to the medical center for the medical checks. Our host met us in the lobby and took us, and our Beijing friends, to the medical center. This was a 20-minute ride from the hotel. The weather is cloudy and cooler than Nanjing, with thunderstorms (all due to the typhoon we think). A really nice break from the heat! Thank you Lord for the cooler weather!
The medical center was an interesting place. It seemed that they took care of other patients as well (like an urgent care center or a small hospital perhaps), as well as a lot of adoption checkups. When we arrived, there were only 2-3 adoptive families waiting in front of us. Within 15 minutes, there were maybe a dozen additional families! And within the next 30 minutes, it seemed that we had up to 30 families in the center, all getting the same things done, but in no particular order, which made for a small amount of chaos. Pictures for the travel authorization/immigration, ear-nose-throat checks, height/weight/eye checks, general physical exams, and TB blood work for those 6 & up. Parents aren’t allowed in the room where the labs are drawn; mama wasn’t happy about this. Our little girl was very brave with the blood work – no tears! We have to wait for the labs to come back, hopefully negative, which will clear us for bringing her home!
The most amazing part to me was watching Joanna get her vision checked. Since we first received her, she has only really shown that she’s using her right eye to see, since her left eye drifts out to the left. We weren’t sure if she had vision in her left eye for this reason, or maybe just peripheral vision. The eye test chart looked similar to what we use in the states (on a poster), but instead of letters, had a picture of a hand. The position of the handprint varied throughout the chart (left, right, up, down). They explained to her how to show them what direction the fingers were pointing by making her hand look the same. They had her stand back at 20 feet or so from the chart, and covered her right (dominant) eye first. To our amazement, she was able to demonstrate that she could see with her left eye, and only faltered on the 2nd or 3rd row from the bottom of the chart! She then was able to duplicate the same results with her right eye, with even better results! Praise the Lord! The poor girl likely has double vision at times. We look forward to getting her into the Duke medical system as soon as we can upon our return to the states!
Following the medical appointment, we received a brief tour of Shamian Island (where we’re staying in Guangzhou), and then Lynette finished some paperwork while the kids and Randy went to our rooms for snacks (still have to have 2 bedrooms due to gov’t policies – fortunately, they connect together!).
We went for lunch to a Thai restaurant down the street called “Cow and Bridge” (delicious food), and then walked to the mall. We accidently took the wrong footbridge over to the “mall area” and ended up in the large medicine market area instead. Lots of interesting things there…barrels, bins, and bags full of dried stuff…sea horses, snakes, small horseshoe crabs, rodent skins, etc. It was quite a busy area. The older children were poked at several times by passers-by, and Randy was reprimanded by a man for having too many children. We made our way quickly through the medicine market, some mud puddles, a construction area, and finally found the mall. Sticker shock! Wow! Just as expensive as clothes in the US, if not more. Maybe it’s because of the exchange rate…it just seems that 300 “whatever-your-currency” for a t-shirt is really expensive. Hmm…OK, maybe we’ll just eat at the mall and shop elsewhere! We found a grocery store in the mall – of all places – kind of like a Super Walmart. Our first experience with a certain little someone on foot (and on the loose). She wanted to touch a lot of stuff…and was successful pretty often! We think she was trying to figure out whether everything she pointed at would end up in the cart. She handled it very well when it did not. Some of the finger-pointing may have been curiosity, too. “What is that?” We feed her a lot of language during the day, both verbally and with sign language. We did find a number of things to supplement our room supply (especially for her), so it was a good stop for us. Just a little tiring. On the walk back “home”, we found the correct footbridge. It is much easier to move about on the island – without street-side vendors. Time for a snack and a nap!
This morning, Lynette offered Joanna a choice between her cup that we brought (one that has a flip-up straw – probably for 4-5 year olds), or one of the complimentary small water bottles in our room. She chose the small water bottle. Someone wants to be like her brothers and sister! So now our big girl is using the bottled water, holding it with her right arm, and opening the cap with her left hand. You can tell that she’s proud of her ability to drink like the rest of us!
Teasing Nathan is one of her favorite past-times now. She pokes him and swats at him repeatedly to get his attention, then smiles and giggles with glee at his funny facial expressions. She also wants to hold his hand everywhere we go today. She hollers out, “Wa!” at him. Is that her nickname for him because he says, “What?” to her so often? We don’t know. We let her know that pinching was not an approved way of getting her brother’s attention; we’re also working with her on being a little more gentle with him. She probably played this way with her “older brothers” in the orphanage. And yes, Nathan does kind of like all the attention that she gives him, for the most part. He is a very good big brother!
At bedtime, I (Lynette) sat on the bed with Joanna and Hannah on either side of me to read a Chinese bedtime story book that we had purchased. I was stumbling over the pinyin, so Joanna took over and recited the story to us instead. I followed along with the pinyin while she spoke and her words were almost verbatim. Apparently, she had basically memorized the book a few days ago by listening to the MP3 audio CD played a few times on Daddy’s computer. She is sharp!
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