The Day We Prayed For

December 16

We are to meet our forever son today and be united as a family. 

As a parting gift, we gave our driver a bag of chocolates...a great luxury over here.  He affectionately hugged all the children and smiled.  The driver who supposedly spoke no English, said "thank you very much."  He had a jade Buddha on his dash board. Its size and translucency, I learned, meant it was expensive.  He also had an amulet hanging from his rearview mirror.  A dragon baby that is suppose to be like a piggy bank.  It takes in all gold and money and never lets it escape.  To me, it sounds like a greedy dragon baby, but here it is a sign of prosperity.  Also, strangely enough, cabbages are symbolic of prosperity.  I gather the word for them in Chinese is very similar to 100 and prosperity. 

Okay, I know you are getting impatient to see photos of Teddy, but you have to realize that after all those days in Beijing and all those months since March, we have been waiting more than anybody. We didn't come to China to sightsee; we came to pick up our son.  You have the privilege to skip ahead, but we waited each of  those minutes, hours, days and months. 

You still haven't heard about how our van always smelled of stale tobacco smoke and that the gray upholstered seats had sail boats and palm trees on them.  Yes, a dream vacation can be experienced while stalled in the crazy, congested traffic .  The traffic is so horrendous in Beijing that only on certain days of the week private cars can take to the roads.  You would never know this. 

With 20 million people, public transportation is what our guide relied on.  Because of this, she took a bus and then a train to meet us each day.  It took her 2 hours each way.  Our guide wasn't there to send us off, because she couldn't get into the city due to the early hour of our flight.

At the airport, we waited some more.  Ben and Alex checked out an airport shop that sold assorted delicacies.  Dried yak meat, chicken feet, duck feet, dried roasted whole Peking duck, chicken hearts, duck hearts, unusual looking candy with medicinal purposes, duck necks ("all wrinkly looking and umm, umm good"- Ben's words).   In case you were wondering, 14 dollars buys you a whole duck.

Then, we boarded a pink plane to our future.