We shared our table with Randy & Audrey Anderson this morning. Daley, their little Miss Personality, had had overnight diarrhea; so we volunteered our supply of Immodium. He was also trying to start her eating something other than rice congee – the game of cutting eggs and fruit up, while she wasn't looking, and then spooning it in, was wearing rather thin. Besides, he said, "I can't go the rest of her life putting a spoonful of sugar on everything she eats." So we gave him some of our Instant Oatmeal, too, and wished him luck. By and large, it seemed as though every baby was eating something different – odd, for nine little girls supposedly raised on the exact same diet!

As for Becky Jade, she awoke ravenous. I left her in the Snugli for breakfast, and shoveled it in. Yesterday's egg custard was OK – but the new find was the buffet's (rather thin) oatmeal porridge. Thin or not, she LOVED it – two bowls' worth, mixed with bites of banana and watermelon, and as much water as we could slip in between bites (she still despises milk, in any form – gonna have to mix it in her oatmeal). We compared notes with the other families on feeding , on sleeping, on bowels – it was like a big maternity ward!

The sweetest thing is watching the changes in the parent couples – the ones without any previous children, and the rest of us, too - we were more or less relearning old skills, half-forgotten. Delores (pronounced "Dee", by the way) Lynch, for example, hadn't been a practicing Mommy for thirty years – yet here she was, directing medicinal dosages for her little grandbaby like a Grandma with thirty years' practice. Again and again, we had our tour guides express the gratitude of the Chinese people for the new life we were giving their abandoned little girls – but nobody speaks of the sea-changes these little helpless bundles of need are going to work in OUR lives. It's downright miraculous!

Some of the "experienced" couples were pretty cute, too. Brinda announced that she had finally broken down and called home – from China! – and spoken with her mother, who's watching little Sydney until she and Marty get home. Much weeping, great joy – and a whopping phone bill, no doubt!

Today, we had a morning to ourselves - no trips scheduled. We stuffed so much food into Becky at breakfast, she clonked right down for a nap again – and we all three did the same! Well, nothing against the hotel beds – but none of the three of us sleeps very well in a strange place. I'd been waking regularly at 1:30, and then again at 3 or 4, reading for a bit, then coming back for a doze. But by no means could this be confused with a full eight hours' sleep. So, like Becky, we were making it up in naptimes.

After lunch, the only thing programmed for the day was a trip to the store, then to the bank, and finally a visit to the Famous Tengwang Pavilion, on the riverfront. Lunch again was a meal-in-the-round. We sat with Randy, Audrey & Daley – it appeared the Immodium had worked out OK, and Randy was definitely making progress toward a Life Without Sugar for Daley. We also had the Marshall threesome: FuBing, Momma Liz, and Aunt Christie. Everybody was really taking a shine to this personable little four-year-old – I for one can't WAIT to see what he's like with a straight neck! Meanwhile, Becky found something new to love at table: rice soaked in chicken broth! Yum Yum!

I really felt like leaving her home for a nap, but we couldn't. Our Christy was staying behind in the hotel, with the computer and the last of her books, just to avoid the 95-degree heat, but we weren't able to leave her baby sister with her, not quite yet. (A little more Basic Training needed first!) So we packed some water, and a few crunchy snacks, and headed out again.

First stop was a large, multi-floored, and decidedly modern-looking department store. Barb wanted to pick up a sleeper with feet (we hadn't brought any, fearing we wouldn't get the proper size, and were borrowing one from Lesa Cooley); we ended up getting a pair of sandals for Becky and a small plastic replica of one of those folding screen room dividers (very cute) – all for less than Y200. Not bad!

I did have one rather spooky experience. This department store, like most of the large retail establishments we visited in China, seemed to have a clerk at every counter – generally a young woman all dolled up in a nice store uniform. Usually, one of them would home in on us as soon as we expressed interest in a particular item. Since they couldn't speak English, it appeared their function was just to keep the place looking pretty – maybe they would haggle with the Chinese-speaking customers! Anyway, we generated a lot of interest, walking around with our Chinese baby. So I couldn't help noticing one of the girls, who seemed to be studiously avoiding us. I got a real shock when she turned toward me – she was Becky's grown-up image!

Now, I'm not so dumb as to suppose for a moment that I actually ran into our little orphan's mother, there in the Nanchang department store; but it sure was a sobering thought to think that, Yes, I COULD have. Chinese children are not given sex education, either in school or at home, where there is a cultural taboo against it. It was not too much of a stretch to imagine a young girl, up from the farm, given a nice uniform and a minimum-wage job at the store, then left on her own for a nighttime social life, falling in with some smooth operator who specializes in young girls fresh from the farm, and then being left to take care of the inevitable consequences. She COULD have carried this baby to term; and then, she might have bought a train ticket to Guixi, sixty miles away, stayed in the train station overnight, and left her little bundle at the door of Guixi City Hall. It COULD have happened like that – and who knows? I just might have run into her, two years later, still a floorwalker at the Nanchang department store… Brrr!

We skipped the lower level, where the water and groceries were – too much to carry. Then, at 3:30, one designated money-holder from each family joined Judy, our guide, for the scorching three-block trek to the Bank of China branch, where we each handed over our last envelope, the one with $500, and Randy (our designated mugging victim?!) handed it to the teller, for deposit in the notary's account. Let's see – 10 x $500 – not bad for a half-day's work! No wonder the notary had such nice clothes!

Heck, a couple of years of this, and she could own the hotel!

After slogging back to the bus, Barb & I decided NO Pavilion, famous or not, was worth dying for. Becky was getting antsy, too. We had dutifully fed and watered her, but it seemed she was just TIRED. She passed out on my shoulder again, as soon as we parked in front of the Pavilion. After gaily announcing that there would be a LOT of steps to the top (I always thought of "pavilions" as one-story, open-sided jobs – silly me!), and that this building was NOT air-conditioned, Judy tramped off on her Long March, followed gamely by all our brave crew except us and Carol (the designated wimps). We stayed behind and chatted. I had learned earlier that Carol was a transcriptionist before working her way up to Admissions Director, so I knew she and Barb would have a lot to talk about. I just rocked back and forth, listening to Becky's heartbeat, and pondering how truly small this world is, until the bus door opened.

Mrs. Marshall and FuBing were back, having "semi-wimped out". FuBing was eager to try out his new toy. At first, it just looked like a plastic soccer ball on a neck chain; but when you took off the top and pulled, it slid out into a telescope! Marvelous! Well, like any four-year-old, he tired of this is about sixty seconds, and started playing Drop-The-Toy over the seat back. When Mommy took the toy, he started on Hang-Over-The-Seat-Back-And-Mess-With-The-Ashtray. When Mommy put a horrified stop to THAT, it was time for a slightly modified version: Hang Over The Seat Back and Swap Funny Mouth Noises With The Big Bearded Guy. God, I love kids!

The return of the Melted Long-Marchers woke Becky up – she was sweaty, too – but once we switched Parentholders from me to Barb, she seemed content to look out the window. And then – she spoke! I dunno what she said – something with "sheng" in it, I believe – but it was a recognizable word! And here we'd thought she was too young to talk yet! Well, that was it for verbalization. What happened on the thirty-minute ride back, through Nanchang's bizarre rush-hour traffic, was evidently increasing paranoia. She cried every time she looked out the bus window – well, heck, cry too. I kid you not, we saw TWO cabs within 30 seconds of each other decide they really wanted to be going the other way, and pull U-ies, directly across FIVE LANES, not twenty feet in front of us! I'm telling you, believe evrything you've ever heard about the incredible Chinese traffic, because it's true. Becky must've been in some kind of minor crash on the way to the hotel from the orphanage, because every time a bus or truck got near our window (which was all too often), she wailed.

Well, we finally did make it back to Home Sweet Hotel Room, to be met by a glad, glad Christy. We're gonna have to come up with something new for her to do, I'm afraid – she couldn't pack her whole science fiction book collection, but now she's out of reading matter, and there's still a week to go before we get home. I'll walk her through some of the other computer games on the laptop, and see if things get better. But the REAL story was how Becky reacted.

I had come to consider her the saturnine baby of the group. She rarely changed expression, didn't chatter or giggle, and generally acted very reserved, very quiet. We didn't care – we loved her anyway; we thought the cheerfulness and the smiling would come later with this baby. Well, later turned out to be tonight – she greeted Christy with a whole slew of giggles, and laughed out loud at "peek-a-boo". Our darling had come out of her shell! She spent dinner alternately laughing and eating. She didn't eat very much tonight – too much breakfast and dinner, plus all those Cheerios for snacking, probably depressed her appetite. She DID take some milk out of her sippie, which is progress.

After dinner, we went back to the room. Daddy passed out – literally. During my 20-minute nap, Barb & Christy played giggle games with Becky – and she spoke again. This time, by golly, it sounded like "Christy"! Well, "mama" and "baba" can't be far behind.

Day Eight (Thursday, August 6th) - Again, a totally unstructured morning. We were instructed to board the bus at 3:00, ride into town, and produce our passports and adoption certificate for verification – we would get our final documents from China today. After that, we were scheduled to visit a local arts & crafts fair. Didn't sound too trying – especially since the change in weather. From our previous 95 degrees and frying, we were down to what felt like no more than 75, and rain.

Our general impression that this process was taking far too long was confirmed by our group leaders, the Bogards, who had adopted here two years ago: they said this part of the adoption, in Jiangxi Province, had taken them only a day and a half back then. Teddy-Bear John confirmed that he had spoken to ShiYan earlier, who had told him, Yes, we could have done all the documents in a day and a half, flown to Guangzhou on Wednesday afternoon (rather than Friday), completed the American paperwork by Friday night, and flown home on Saturday. The problem for us now was, we wouldn't be getting to Guangzhou until Friday night – and the offices were closed all weekend. ShiYan said this was no accident. The Jiangxi Province authorities had been voicing growing dissatisfaction with the fact that, although THEY were the ones providing the "product", if you will, they were not getting enough time spent by the Americans, and hence were being shorted those American tourist dollars. So - the new arrangement, whereby the local paperwork in Jiangxi Province (Nanchang) was stretched out to cover four days, rather than one and a half.

After lunch, we boarded the bus – Barb, Becky & I: Christy elected to stay behind, reread a couple of her paperbacks, and generally veg out. She had a right to: the combination of unusual food and weird sleeping hours had given her a major case of cold sores – as many as six. We hoped she would nap until we got back.

The "arts & crafts fair" turned out to be a Porcelain Exhibition Hall – a large, high-ceilinged third-floor room – NO elevator, NO air-conditioning. Yes, the porcelain was exquisite – but we weren't about to buy sixty-pound porcelain vases and stuff them in our suitcases! So we trekked downstairs again, and we three, at least, elected to wait it out in the bus. Meanwhile, the rest of the group crowded into a small, airless shop on the hall's grounds, and apparently bargained for another half an hour. Then we motored over to a nicer-looking shop on one of Nanchang's better streets, where the bargain-crazed went shopping AGAIN!

Back in our hotel room at last, we packed furiously – the bellhops were coming at 3:00, and we would be off to the airport by 3:30. The tension level went up, and I'm sure Becky felt it: she was cranky, and refused to do anything but be held by Mommy. We weren't sure how we were going to get our carry-on luggage to the plane – Momma couldn't use the Snugli (To tell you the truth, neither could I, by this time – Baby kept sliding down, and didn't want any position except the one where she could look over our shoulders.); and that meant she would need BOTH hands for Baby. Oh well. Tensions rose, and matters got a little out of hand.

As a result, Christy sat on the rollaway for a moment, in shock, and then stalked out of the room, disappearing down the corridor. Barb & I finished our packing in silence, and I went to look for her. She wasn't hard to find – she was just coming out of the elevator. She was still giving us the silent treatment – that was going to last all the way to the airport. Numbly, we paid off the bellboys, got into our seats, and settled in for the hour-long ride. Miss Judy gamely tried to liven things up – by singing "Edelweiss" and "Que Sera, Sera" – didn't know anybody KNEW those songs anymore. All the while, the tears rolled down Barb's cheeks. Don't let anybody tell you adopting isn't stressful – both for those adopted, and for those who make the trip. After the above-mentioned luggage episode, we found ourselves in the airport waiting room, waiting, waiting… And poor FuBing. Apparently, the little four-year-old finally realized this was it: he was leaving what had been his home, probably forever. He wailed, and wailed, and wailed, pretty much until it was time to board our flight. We also discovered that we were once again over the 20-kilo weight limit (big surprise – I thought a couple of families were going to buy out the shops!); so we elected to collect Y60 from each family, to pay the fine.

The flight attendants managed to console him with one of the strangest Beanies I've ever seen: we christened it Santa Frog, because that's what it looked like. I sat by Christy, ahead of Mother and Becky; and after some general observations about the REALLY strange food we got served inflight, as well as the warm pop, we got into some pretty animated discussion of the cloud patterns, which was followed by Christy's animated, music-enhanced synopsis of the entire film version of "Evita", which we had rented for her last month. Christie Grothe, sitting on the aisle side, was enthralled, and it appeared to have done wonders for our Christy's disposition as well – by the time we pulled into Guangzhou Airport, all was forgiven between Mother and Daughter.

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