"Sleepless in Shanghai"

Today was a glorious day of sunshine and 14 degrees - sorry Toronto :( .

We had a very relaxing day strolling through Shanghai, a vast and vibrant city, depicting "old" and "new" in both the people and the structures. Shanghai has a population of approx. 18 million, the largest and most dense in China.

We started off the morning with a great buffet breakfast in the hotel and then headed off to the Shanghai Museum. The Museum is a fantastic place to experience the beauty of ancient Chinese art through a collection of 120,000 artifacts. From sculptures to calligraphy to pottery to currencies and to paintings, the exhibit was a refreshing view into the past of our children's birthplace.

After our museum visit, we traversed through the streets - crowded, action-packed, and bursting with life like no other city we've witnessed. The character of the people is etched on their faces. We arrived at the Tai Sheng Yuan Restaurant for lunch with very sleepy kids in tow. Their early morning rise (2am to be exact!) posed some eating challenges for Jane and Steve, who discovered new ways to fetch and eat their food, with slumped bodies draped across their laps. The food was yummy :).

After lunch, we headed down to the Bund, Shanghai's famous waterfront situated on the Huangpu river, which divides Shanghai into 2 parts. From the Bund, you can witness the beauty of modern skyscrapers and buildings of varying architectural styles.



It was after 3pm when we completed our walk of the Bund, so we decided to call it a day and head back to our hotel for a swim in the pool. We will plan to do some further re-tooling of the girls' clocks in hopes that they can get the most out of a busy day tomorrow. Sweet dreams everyone - zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hi there! Jane here. Everyone is sound asleep and I thought I'd add a couple of things from Friday. While the weather here is beautiful by our chilly North American standards, for the Chinese, it is still only "early" spring and winter coats are still the norm, thus our travel guide, Fontana, in one of the pics, is in a winter coat. The girls today went out with lightweight down vests, but bare arms, much to the dismay of many people. In the museum, we had a couple of people stop and point to the girls' arms, and some even touched them to see if they were warm enough. We had tried to convince our "very determined" daughters earlier in the day to cover up the arms, but without success. I had forgotten about our beloved "clothing police" here in China and all were good natured when we insisted (with Fontana's translation assistance) that they were in fact warm enough. Later on the Bund, Steve had someone come up to him and say something about summer. Not quite understanding what the person was saying, he just decided to greet him with "Nihao" (hello), and only later realized the gentleman was wondering if he thought it was summer out with his short-sleeved t-shirt. Fontana told us that many Chinese people think North Americans are crazy going out running in shorts when it's cold out - those crazy runners!!! Here's hoping for more t-shirt weather tomorrow!!

The Ottmans Are In China!

We arrived in Shanghai safely to beautiful sunny weather and about 12C. The flights were both smooth, although Stephanie suffered when we landed in Vancouver because of her ears. The girls were awesome on the flight and slept a lot of the way. We met our travel guide, Fontana (no relation to Hannah Montana), and our Shanghai driver, Shu, and headed to the Baolong Hotel (Grand Mercure).

On our drive to the hotel, our lives flashed before our eyes at least 4 times in the first 20 minutes. We forgot how wild the drivers in China are - weaving in and out, missing hitting others by millimeters!! We escaped with only a few damaged nerves. All of this "smash-up derby" driving is making Jane a tad nervous for our visit to the Lushan Mountains :). Hannah wanted to let everyone know that she is buckle-free in China (to us that's no buckle, white knuckle).

We're thrilled to be back in China, and I now know what friends meant when they said their daughters were excited to be in their birth country as Hannah lit up with a huge grin on her face the moment we landed. When asked how they felt about being back in China, Hannah responded "It's gonna be awesome", and Stephanie gave us the Scooby Doo cheer!

Before...

We're off - bright and early at 4:30am on Wednesday morning. We'll post an "After..." when we get back from our adventure. We suspect we'll look a bit less energetic with 3 weeks of travel and a 3 year old boy in tow. See you in China!!

Well - this is it!!!

This is our last post from "home base" as we begin our third journey of a lifetime. I can't believe it is finally here!! Our bags are all packed (and re-packed to get the weight down!!) and waiting at the door for our 4:30am shuttle to the airport.

Our niece Jennifer arrived today safe and sound (and on time even in the snow storm) after having her flight get cancelled on Monday. She ended up having a nice hotel stay right by LAX and arrived all excited for her journey. The girls were thrilled to see their cousin again but managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Hannah is a little nervous about what to expect so woke up about 10pm to talk about it and to call Grandma. Apparently, she likes the familiar and would have preferred that all relatives and friends accompany us;-) She is excited about her Jiujiang visit and nervous all at the same time - quite understandable for our very sensitive 8 year old. Stephanie is just looking forward to whatever this adventure brings her way.

To all those friends that have called or sent us emails in the past few days - thank you for your thoughts and best wishes. To our Jiujiang gang - we wish you were with us but will have lots to talk about at our May reunion. To our Taizhou group - we look forward to catching up with some of you when we get back (and Grandma Gail too!!) and the rest during our camping adventure in July. We look forward to sharing our adventures with all of you, so come along for the ride and enjoy!!

Chat with you in Shanghai!

5 days and counting

Well this is it - our last weekend at home before the start of our big adventure. The girls are completely stoked and bouncing off the walls. We currently have High 5 on LOUD and lots of dancing going on. I'm sure the next thing will be the "12 girls band" from Shanghai. If you haven't heard them, they're awesome! I find myself, dare I say, somewhat relaxed although getting more emotional by the minute. I guess it's those pre-adoption hormones kicking in. Beware, Jane will cry at the drop of a hat or at nothing at all!!

We received our airline tickets this week along with other documents from Children's Bridge and now it's just a matter of finishing the packing. Stephanie's bag is packed, Hannah's will be tonight and my stuff is all ready to go in the bag - no last minute, staying up all night packing for me this time! Of course, going to bed on Tuesday night is probably useless as we'd have to get up at 3am anyway. Oh well, we'll be ready to switch our time clocks over very quickly....I hope.

We now have 2 extra friends coming along on our trip - Flat Stanley for Hannah's class and Flat Jessica for Stephanie's daycare class. Thankfully, they are flat and won't take up much room in our luggage;-) Stay tuned for the Flat kids' adventures in China.

It has been a long journey to Quinn but oh so worth it. I can't wait to give our son a hug - or even just a high five. I keep thinking about how our life is about to change, but our little man is facing more changes in the next few weeks than most of us could ever imagine. We look forward to sharing our trip with you.

Two weeks to go....

Hi there friends!

Here we are in another snowstorm (uggghhhh!!) and hoping and praying that it won't be like this in two weeks!! At this time two weeks from now, I'm hoping we'll all be in bed with bags packed and by the door. Hopefully, I'm not dreaming in technicolour;-)

We have now received our Robeez donation - 25 pairs of little leather slippers for the orphanage. What a great program they have, through which they have donated many pairs to the orphanages in China, and for that we are very thankful.

We received our final itinerary and it looks like we are going to be visiting some interesting places in Shanghai, and we are hoping that we will be traveling by boat on the Yangtze River from Hannah's birth city to Wuhan in Hubei province. Of course, one person reminded me today that China's safety standards are not the same as ours and to make sure I knew where the life jackets on the boat were!!! But this is coming from a person who went up the Lushan Mountains and said it was no problem on a one lane road for two-way traffic!!!??? So my point, it's all a matter of perspective and I'm not going to stress about it....too much;-)

The girls are getting very excited and starting to think about what they might take with them. Poor Stephanie was disappointed that her entire collection of Webkinz could not come with us, and how could she only take one??? Hannah received some great "traveling stuff" for her birthday - sketch pads, pens, videos, books - so she's got the essentials for keeping busy on the long flight.

We look forward to sharing our journey with all of you. Until next time,

Jane

3 1/2 weeks to go...

Good morning! I can't believe that it is just 3.5 weeks until we get on that plane!! As we are cleaning up from snow on Friday, we feel so fortunate to have all the resources we have here in Canada. The news out of China is not good as they are experiencing the coldest and snowiest winter in about 50 years. Please keep everyone in China, particularly the little ones in orphanages in your thoughts. Reports from Half the Sky (an organization that provides support to Chinese orphanages) are that many places are without heat, electricity and fresh water, and that food prices have skyrocketed. They are heating their places with coal - something I'm sure none of us could imagine.

We can't wait to welcome Quinn into our family and hope that he is safe and healthy through this weather. We are hoping we can somehow find out through Children's Bridge how they are doing. I went out yesterday and purchased some warm tops and pants to donate to the girls' and Quinn's orphanages - it's a drop in the bucket and probably too late for this year, but they will be there for any more cold days this year and next. We are also anxiously awaiting our Robeez donation - they have a wonderful program for needy children around the world.

So not wanting to sound all gloomy, we are very excited about our upcoming trip and will keep you posted as things progress. We should have our finalized itinerary sometime this week and will post it then. We will also be celebrating 2 great events this week - Hannah's 8th birthday on the 6th (where does the time go??) and Chinese New Year on the 7th. To celebrate both, we will be going to our favourite Chinese Food haunt for "New Years Eve" and birthday celebrations.

Gung Hay Fat Choy or Gong Xi Fa Cai!!! Happy New Years to all!!

Jane