An Adoption Story_ Rowan _ Videos from 2005

Come in this morning. It's a quarter till 9. Very pretty airport. It's raining. Very humid. Actually we say Cantonese. We say 早晨. If you have a friend or anyone, your relative, you say 早. And he has a son. His son, Joe's son. No S. 早晨. Good morning. 早晨. We travel around like 45 minutes to the downtown to the hotel, Shangri-La Hotel. Including all the bridge, tunnel and highways. The whole project for the airport project, 20 billion U.S. The largest project in the world, last century. All completed within 8 and a half years. We decided to put the airport here in 1985. Started construction in 1990. The whole project finished by 1998. This is called the Chat Lam Kok International Airport. Chat Lam Kok, it means rubbish corner. That means this island was a hill. And make a big piece of land, 4 times of the original airport, the old one. And build up the airport here. So, it takes 5 years for landfill. 3 and a half years construction for the new airport. Chat Lam Kok International Airport. 2000 to 2003, this airport has been chosen the best one in the world. One day today, Friday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, very busy on the street. Especially on the 8th, Sunday. That is our Mother's Day. The restaurant will be 100% full. Now we are on the island, Lantau Island. On the way to the hotel. Are you a movie star? Movie star! Touch your belly. First of all, to you. Thank you very much. The orphanage is actually a pretty new orphanage. Some of you asked me yesterday, is this the first time for CCAI to work with this orphanage? I probably gave you the wrong answer. It is the first time. Yes, it is the first time. This orphanage was made one of the orphanages for open to international adoption. In this year, so far, including the babies in our group, they have placed over 30 babies to our families. The orphanage has over 80 children. And most of them are infants. And of these 80 children, 60 of them are right now in foster care. And only 20 of them are in the orphanage. Is there hope for these families to adopt for themselves when they take the foster child? Do the foster families hope to take the baby and adopt it themselves? Or do they just do it purely for fostering? Maybe this question I don't have to ask now because this is not a question related to this particular orphanage, but it is everywhere. I did see that some foster families after they have taken care of a child for a certain amount of time they become so attached to each other and the foster family who had initially just wanted to foster care this child became so attached to this child that they wanted to adopt this child. But this is very rare. And if it does happen, so far I have not really seen not even one case that has succeeded. The reason is, first of all, most of these foster families do this as a job. There is a very small portion of the foster families who do this get engaged into the foster work not because they want to make any money, but only because they want something to do. Usually these are retired people who have their own retirement plan. They have their patients. They don't care for extra money, but they just want to do it. This is a very small portion. The major portion of the foster families are the people who are either out of a job or who need to find something to do to earn a living. That's the major portion. So even for these foster families, even after a certain amount of time, they have been so attached to this child. They want to change their minds. They want to adopt her. They are not able to. There is stipulation about the conditions of the applicants. You have to meet a certain criteria. If you are struggling yourself to make ends meet, how can you possibly take good care of this? So most of these families, even if they change their mind, they will be convinced by the department that their condition is not good enough to provide good conditions to this child and guarantee that she is going to have a good life. And if they do love this child very much, they want to keep her, they want to adopt her, not because they are selfish. Mostly it's because they have really so much love with her. So they probably will agree with the department's people that it's absolutely a better option for this child to be adopted by a family with a much better condition. If we were told in our updates that our baby is abandoned with a milk, is there a chance we can get her milk? We have eight babies in this group from this orphanage. Seven of them, when they were found, there was a note also found left with them, except for her. You go last and you don't get a note. Okay. Most of these notes are already prepared. The rule is they have to keep everything, all the records, you know, original, in their file for 80 years. Oh my gosh. So when you come back in the future, after she has grown up, they can show you the file. Can we take it downstairs to the business center and photocopy it? You can, but I don't think we'll turn up to it because it's red. Yeah. I definitely think it would be much better if you just take a picture with your digital camera. It's written with pencil, so it's not really very clear. It's such a simple message. It simply says, born on June the 10th, 2004. That's it. That's it? And it's written with pencil. That's right. They have someone training every day. And I thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. She looks great. Yeah. That's right. She looks great. Yeah. He says he looks lovely. Thank you. Happy ending. Yeah. It's really weird, though, when you guys do this. Some people just stare, and then other people smile and stare, which I'm like, thank you. And then other people are just kind of like, look at you like, it's hard. Yeah, you're just great. Thank you so much. Yeah. And then this is for him. The Russians and that, so he can get to his wife. Thank you. Thank you very much. These are for the nannies. And clothes for the orphanage. Okay, thank you. Hey, Rowan. Hi. Today is Tuesday. The tent. Rob looks real pleasant. This is the park outside the park. A bunch of people doing like Tai Chi or something. This is the inside of the park. A lady with swords. Nobody seems to camera shy. The king is smiling. What are you looking for? Is that good? Mmm. She is eating bitter biscuits. A Chinese lady at the market threw them in our cart, so we bought them, and it was a good thing. She really likes them. Today is what? The 11th. She had the doctor check up today. Ears are clear, but she has a cold and a cough, so we started her on the autobiotic a couple of days ago, and the physician said that that was good, and keep her on that, and give her some cold medicine. We have some Tylenol cold we'll give her. Before bed. Before bed, so she'll sleep. She also had a mark on her arm. I don't know if you can see it. It's kind of blurry, but this rash right here, we thought it was scabies, we weren't sure, and it turns out that she just bites her arm to pacify herself, so we're trying to keep her from biting her arm. Hopefully that'll go away. We bought her some little bows today for her hair. We're getting ready to go to KFC soon, huh? There's daddy. So you turned, today, 11 months. She's thrilled. She almost fell asleep eating a biscuit. Alright, buh-bye. Buh-bye-bye. Are you gonna sit up? Bye-bye. I'm gonna get you. Come here. Where are you going? I'm gonna get you. Are you sleepy? Really? Come here, daddy. Turn off the TV and come play with me. You're silly. Did I get you? No. Why are you biting your arms? No, bite your arms. Say no, bite your arms. No. It's now 10 o'clock. This is the main building of Teng Wan Tower. Teng Wan Tower, literally translated, it means the Tower of Prince Teng. His real name was Li Yuan Yi. He was the 22nd son of the first emperor of Han Dynasty. In ancient times, Chinese emperors would have as many as 12 wives and 3,000 concubines. So it's not unusual at all for an emperor to have over 20 sons and maybe even a bigger number of daughters. You know, big family and a very busy life. Yeah, a lot of time on your hands. Very serious violation of the one-child policy. So if you ever have a chance to see the Forbidden City in Beijing, which was the royal palace in ancient times, your guide will tell you that the royal palace, the Forbidden City, has over 3,000 living chambers. They need that many houses to house this many concubines. And then the servants working on it. And the Tang Dynasty, we can say, the last time in Chinese history, that was over 1,400 years ago when most European countries had not started industrialization yet. We're a very primitive agricultural country. Official written language of Iran. Already a very sophisticated, very, very well-developed country in the world. The strongest and the most prosperous in the world. And this guy, he was the 22nd son of his father, who was the founder of the Tang Dynasty. And because he was the son of the emperor, so he was given the title of the prince, he was first given a piece of land in Shandong Province, the Tang County. And he was made the local governor. So he was given this title, Prince Tang. So he was named after the first piece of land given. Later, it was New Year, and he became the local governor of Nanchang. So he built this place for himself. So this was like a private garden, a private place where he entertained himself and his friends. It's not his house. It's only for his own entertainment. It was more like a garden. And the main building was the tower, where he held large banquets and had his private troupe to perform for him and his friends, singing and dancing. At that time, this was the tallest building. It's still very tall, right? Today. But at that time, it was the tallest building in the city. So it became very well-known in this area. It almost became like the symbol, the icon of Nanchang, the landmark of Nanchang. You don't expect any man-made building to last that long, especially in this local area, which has too much social upheaval and wars. So the original building was destroyed. But because it was almost like the icon of the city, the pride of the local people. So very soon after, each time it was destroyed, people gathered to find and have it rebuilt. In the history of the past 1,400 years, this had been destroyed and then rebuilt 27 times. This was the 28th time it was rebuilt. I just want to let you know what this place was all about. This building, this new building, was rebuilt exactly according to its second design. We cannot find the very initial design. So this was rebuilt according to the design of the Song Dynasty instead of the Han Dynasty. At almost exactly the same location, just 100 meters away from the original location, because the original location is right now a busy park. So it's only 100 meters away. I want to get those little drum things for the kids. Maybe not. He built the tower. He's eating the fish more than he's feeding Rohan. Can you smile and say la la la? It's a little over an hour flight. Different groups coming in too. There's Rob with our luggage. We actually got our bags. Are you smiling? Can you smile and say cheesy? Rohan, can you say cheesy? Cheesy! Look at the view. Where's Rohan? Where'd she go? Where's Rohan? There she is! Where's Rohan? Where'd she go? There she is! Rohan. Hi. We're at the White Swan Playroom. A little case of Barbies. Rohan. Hi. Can you smile? Not face? Started with a little runny nose yesterday and it's gotten worse today. So nice. White Swan. Here's Rachel and Leon. And Rob. And sweaty baby girl. Rohan. Hi. Yeah. Bonnie will die laughing when she sees this. My girlfriend spent three weeks in Kazakhstan for adoption. And they stayed in this little teeny apartment. Ate Spam for Thanksgiving dinner. And our other friends who adopted from China we're talking about. They went to the White Swan and went to the swimming pool. She's like, swimming pool? You got a swimming pool? I have a friend who's a natural person and they went to the White Swan. So that's how they did it. Answer the questions here. Check the second page. Can she hear in line? Yes. Is she sick? Touch your head. Where did the baby go? You lost your spot in line earlier. Huh? You lost your spot in line. Oh, we did? Before we go home. Wednesday the 18th. Down at the pool for a rest. For a rest. Before we keep going home to introduce her to her whole family. And Phoebe. Which she'll probably miss because we have pictures on the red couch. For like 48 hours of traveling. Rob's looking hot. There's baby girl. That's a good one. Hey slow rose, look here. When it goes dark then it's a picture. Yeah. Hey, do you have something to say to Rowan? Happy birthday to you. Yay! Can you clap Sloane? Yay! Happy birthday baby girl. Happy birthday Rowan. Rowan, it's your birthday. How old's Rowan today? I don't know. One. Yeah, she's one today. She'll be able to walk today. I don't know if she'll be able to walk today. How old are you buddy? Four. How old's Sloane Rose? One. She can stand up and walk. Well, she's almost two. She's almost two next month. We had pot sugars last night. You did? Do you have any songs to sing? I don't know.