West Lake and the Tea Plantation

Today our guide, Jessica, picked us up at 9:00 a.m. from the hotel, and we spent the morning touring West Lake with her.  We went to the opposite side of the lake from where we were walking around Sunday on our own.  We took a beautiful boat ride around the lake, and Jessica explained the stories behind the two different pagodas, the gardens, the bridges and the islands located around the lake.  The people of Hangzhou take such pride in their historical West Lake, and it plays a very important role in their community.  After the boat ride, we took a walk around the gardens and let Juliet look at the fish pond and the birds on the property, which she was very interested in.  This part of the lake was very crowded with many tourist groups, and Jessica explained that this is very typical.  People from neighboring provinces come here often on buses for tours of the area.  After leaving the lake, we decided to visit the tea plantation that was close by, even though Juliet was getting pretty tired.  At the plantation, we learned the process of making Dragon Well green tea, one of the two major products that Hangzhou is known for, the other being silk.  It was interesting to see the hills of terrace farming around the plantation, and to learn the intense process that goes into producing the tea.  Jessica entertained Juliet at the plantation as we had our crash course in tea production.  Juliet was especially interested in a little dog, named Dodo, that roamed the property.  We're hoping she has the same curious interest in our own dog at home. 



After the tea plantation, we made our way back to the hotel, trying to keep Juliet from falling asleep in the van so she could take a good nap in the hotel room (she starts falling asleep anytime she is riding in the van...hard to believe with all of the honking of horns and sudden stops that occur). She does perk up when she hears a wrapper of any kind, thinking she is going to be able to eat more. We kept digging in our bag and handing her goldfish crackers to keep her awake.  To say she has a good appetite is an understatement.  She flaps her arms, squawks, and kicks her feet at the sight of food.  Our strategy worked because she is going on 2.5 hours of a nap as of now.  We plan to walk back to the silk market again before dinner.  She loves to look around at the people, the colorful silk scarves, and the red lanterns that hang in the street. 

It's Official!

On Tuesday we traveled back to the Civil Affairs office to receive the adoption certificate.  We spent the better part of the morning there with the 3 other families we saw on Monday.  2 were from Spain and the other was from Sweden.  One of the boys, who appeared to be about 9 years old, was from the same orphanage as Juliet.  He told us (through an interpreter) that they lived in separate buildings.  Once our certificate was ready, we had a ceremony where the civil affairs woman read through our document and made the adoption official.  Juliet is ours!

We returned to the hotel after that to have lunch and so that Juliet could take her nap.  She only slept for about 45 minutes though which made for a long afternoon.  She was very tired.  We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Silk Street where they have shop after shop of items made from silk.  Scarves, dresses, pajamas,etc.  Everyone was very interested in us as we were the only westerners there.  It's funny how they react when they see we have a Chinese baby.  They can't seem to figure out why. 



We returned to the room after this to let Juliet play and run around for a while.  We had a quick dinner and then returned early to put her to bed.  She was very tired.  She fell right asleep, but after about 30 minutes, I (Matt) went to check on her.  She her me, woke up and could not fall back asleep for about 45 minutes.  However, once she did fall asleep, she slept for almost 11 hours. 

We're off to breakfast now and then we're going on a boat tour of West Lake.

Quick Update

Juliet continues to be happy.  She did great at dinner last night, loved her bath, and went right to sleep when we laid her down.  She slept through the night for almost 12 hours!  She was exhausted from the big day yesterday.  As we walked to dinner last night, she was so interested in everything that was going on around her!  She kicked her feet, babbled constantly and was amazed by everything she saw. 

This morning she was a little more reserved and confused, and we actually saw a few tears.  But after having a huge breakfast, she's back to her happy self!

We're on our way back to the Civil Affairs office today to pickup the official adoption certificate so we have to run.  More updates to come later.

Welcome Juliet!

We met our guide Jessica in the hotel lobby this morning at 8:30am.  After a short drive to the civil affairs office, we were led into a large meeting room with 3 other families that were adopting that morning.  There was a family from Sweden and 2 families from Spain along with us.  We had to fill out the necessary paperwork that stated why we wanted to adopt Juliet, as well as sign many different forms.  About 20 minutes later, the 4 children were brought in.  Juliet was easy to spot as she was the only girl.  The 3 other boys ranged in age from about 18 months to about 9 years old.  They were all adorable and dressed very nice for the special occasion.  The oldest boy was particularly excited when his new parents gave him a Nintendo DS.  They even returned all the things that we sent her in her care package.  You can tell that she enjoyed them because all the picture books and toys seemed well used.  She loves her little bear.

Juliet is just beautiful and healthy!  We was a little unsure when Jessica first handed her to Beth, but she quickly became comfortable with both of us and hasn't stopped babbling or giggling since.  She's extremely ticklish and loves to play peek-a-boo.  She's walking on her own and seems to be fearless (like all other Jakubik kids).  She loved the car ride to the shopping market and everything seemed to be a new experience to her.  She's a very curious girl.  After getting back to the hotel, she was a little cautious entering our room, but now she runs around like she owns it. 

Videos - 10/17/2011

She ate a nice lunch and she's now taking her afternoon nap.  She layed down without crying and we haven't heard a peep out of her the entire time.  We've checked on her a few times and she's sound asleep.

One interesting thing that we found out about her was that she was not abandoned right away as we had thought.  She was actually found when she was about 2 months old at a bus station here in Hangzhou.  We hope to visit that spot so that we can take pictures.  We also found out that we'll be able to visit the orphanage on Friday so we're excited to meet the staff that takes care of these wonderful children.

We feel very blessed to be matched with such a wonderful baby and to bring her in to our family.  Luke and Mia will be so excited.

Finally pictures from Shanghai

So I think I figured out how to post pictures as a slideshow in the blog posts.  Here are the are some of the pictures from Shanghai (a day late).

Hangin' in Hangzhou

So we found out when we arrived in Hangzhou last night that we would not be meeting Juliet until Monday morning because the offices are closed on Sundays.  Our hotel is very nice and we have a huge suite with a separate sitting room and bed room.  More than enough room for a toddler to run around in.

We received a wake up call from Luke and Mia asking if we wanted to Skype, so we spoke with them for about 20 minutes.  Mia wanted to know where Juliet was and Luke filled us in on Michigan State's big win over Michigan (4th in a row, but who's counting?).  After breakfast, we decided to walk to West Lake, a national park which surrounds a huge beautiful lake here in Hangzhou.  The walk took about 30 minutes through the hustle and bustle of Hangzhou, but once we got there, it was very peaceful.  There were families walking around, people sitting by the lake drinking tea or coffee, boat rides, and groups of people singning and dancing.  We saw a big group of people gawking at something, we went to see what it was.  Low and behold it was a squirrel, but everyone was pretty amazed by it.  I think our guide is taking us on a boat tour of the lake later this week.

We headed back to the hotel and once we were in our room, we found out there is a school right down the street.  For about an hour and a half, they were playing a loud recording while each class came out in their uniforms to do their exercises in the school courtyard.  We also found out that we're just few blocks from the Silk district so we plan to visit that in the next few days.

Our guide Jessica is picking us up at 8:30am tomorrow morning to take us to get Juliet.  Her crib is ready in our room and now it's time for us to get some rest before the big day.

On our way to Hangzhou

After a long and exciting day of sight-seeing in Shanghai. We are finally on our train bound for Hangzhou. It seemed like we did everything there is to do in Shanghai, all in one day. We visited The Bund (a tourist area on the Huang Pu River), went to the top of Oriental Pearl TV Tower for a 360 degree view of Shanghai, walked through Yuyuan Gardens which have been around for over 400 years and visited the Shanghai historical museum and the Urban Planning Expo Center. We also had delicious meals for both lunch and dinner at local restaurants. Our guide Nick did a wonderful job showing us around Shanghai and was very appreciative of the Detroit Tigers t-shirt we gave him as an additional gift.

Our train is a high-speed bullet train so it should take us about 45 minutes to get to Hangzhou. It travels at about 300 km/hr.



We haven't been able to post many pictures yet because we haven't been in a hotel long enough to get online. Hopefully we'll have time tomorrow. By then we should know when we'll be meeting Juliet. We're both excited and a little nervous.


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Location:Huachi South Rd,Hangzhou,China