Some pictures from this morning

A short video

We don't have too many pictures of Kai smiling yet. The photos we have are all either within the first 10 minutes of meeting him (and he looks scared) or are taken when he has been busily playing and not looking at the camera. We have gotten a bit of good video, though.

Meet Kai

We got a little surprise today... We got Kai about 20 minutes after we arrived at our hotel in Hohhot! Our guide informed us that this was going to happen when we were half way between the Hohhot airport and the hotel. He has been doing extremely well. He interacted with us right away and plays quite nicely with Eva.

After about 15-20 minutes with two staff members from the orphanage, we were on our own. We went to dinner at a restaurant near the hotel. No one spoke any English and we certainly didn't know what we were doing or what we wanted, but we managed to get some really tasty food. After that Scott and Eva went back to the room and Mary, Terri and Kai went for a shor walk and picked up some water and extra snacks at a local store. When we returned to the room, Kai was sad and crying. He wanted to have his shoes on so that he could leave and when Mary said no, he noticed that she wasn't wearing any shoes, so he brought her her shoes so that she could leave with him (we're assuming that he wanted to leave to find his foster family). He settled down nicely and went to bed very easily.

We already gotten lots of smiles and some laughs. He loves throwing toys, but will play nicely when one of us (including Eva) demonstrates how to use the toy. He also seems to love music and can't help but bop up and down when he hears a catchy tune.

We'll post more when we can, but need to sleep now. We've been told that Kai usually gets up at 6am. Yikes!

Hong Kong Day 2

Its near midnight on Saturday here and we are packing for our trip to Inner Mongolia. We leave for the airport at 5:15a.m. tommorow. This morning Eva, Terri, and I headed out to an old fishing village known as Aberdeen, while Mary stayed back to finish some work. The harbour was amazing and filled with all manner of wooden boats; many were live aboard.

Eva enjoyed an afternoon dip in the hotel pool and then quickly crashed. She still has a touch of the jet lag.

This evening Mary and Terri went to a night market and did a little bargain shopping.

We expect to meet our new son the day after tommorow. Things are getting pretty exciting for us.

Hong Kong Day 1

Today we went to Lantou Island and took a very long, very high cable car ride to see the Big Buddha. Everyone seems to be adjusting well to the time change. Eva was a real trooper and stayed up all day. She took at nap in the evening and woke up at 11 pm happy as could be.