Great Wall, Pandas, and Mcdonald's

Gotcha Day is the special day where the parents are united with the child they have been waiting for. It is sort of like a birthday.  Some families celebrate it.  It gives a solid date to go by.  Birthdays are not always accurate.  When children are abandoned, the orphanages have to estimate the day of birth.  That is unless the parent leaves a note stating that information. Once we flew into Jaingxi, we were brought to our hotel to check in.  Then we were advised to meet in the lobby to be brought to the office of the Social Welfare building.  This is where the children were being brought to.  The trip for the children was 2 hours away in a more rural part of Jaingxi.  We were in the city. Before going to China, we looked up other Gotcha Days on the Internet.  It was a festive day where parents were brought into a room.  One by one workers would bring in each child as they called the parents name and they were joyfully united. ...

Our homestudy was finally approved.  A couple of things needed to be clarified, but it was no problem.  Now it is on to the next step.  We did receive our PA for a child.  She is 18 months and blind.  PA stands for pre-approval in adoption speak.  We have been given a deadline to get our dossier to China.  If we do not get it there in time, the child will be open for adoption.  We plan to get our stuff done as quick as possible. The paperwork was received on Friday and was out to Texas the next day.  Next up is fingerprinting to verify we have a clean criminal background.  Then, I think some certifications are done and applying to bring an orphan to America.  Once these things are done, it is prepared and sent to China for review.  Hopefully, the process will be expedited, since she is a special needs child. Once again, it is back to waiting.  .  .

In Jiangxi, one of the few things that we got to visit was the Tengwang Pavilion.  It is a multi story pavilion near the Gan River.  Upon arriving, we took a group shot in front of the pavilion.  Then we proceeded to go into the pavilion.  We took an elevator to the top floor, I believe.  Seeing that this supposed to be an ancient building, it was probably added in the many reconstructions done.  On the top floor, there is an area where a musical show is being performed. Walking around, we saw the decorations and artistry of the building.  Walking to the sides, you have an area to look over the city and river.  We did get to see a car accident.  It looked like a person on a bike was hit by a car.  I'm surprised we did not see more accidents.  You can also look down on the garden that is to the left of the building. We took the stairs to each level and explored.  There were a lot of historical artifacts, pictures and crafts....

I had previously started talking about the Beijing Zoo in the Pandas Part 1 post.  During our two week stay in Beijing, we got to visit a lot of the tourist spots in Beijing.  Besides the pandas, the zoo has many other animals. This zoo is huge.  I don't even know if we walked the whole thing.  We got to see lots of what it had to offer.  It is an old style zoo.  There are cages, open areas, netting for birds.  The open areas had animals like a giraffe, donkey, etc.  In these areas, you could get close to the animals.  There were some open areas that you could not get to the animal.  Those housed bears, lions and tigers.  The monkeys were in cages.  Some birds and hawks were in an open netting.   I did see an elephant in a small concrete enclosure. The zoo was kept in good condition.  Some animals did not look happy, but what animals in captivity would be.  People would yell and poke at them to get them to mo...