Back in Beijing!!!

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Greetings from Beijing; boy it is good to be able to say that. It was an interesting day yesterday. Besides being our 9th anniversary, yesterday morning Eliana received her final IV treatment before we took her out of the Guangzhou Children's Hospital. She was in good spirits and during the last and fourth night that Andrew spent at the hospital, he was actually able to get a decent amount of sleep. Below is a small picture of the central waiting area of the hospital. In the morning hours the place is a zoo. Eliana stayed on the 2nd floor of the white building which is just visible through the opening between the two other buildings.

This is Elsie, or as we prefer to call her, Eliana's Angel. She was absolutely brilliant with Eliana and spent 8am to 9+pm with us at the hospital, interfacing with the doctors, interpreting and taking care of all paperwork. We can't thank her enough.

Here are a couple of pictures of Eliana in the hospital. Overall she received excellent medical treatment notwithstanding the general lack of amenities found in Canada. For example it was bring your own toilet paper, also no soap to wash your hands with. Thank goodness for Purell, hand sanitizer, again not provided, but we had brought some with us to China. The other device that we will never leave home without was the digital in-ear thermometer. Considering that the nurse only came about every 4 hrs to check Eliana's temperature, that device might have been a contributing factor for her being well today as during the night Friday there were several times that Andrew went running for the Doctor after measuring a rapid increase in temperature. Definitely worth every penny and the subject for some jealous looks by other patients.

The other person we have to give credit to was the nanny we hired for Olivia. For 3 days straight she cared for her while we were at the hospital. We couldn't have managed without her.

So yesterday we made our afternoon flight to Beijing. It was so good to land and realize that we are now only one flight away from Canada and our own beds. On the flight the babies were remarkably good, even if Eliana seemed at times to prefer any strange woman to her father - she hasn't warmed up to men yet.

Unfortunately we noticed that Olivia had developed a high fever while in the air so we gave her some medicine on the plane which thankfully brought it back down. It wasn't to last however since once on the ground it started going back up again. This then necessitated a trip to the medical clinic at 11pm. Dad, used to working the night shift, did his duty once again.

Now back with our group again, they welcomed us back and have stepped in to help out. For example, last night John and Stacey Day took Eliana for the night and our tour-guide Jenny took Olivia for the night. We had 6 hours of completely unhindered sleep from 1 until the alarm went off at 7. For Andrew it was the first night since Thursday that he had had a good night's sleep. Margaret was also treated to a 90 minute massage today including babysitting.

Here are a couple of pictures from the hotel room.

This morning we had to take both girls back to the medical clinic to do the official medical for the girls' visas. Once that was complete we rushed over to the Canadian Embassy and submitted all of the paperwork. Hopefully the embassy will issue the visa tomorrow morning so that we can fly home with the rest of the team tomorrow afternoon. Other wise we will have to stick it out in Beijing alone until the visas come through. Our adoption agency has requested an expedited processing for the visas and the lady we talked with this morning was hopeful, but there are no guarantees.