Home!

We started the day Thursday by heading to the Hong Kong airport at 10am. We rolled into the garage at 10:30pm Iowa time (11:30am China time). 25 hours of travel! The big flight was from Hong Kong to Chicago--14.5 hours. The plane we were on had some mechanical issues on the tarmac so we sat there for an additional hour and a half.

Zachary did pretty well. He played a lot and at times was frustrated with no place to really walk around, but slept for 9 of the 16 hours we were on the plane. We built a little tent over his seat which kept it dark for him.

So good to be home. Thank you for all your comments, prayers and well-wishes. We checked our email everyday to see what you wrote. Helped us to feel connected while we were gone.

Feel free come on over and meet Zachary. Just give us a call so we make sure it's not during nap time ;)

more zoo pics

More zoo pics including Zachary passed out at the exit. It was past nap time and draining pointing at all of those animals.

Zoo & safari

Yesterday (Tuesday) we went to the Guangzhou zoo and safari. The Guangzhou zoo is the largest in China. We saw just about every kind of animal you can think of including giraffes, lions, wolves, rhinos, koala bears, etc. The pandas are the prize of this zoo. They have 10. Five are their own and five have been moved to this zoo from the part of China that had the earthquake last year. Zachary got the biggest kick out of seeing the baby lion cubs.

Today we will be going to an "exit meeting" with our agency where we will learn about the final steps of our trip. We will also be getting Zachary's visa and going to an "oath taking" ceremony. From there we get on the train for Hong Kong. Last week there was a case of the H1N1 (swine flu) discovered on the train in Hong Kong. We have heard that the officials are being very cautious as a result. We anticipate having our temp checked several times on the train. Please pray that no one on our train has a temp!

We'll stay over night at the airport hotel and fly out at 12:45p Thursday morning arriving in Chicago at 2:15pm Thursday. That doesn't seem to add up on a 14.5 hour flight. We'll get home at 6:15pm on Thursday. Really, really looking forward to being in our house versus a hotel room!

We look forward to introducing you all to Zachary in the upcoming weeks. We are hoping to get us all adjusted to US time this coming weekend.

Medical Check

Today (Monday) we had Zachary's medical check. This is a requirement for the adoption process. Basically they checked his height & weight, attempted to look in his mouth, and listened to his heart. I am not sure that they told us anything new, except his weight (23 lbs). The nurse made him very mad when she tried to look in his mouth. He had quite the meltdown. After that she tried to test his hearing in a very scientific way--squeezing a squeaky toy on each side of his head. She was concerned why he would not turn toward this toy.....maybe it had something to do with him crying hysterically! Anyway, we made it through and got the necessary documents to move to the next step of the process. That's for his visa. Holt takes our paperwork over tomorrow to get that ball rolling.

Yesterday we borrowed (yes, for free) a stroller from a local store. Zach seems to like the rides and mom and dad's muscles and joints are liking the relief as well! We took a stroll down the road to a German restaurant for supper tonight. The food was a nice change from the Asian foods of late. We are looking forward to meat and potato meals back home!

Zachary has slowed down a bit on his eating. He must have figured out that we are going to provide him with what he needs. We still get a little bit of gruff from him when we take his bib off, but much less than a week ago. We even found some foods that he does not like (potatoes, carrots, and yogurt).

It's hard to believe that we just met this little guy one week ago. He has really changed over the week. This Psalms seems appropriate as we look back on what God has done.... (Psalms 29 from Psalms Now by Leslie F Brandt)

We need to give credit to whom credit is due.
God is alive, and He deserves our perpetual praises.
There is a reason for rejoicing.
There is a God to worship and love.

The skies and the forests manifest His beauty.
The sweep of the ocean represent His power.
The gigantic bodies suspended in our universe portray His majesty.
The wind and the rain, the lightening and the thunder, the creatures that inhabit
the land, the flowers that brighten our lives, all this comes from the hand of God.

The glory is not ours but God's.

Even the achievements of human hand, mind, and machine come through the wisdom
and power of the eternal God.
The contributions of science;
the fields ripe for harvest;
the control of water, air, and space;
the establishment of our great institutions--
these also reflect the glory of God.

Let us give credit to whom credit is due.

The Big Toy Room

Hello from humid, rainy Guangzhou. It's been raining for two days solid--not off and on for two days, but a steady rain fall for two days. So we are becoming quite good w/ umbrellas (which the hotel provides).

Have to give a big thumbs up to the toy company Mattel. There is big room in the hotel full of Mattel toys where parents can take their kids and turn them loose. Zach loves it and it's been good to see how he interacts with other kids. Downtime in our room has been spent wrestling and tickling. We love to hear Zach's laughs during these times.

On Saturday, we had an orientation with our agency where we turned in some of the paperwork we've been toiling over for years. Good to see it put to use.

Today (Sunday) we went to church. Both services were full (Nancy went to the first, I went to the second). The services were somewhat similar to what we do at home. Although the first was in Chinese and the second was both English and Chinese.

Tonight we had supper with the group of families from Holt. It has been fun to watch how the kids are attaching to the parents. Every family in our group has a child from Holt's Children of Promise program. This is a program established to help kids with special medical needs find a forever family. What a blessing for the parents and children both!

A few random photos

A few random shots!

Travel to Guangzhou

On Thursday, we went to a park in Taiyuan. The park was huge, encircled a lake, and was filled with people in the middle of the afternoon. There were people playing instruments, taking music lessons, singing, playing hackey sack, playing a card game that looked like dominoes, and sitting around in groups talking. We seldom see a person alone anywhere; there is definitely a great sense of community--all over China--and we have been treated with kindness and consideration throughout our trip.

At one point at the park a gentlemen asked us about Zachary which brought others over to hear what was being said. Our guide was with us and translated everything. They said he was a lucky boy and gave us the 'thumbs up' which we've received several times now. This happened twice at the park.

Today (Friday) we traveled from Taiyuan to Guangzhou. It was about a three hour plane ride and Zachary's first (and our first w/ a two year old). He squawked a few times, but really did very well. We were able to provide entertainment (aka Cheerios and tearing a barf bag to shreds) and he played his standard game of loading blocks into a bag and taking them out again. The two cities vary a lot from one another. Taiyuan (population 3 million) is an industrial city where as Guangzhou (population 10 million) is a city thriving on trade. We are staying at the White Swan Hotel which is separated from the mainland by a water way, so it's sort of on an island. There is little traffic and nice places to walk. Much quieter than Taiyuan which was a lot like New York City in terms of traffic and honking horns. The White Swam is a famous for housing people adopting in China due to its proximity to the American Consulate where we will be doing more paperwork for what will ultimately be his visa.

Zachary continues to blossom each day, showing us more and more personality. Tonight momma received the best gift ever---a kiss smack on her lips from her son!

 

Safe Enough to Walk!

Each day we find that Zachary feels more and more comfortable with us. Today he decided he felt safe enough to let go of mom & dad and walk around the hotel room. He was motorin' around this afternoon before nap time. Our arm muscles were happy for some relief:)

Zachary's appetite has not slowed down a bit. In fact, he ate more than mom and dad at bfast this morning. The hotel here has a good mix of typical Chinese bfast food and American food. He likes to eat dumplings, stewed buns, eggs and fruit. You should see him when he is motioning for more food. He takes his pointer finger and politely taps his plate. We cracked up laughing when he started doing this. We are trying to teach him the sign for "more" instead.....

We went on a tour of Jinci Temple today. It was first built in the Western Zhour Dynsaty (the 11th century BC) to worship Duke SHunyu of Jin State. The temple has remains of sculptures and stone tablets from several Dynsasties. It was interesting to hear stories of how the Chinese people worshiped these gods. Even today while we were there we saw people paying respects to the Gods and leaving treasures at their altar.

This morning we met a few people from the US and Britain. It was a relief to speak English at full speed!

We'll be leaving for Guanzhou on Friday morning for the final leg of our trip. We'll get all of Zach's visa paperwork done there. We now have his passport.

He's warming up!

Zachary must have been exhausted after his long day traveling to meet us. After sleeping 11 hours in his crib, we had to wake him so we could get ready to go to our appt at the Civil Affairs Office. The appointment went very well this morning. We got all the documents signed and application submitted for his Chinese passport.

After that we got to experience Walmart. Let's just say that it is comparable to the Walmart's in the US!

We have gotten the chance to play a few more games with Zachary (rolling the ball, peek-a-boo with his book). We have seen some more smiles and lots more eye contact. He tried to teach Mom & Dad a new game this morning, which involved throwing his little truck and then having us chase after it ;)

He loves to be held. In fact we basically hold him all the time except when sleeping or eating. That allows us the chance for some good bonding. He is an excellent eater! He probably was only allowed a limited amount of food at the orphanage, so now he is in heaven eating as much as he can. We are trying to figure out how much to let him eat at each meal. He basically eats anything we are eating and drinks from a bottle.

At lunch today we ate at a Shanghainese restaurant in the hotel. They must have thought we were making a mess at the meal because they brought us 3 wet wash clothes and a pair of plastic gloves (must have thought it was strange that mom used her hands to feed him at times).

By the end of the day, Zach was showing a lot more personality, pointing and squealing, babbling on about everything he was seeing and doing and lots of eye contact.

I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD" (1 Samuel 1:26-27).

We got him!

At long last, we have Zachary.

I am having trouble getting photos to attach to my email (which is how I'm posting), so I put a link to photos below.

We'll give more details later, but the short version is that he was pretty scared and would not make any eye contact, didn't move, didn't make a sound. After we got back to the hotel, we have him a few toys and got him giggling a little bit playing ball. Sometimes we couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying. I think it was both. I don't think he wanted to let his guard down.

For photos, click on this link.

We'll write more later. Have a meeting in the morning (Tues) to get his passport in the works.

Updated pictures of Zach

We received some updated information for Zach today and some new pictures. We only received prints so I took pictures of the pictures so I could post them. We will get the real thing tomorrow.

Also received details on what he eats, his eating schedule, sleeping schedule, nap, etc. So now we have some background on his routine.

We leave the hotel at 5:30am tomorrow morning (Monday) to go to the airport to travel to Taiyuan in Shanxi province SW of Beijing.

We are being taken care of at every turn by our agency. They make sure we know our schedule, when to be where, who our guide will be, what to eat, what not to eat, etc. And they speak very good English. Takes all the pressure off of being in a unfamiliar place.

Hopefully, next time we post, it will be with Zach in tow. We are scheduled to get him at 2pm on Monday.
 

More pictures

Follow this link for more pictures.

Beijing and the Great Wall

We actually arrived in Beijing a day earlier than required, both to ensure that we arrived before our orientation on Sunday and to do some sightseeing.

Our first stop was the Great Wall of China. It is mind-boggling how difficult this must have been to build. It goes on as far as the eye can see in either direction and up steep mountains. Our tour-guide "Happy" told us that it is 8,841 km long (or about 5,500 miles). That's why it's one of the 7 wonders of the world!

Next we went to Hutong; an old neighborhood in Beijing. Parts of Hutong are 500 years old (consider that America was founded about 230 years ago). The streets are very narrow and residents do not have bathrooms in their houses, they share community bathrooms. Mostly older generations live there, as the younger generations want their own bathrooms. We got to tour this area riding in a rickshaw (a bicycle w/ a "carriage" on the back).

Tonight we visited "Snack Street" filled with such dilectibles as fried sheep kidneys, something that looked like fried mice, and squid on a stick (eat your heart out Iowa State Fair). We opted to eat at McDonald's.

Overall, Beijing is very western. Most people speak English and the newer parts of the city look just like American cities. You wouldn't believe all the bicycles here.  Happy tells us that there are about 10 million cars and 9 million bikes in Beijing alone. Wow! Guess how many helmets we saw....0!

Sunday (tomorrow) we have an orientation where we will get more information on Zach and perhaps a new picture. One of the families in our group received their little girl a couple of days ago, so playing with her today has made us even more anxious to get to Monday.  The other 3 families get their child on Monday as well, just from a different area in China than us.

Adventures in Flying

[It appears we cannot view our blog from China, so hope the pics are attaching okay as we are emailing our posts to the blog]. If you comment, all comments are emailed to us, so we will see them.

We had been wondering which direction we would fly to reach Beijing; east or west. It's about the same distance either way. However, we received a nice surprise when we took off and realized we were headed north.

Our flight went directly over the North Pole, so we were able to enjoy some scenery during the flight. Oh, and it was broad daylight the entire way.

At the Beijing airport, we were asked to remain on the plane while quarantine officials came on board and took everyone's temperature (remember the H1N1 virus is still out there). I would estimate there were about 300 people on board. So everyone was 'shot' on the forehead with some kind of laser thermometer. About 15 rows in front of us a man was running a fever. So we had to wait while new group of quarantine officials came on board. These officials were completely decked out in what one passenger called "Ghost Buster suits." It took around two hours to get all of this done.

As they did their work my only thought was that they were going to quarantine the entire plane. However, they simply took the 10 or so rows around him and those people got off the plane first and were rechecked and released. The rest of us deplaned after them.

We slept only a few minutes on the flight, so we were exhausted when we finally got to the hotel at 6pm China time (5am Central time). That means we were traveling for closing to 24 hours straight. Yikes! After eating and showering we passed out and slept all night--which is day time in Iowa.

Leaving Tomorrow!

We are all packed and ready to go! Thank  you all for your prayers for the Kragel family. Please continue to pray for us as we are in China. Today we got word that China has increased public health screening at airports for all passengers and quarantined several hundred travelers for observation, including one family traveling to adopt their child. We ask for God's protection and peace over us and all the families currently traveling to bring their child home.

When Love Takes You In

Zachary--This song says it all. Know that we're dreaming of you and counting down the days until we meet!

I know you've heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You've heard about a place called home
But there doesn't seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in

And somewhere while you're sleeping
Someone else is dreaming too
Counting down the days until
They hold you close and say I love you
And like the rain that falls into the sea
In a moment what has been is lost in what will be

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart

And this love will never let you go
There is nothing that could ever
cause this love to lose its hold

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in it takes you in for good
When love takes you in

Steven Curtis Chapman \ When Love Takes You In

Love you ~ Mom & Dad

Last Minute Details

As the moment of our departure nears, we are going over some last minute details: Brushing up on a little Chinese and acquainting our cats with the culture. Actually, we've already been warned that attempting to speak Chinese will get us a few snickers but not much else. Fortunately, we'll have an English speaking guide with us the entire time.

Zachary, So many people have had fun shopping for you! We had fun opening all of your gifts, but it kind of felt like a birthday party without you! We can't wait to show you all of your new toys.....14 days til we meet!

Still Goin' To China!

We are happy to report that China is still allowing families to fly in and out of China, despite what's been going on with the swine flu. We are planning to go as scheduled on May 14! Thanks to all of you for your prayers. We have attached a photo from a prayer wall at our church (Lutheran Church of Hope-NorthBranch). Folks came to pray for the church and the world all week long during Holy week--24/7 for a week. This photo shows all the prayers of thanksgiving that were lifted up for Zachary!