Adoption debacle, the final insults and a happy ending

By the time we got to Guangzhou (where the American embassy is) to finalize our adoption, things were going better. We had purchased stuff for our daughter. She was happy.

I might mention here that underwear in Mainland China is not plentiful in the department stores. I don't know why. I also know that undergarments are not made for Westerners. Both dh and I required the largest size ever made by Chinese hands for the Chinese consumer and we were mighty uncomfortable. 'Nuff said.

We got to the White Swan hotel, relaxed, did some shopping, and generally had a fine time. We paid $8 for a half gallon of orange juice and the same again for a single serving of Hagen Daaz ice cream. We didn't care. We were, by then, starved for Western comfort food.

Then, the CURSE struck again. There was confusion amongst those awful travel wholesalers, our adoption agency and the hotel. The hotel expected us to vacate our room for 24 hours. We were 13 hours ahead of the Midwestern hometown folks who could help us. We paid for another day and fired off some nastygrams via email. Ultimately the travel wholesalers paid for the room and the charge to our credit card was refunded.

We thought we were home free. The adoption was done. All was settled. We had a "final dinner in China" celebration with our now dear, dear travel companions at a beautiful restaurant on Shamian Island. It was heaven. And then, of course, disaster struck.

Dh came home from dinner with us and became violently ill. Actually, I think violently might be an understatement. I called the front desk for help-- please send a doctor immediately. This was no regular food poisoning, this was something much scarier. Dh was conscious, but just barely. I was terrified.

The doctor arrived, checked my dh out and, I assume because I am a woman, refused to speak to me about dh's treatment. Instead, he handed dh a large number of packets containing pills, powders and various other unidentifiable things. He gave very complicated directions which, he said, must be followed to the letter or dh would not recover. I tried to take notes, but he spoke too fast and, again, would not address his remarks to me. Our flight out of China was the next day. I feared with all my heart that they would not let us on the plane.

Long story short, dh did not recover. Turns out one of the packets was full of Tylenol which makes dh throw up.

The next morning I propped dh up in the bath tub so that any...uh...accidents would be where I could clean him up, put a tiny bit of warm water in the tub and towel around his shoulders because he was shivering with cold, put my daughter in a stroller and FLEW down to Lucy's, a store which had a "trading shelf." Although dh was vastly oversized for the bathtub, I still feared he would drown in the 3" of water I'd put in the tub. That was my state of mind-- not entirely rational is probably a fair assessment.

For those of you have never been there, a "trading shelf" is where Westerners donate Western things they did not need on their adoption trip for other adoption travelers to use if they need it. I found a bottle of Pepto-- one in liquid and one in pill form for the plane. I also dashed around after bringing back the Pepto buying the souvenirs dh and I had planned to buy on the last day, as well as some luggage to transport our Chinese-purchased items home.

Dh consumed a vast amount of Pepto and, by flight time, was well enough to travel. I have to say I offered up prayers of thanksgiving to practically every deity I'd ever heard of. I was THAT grateful. Before we left I took every spare item I could think of and left them on the Lucy's trading shelf.

The final insult?

We arrived in LAX only to find that that horrid wholesaler travel agency had CANCELED our tickets home. We had, after all, complained about our treatment by them not only to our agency but on our agency's yahoo message board. Whoops. Guess they read that one, huh?

Anyway, dh, who long ago worked at an airline, was allowed to look at the service rep's screen and, indeed, the reservations had been canceled by the travel agency. All but our daughter's. They didn't know our daughter's name, apparently.

The tickets were easily rescheduled, happily, because we had paper tickets. Unfortunately, we had a group of people planning to meet our original flight at the airport. However, we paid $15 for an hour of internet time in the airport, emailed everyone about the change of flight, and got home to a warm welcoming CROWD of our loved ones.

But I guess you can understand why we're thinking about traveling with carry on luggage only when we go to Taiwan and using a real travel agent.