passport day

on tuesday we took samantha to the embassy to get her passport and register her. it was her first day to breathe the fresh smoggy beijing air. i hope she's not addicted to the air and doesn't turn out to be a smoker someday.

a few people have asked if she will be a dual citizen, but china doesn't grant that so, she'll just be an ordinary american citizen. i guess when you already have 1.3 billion people to worry about, why should they throw in a few foreigners?

typically when a chinese lady has a baby they stay at home for a month afterwards and don't get out of bed (they don't brush their teeth, take showers, comb their hair, etc...). apparently it's good for recovery and the baby. so for us to take samantha out on the town after 3.5 days, it turned some heads. not to mention that we don't have anything to carry her in, because she's too small for the baby bjorn thing. so we just carried her around, oh well my guns are getting bigger from carrying a 6 pound weight everywhere.

Samantha Grace Wu

here she is world!!!!!

she's finally arrived!!! samantha grace wu came on may 11th at 8:12 pm here in beijing (oooh an international baby).

her stats for the back of her baseball card is:
weight - 6lbs 8 oz
height - 19 inches

here's some shots of her big day.

tribute to the loser

here's my offcial salute to the first loser of the baby pool. sonny chose 5/5 (wu yue, wu hao-since my last name is the number 5-wu) at 5:55 pm for the baby to be born. unfortunately it didn't happen, it would have been cool. sorry sonny :( but we did enjoy a delicious gi-normous pizza on 5/5 to try and get the baby out.



in case there are others that want to participate in the baby pool, it's not too late to enter, since baby lilo hasn't come yet.

going to the zoo

still no baby, so we decided to hit the zoo today (i thought the walking might get lilo out). stuart, who teaches in beijing, joined us for the adventure. it's been almost 10 years since i last went to the beijing zoo, so i was excited to see if anything really changed. there were some really nice parts to the zoo and some really not so nice parts (those parts didn't change since 1997). at one point, stuart and i named a goat michael scofield (from prison break, the tv show) and tried to scheme a way for him to break free.





one cool part was feeding the giraffes, they were kinda slobbery - yuck!














everywhere you go in china, people are always posing and taking pictures with their cell phones. so here i am taking a picture of stuart by some beautiful trees with my cell phone. except that i didn't splurge for a phone with a camera. too bad i couldn't really capture the kodak moment for stuart.



part of the fun of the zoo is seeing all the chinese people and how they react to all the animals. for that, it's worth the admission price.


here's a picture of the puzzle that rachel has been working so very hard on for the last few days. she finally finished! aparently when you are waiting for a baby, a puzzle is a good thing to do. i hate puzzles, i officially named myself a "puzzle-tard", with some of the youth back in michigan.

mr. and mrs. smith hit beijing

this morning we met up with some friends (who we really had never met in person). eric and heather are here in beijing, because they are on their way to changchun to pick up a baby from the orphanage in siping. it's a long crazy story how we got connect with them, but we had a good time hanging out with them and sharing stories about their daughter and the other babies at the orphanage. we are so excited to be able to know where one of the babies is going! we are more stoked to know that little han xue will have a new family! here's a picture from breakfast/brunch and a picture of their daughter :)



and here's a shot for seth. seth always tells this joke (that's not even his own orignal joke), but it goes something like this: did you know an escalator can never be broken? to which he responds: it can only be stairs! it's funny the first time, and not when seth tells it, but he still tells it to every girl he meets. so here is my picture tribute to the lame joke and an apology to all the ladies who have had to hear it. but he does look good in a moustache, that's one thing going his way.

waiting in beijing

so i arrived in beijing yesterday, and now it's just sitting around and waiting until lilo comes. the famous mavis davis was here hanging out with rach for the week that i was still teaching in siping. today we put her on the plane and said "adios". while she was here, her and rach didn't do very much, they pretty much took it easy and lounged around. so when i arrived yesterday, we took mavis around the town. i wanted to bargain for junk for her to bring home, so we headed out and did some mad shopping. i love bargaining, some people hate it, but i love it! it's like a game, and i'm all about finding the treasures and getting the deals.




this morning rach had a doctor's appointment, so we got to see baby lilo on the ultrasound for the final time before she comes popping out. she's on the low end of size and weight, so i guess that's good for rach. it appears that all her limbs are there and she has five fingers (at least on the hand we could see). we also had the doctor make sure she's still a she, and it looks like the girly clothes still have a good chance of sticking around.

here's also a friendly reminder from the good folks in beijing; remember: "do not drive tiredly". we could all learn a good leason from this road sign.