More Photos and a Brief Report

Anna and Maja arrived in Reykjavík safe and sound, albeit very tired late on Wednesday, 17 September. Logi left them in Copenhagen, heading for Milan and then Genoa.

Since their arrival in Reykjavík, Maja has made the acquaintance of our cat Farinelli, people at Reykjavík University, and the neighbour's girl. She seems to be a happy and lively girl, and she charms everyone around her.

In one of her comments to previous posts, Yayoi asked what she liked to eat. From I hear from Anna she is a big eater and loves fruits (especially big bananas). Here is a live report from Anna on one of Maja's breakfasts (22 September 2008):

she ate skyr (an Icelandic yoghurt-like product), lýsi (Icelandic for cod-liver oil), corn from a can, rice cake, orange juice and a part of a peach.

And here's one from yesterday:

She just called me (loudly) to tell me that she wants another banana, but this morning she has eaten already one banana, a spoonful of cod liver oil (which she likes), half a yoghurt, half an orange, rice cake and a lot of cheerios.

So, she does have a good appetite :-)

I have posted some photos from September 13, 14 and 15, which were kindly provided by Logi. Enjoy!

Photos from the adoption ceremony

I have also uploaded the photos from the adoption ceremony, which was held on Tuesday, 9 September. There are also some photos of Maja Mei Xin talking to Róbert via skype while having a snack. Róbert told me that she was definitely enjoying her meal and that she was very talkative.

That's all for today.

Photos from the trip to the zoo on 10 September

It looks like I am reversing the flow of time. Here are some photos taken during the trip to the zoo last Wednesday. As you can see, Anna is training Maja Mei Xin in eating noodles. I have no doubt she'll like Italian pasta :-)

Today during our daily skype video call she entertained my sister's daughters, Chiara and Caterina, by singing for about 13 minutes straight. She certainly does not seem to lack energy and memory.

Anna says that she likes to see photos of Róbert and me on the web. So I found a few more to put on my picasa web account and added a handful of photos of our cat Farinelli. I trust that she'll enjoy playing with him. It remains to be seen whether Farinelli will like it too :-)

Photos from 11 September 2008

Logi has arranged the photos by day. (Thanks Logi!) So I can tell you that these photos were taken today. Maja Mei Xin got her taste of Starbucks and apparently enjoyed a frappuccino.

At some point soon, I'll upload the photos taken during the trip to the zoo yesterday to watch the pandas ("big mao" according to Maja Mei Xin) as well as those from the adoption ceremony. Watch this space.

Photos

I am uploading photos provided by Logi on a picasa web folder so that anyone interested in the developments related to Anna and Logi's trip to China can have a look.

You can access the folder here. There are still quite a few photos that I have to download from Logi's web directories, so the number of photos in the folder is likely to increase a lot over the next couple of days.

Enjoy.

Trip to the Chongqin zoo

Anna wrote to me saying that today they all went to the local zoo to see pandas (big mao as Mei Xin
calls them) and other animals. Maja Mei Xin enjoyed the trip a lot and ran around laughing. Back at the hotel, she played with Logi with a stuffed panda Anna and Logi bought her.

Anna says that Maja Mai Xin still cries in the evening when she goes to bed and puts her old shoes on. Otherwise she is fine and is laughing most of the time.

Adoption procedure

Yesterday Anna and Maja Mei Xin went through the adoption ceremony. Now I am the leagal father of Maja Mei Xin Aceto. Anna wrote to me saying that there was a formal ceremony. Maja Mei Xin cried when it was their turn, not because she was afraid, but because she did not want to be held as the big girls were not held.

Maja had a long chat with Róbert on skype before the ceremony and said bye-bye to him and já. According to Anna, she was very excited to see Róbert. She might have recognized him from the photos she was shown.

I also had a skype video call with Anna and her. She was repeating "Ciao papa'" and playing with her water bottle.

Photo(s) of Maja and from the trip

Logi is uploading some photos from the Chinese trip. Since the internet connection here is slow, I have only uploaded a couple of ones of Maja and I have not succeeded yet in uploading a single one onto blogger :-( You can, however, try to view or upload some photos from here.

I have also just had a skype chat with Anna and Maja Mei Xin. It was short since she wanted to go and play with the other kids. Skype video calls are boring :-)

Today is the day

I am writing this post from a conference room in Milan, so this will be very short. Anna and Logi are in Chongqin, and today is the day that they will meet Maja Mei Xin for the first time. In fact, in the light of the time difference between Milan and Chongqin, they have probably already met the girl.

Anna and Logi will probably post some photos and/or impressions at some point soon, and I might have a video call via skype with them once I have charged the battery in my laptop using one of the two power outlets in the room :-)

The first invited talk should be starting now, so I'll quit.

Beijing

We've arrived. The hotel is nice, the room is big and comfortable and the internet connection seems to be unfiltered.

The trip wasn't quite as rosy, though. It turned out that the SAS plane scheduled to fly from Stockholm to Beijing needed maintenance, so the one from Copenhagen would need to stop over and pick up more people. (You can probably read this as the flights being under-booked so they wanted to save on fuel - and I can't really blame them much)

Of course, then our plane malfunctioned with hot air leaking from the left-most engine or some such. Take-off was aborted on the run-way and we taxied back to wait two hours while technicians techniqued at the problem.

We finally set off 2 hours late, and were delayed another hour and a half by the stop-over. However, both my mum and I fell asleep right after takeoff and woke up just in time for breakfast as we were approaching Beijing, so overall the flight wasn't bad.

I'm now going to shower while the porters look for my bag and my mum dresses out of hers which were brought earlier.

Copenhagen

I've now been waiting in Copenhagen for a few hours for the flight from Iceland to arrive. The airport web-site claims that it's landed and I think I can hear them approaching the gate now. My mum will then give me my passport with the required visa, and I can check in to the flight to China.

Ah yes, that's them disembarking now...

Chongqing (the target location)

After their arrival in Beijing, Anna and Logi will travel to Chongqing, the location of the orphanage where they will finally meet Maja Mei Xin. I knew nothing about Chongqing myself, and this is why I am posting the link to the wikipedia page on the city and its province. I was quite surprised to read there that the population of the urban area of Chongqing proper was 9.1 million in 2005!

As my brother told me a few days ago, when Maja Mei Xin arrives in Iceland she will no doubt ask: "Where is everyone?"

Great Firewall of China

I was just looking through the list of blogging sites blocked in the PRC and it seems that blogspot.com is on the list. This could be a problem, but I am hoping that some combination of corporate VPN, holes in The Great Firewall of China and ssh tunnels to http proxies will allow us to access this blog. That's assuming we have internet access at the hotel(s) and don't need to rely on Chinese Internet Cafes.

But if this blog goes silent the moment we take off for China, then I'll have failed to burrow under The Wall and there is no need to panic.

Schedule of Anna and Logi's trip to China

This is the schedule for the trip, in case you feel like following Anna, Logi and Maja Mei Xing during their journey.

Sep. 3 departure from Reykjavík

Sep.4 arrive in Beijing and stay at Marriott hotel.

Sep.5 visit Great Wall and Summer Palace

Sep.6 visit Forbidden City and Tian'an men Square

Sep.7 transfer to Chongqing, Guangzhou and Taiyuan.

Sep.8 meet the babies

Sep.9 do the adoption procedure

Sep. 10 do the notary work and guide assists to buy some baby necessaies.

Sep.11 city tour

Sep.12 city tour and receive the passports

Sep.13 city tour

Sep.14 transfer back to Beijing.

Sep.15 visit Heaven Temple

Sep.16 apply for the visas

Sep.17 departure

Logi's Travel Arrangements

I am back home in Genova after being back home in Reykjavík for 3 weeks. Yes, it's confusing.

The first leg of my journey was delayed by 3 hours while Icelandair found a plane whose stern engine wasn't leakins suspicious fluids whereby I missed the connecting flight in Copenhagen. Not to worry (much) since the whole flight was booked as a single ticket and SAS arranged for a hotel and an onward flight in the morning. The net result was that I got a free hotel in Copenhagen rather than paying for one in Milano.

The reason I'm posting this here is that as I was getting my accommodation sorted out, at the next counter there was a guy who had missed the flight to Beijing in the same way that I'd just missed the one to Milano. The lady was explaining to him that they'd help him find another flight, but he'd have to pay for the service since he'd booked the two legs of his trip as individual tickets. Just as I was going to do as soon as I was back on a reliable Internet connection... In the end, though, with the help of the people at Ferðaskrifstofa Íslands, it seems that I ended up with a single Milano-Copenhagen-Beijing and Beijing-Copenhagen-Milano ticket.

We'll see Wednesday if that was a disaster averted or merely prudence.

First post

I have just set up this blog so that Anna and Logi can use it to post impressions and photos from their trip to China, where they will pick up Maja Mei Xin. Maja Mei Xin will become a new member of our, already rather Babelic, family.

Two photos of Maja Mei Xin are included.