We’re David and Lois McBeath. We live in Point Pleasant, WV – a small town along the Ohio River on the western side of the state. We have 2 sons. Austin is 15. He’s a sophomore at Pt. Pleasant High School. Darrell is almost 12. He’s in the 6th grade at Roosevelt Elementary.
We actually began our adoption journey more than 10 years ago. I saw an ad in the newspaper about Chinese babies. We called about it, but it just wasn’t even feasible at that time in our life. All these years, it was always there, stuck somewhere in the back of our minds. I don't know why exactly – it just was. The thought never completely went away.
We also talked off and on about having another child. Our house was only 3 bedrooms, and we know the boys could have been in a room together, but we didn't want to do that if we didn't have to. In the spring of 2006, for some reason (I don't recall exactly what) - it came up again. We started thinking and talking - why not? So we started checking into it more. We did a lot of research online. The more we found out, the more we felt a calling, a desire and even a need to do this.
We started the adoption and added onto the house all at the same time. It took about 6 months to get the paperwork together. Then about another month after we sent it to China for them to translate it and 'log us in' (11/6/06). That's when we started to officially wait.
We finally got "THE CALL" on 7/13/08. It was a Sunday afternoon! After 2 ½ years, we are finally going to get our baby!
Leila Ann McBeath, formally known as Shun Xi Yi, was born on Oct 29, 2007. She had a cleft lip and cleft palate. The lip has been repaired, but not the palate. (We'll have to do that when we get her home.) She's in the Children's Welfare Institute of Shunde District of Foshan City, which is located in the Guangdong Province, in the southern part of China.
Shunde, the hometown of flowers, is one of four cities under the jurisdiction of Foshan City. Covering an area of 806 sq meters and with a population of 1.05 million, Shunde City is situated in the middle of the fertile Pearl River Delta, between Guangzhou and Hong Kong. It was set up as a county in the 3rd year (1452 AD) of the Jintai reign of the Ming Dynasy (1368-1644), and conferred with the administrative status of a city in 1992 by the State Council.
Foshan City is also where the actor Bruce Lee was from.
This will probably be my final post from China.
We went to the US consulate today to pick up Leila's visa. We took an oath swearing that all the information we had submitted was accurate and true. That was it! Everything about this trip hinged on when we could get our consulate appt. Maggie and Rosa turned all of our paperwork in yesterday. I know they did all of the behind the scene running part of that for us. But all we had to do, was show up, let them see that all of our passports matched our faces, take the oath and leave.
We ate at the Chinese restaurant here in the hotel for our last meal here with some of our friends. Now they had some strange things on the menu - scorpion soup, eel, lots of feet, shark fin, bean curd, snow frog, sea cucumber, abalone....
I tried some of the snow frog w/ crab. I thought it was pretty good. I couldn't eat a lot of it, but a little was okay. I'm just not sure what the little round crunchy things were in it.
We're leaving the hotel tomorrow morning at 7 AM. We fly to Beijing, then to Chicago, then finally to Charleston. We're due to arrive there at 8:07 PM. I figure we'll have about 26-27 hrs total travel time.
Wish us luck and pray for us on that.
It's been really sad saying goodbye to some of our new friends tonight. We're happy to be coming home, but it's a bittersweet joy to be leaving China too.
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