Chinese Name:

We have received the photo which was placed in the newspaper when the Chinese authorities tried to locate Ceinwen's birth family. Usually, the photo is placed in the paper around 3 months after finding an abandoned child. In this photo, however, Ceinwen is under a week old and her photo was in the edition of the newspaper which was published just three weeks after her birth. What a precious keepsake this is!!

After hearing about Ceinwen from BLAS on 1st August, we had to wait until 11th August to get the official documents and our precious photos of Ceinwen. (We knew about our referral ahead of the documents arriving at DFES in London, which was great, but it was a very long wait for the photos!.

From Ceinwen’s medical report at the end of March, she was 57cm long and weighed 5.8kg. She was found outside Nanfeng orphanage on the day she was born (which was determined by her umbilical cord) and went straight to foster care, where she has remained. They don’t know where she is from, but said she lives in a beautiful place and is treated like a princess. The medical report described her as active, lively, risible, responsive and energetic. She likes watching colour animation TV programmes and listening to music. She is a pretty girl with strong and flexible limbs! She is a pretty girl from her photos, and therefore her Welsh name is appropriate.

Ceinwen is pronounced Cane/wen. It means beautiful (Cein) fair/white (wen). Wen in Chinese apparently means colour of the clouds, so we though that her new name would be doubly suitable. We also found out that there were 6 other families that had referrals from the same orphanage as Ceinwen, including my friend Gwen in south Wales! So whilst we were waiting for the official documents and photos to arrive at the DFES we started making contact with each other, and tentatively planning our travels! As soon as our official documents arrived we sent our acceptance letter straight back. We had our letters courier out to China the following week, and we knew we could really start planning our travels.

All seven “Nanfeng” families are going to be staying at the same hotel in Nanchang at the same time, which is going to be great for us and our daughters. Although the girls are of similar ages and from the same orphanage, they are all lucky enough to be in foster care, so they don’t know each other, but at least there is a common link.

We went to Manchester on my birthday to go and get our visas. We stayed overnight as we could only get visas the same day if we were at the Chinese Consulate between 9:00 and 10.30 am., in the morning. We went out for a meal in Manchester’s Chinatown to celebrate my birthday. Gwion had great fun running round the restaurant (which luckily wasn’t very busy) and the staff didn’t mind. They were quite amused by him! They also kindly translated Ceinwen’s Chinese name for us:

Jian means "sword"
Nan means "south"
So Jiannan means "south sword!"

Haven’t bought much for Ceinwen yet – just a few items of clothing. Not too sure what size she’ll be. The update we had from BLAS about her, which was from the end of July when she was 7-months-old, she weighed 7kg, but I’m wondering how accurate that is as I don’t know whether they weigh them fully clothed or not.

The one thing I have done, though, is finish my 100 Good Wishes Quilt.

It’s the first time I’ve ever quilted and I’m really pleased with the results.

From her update she is developing normally. She is able to roll over, sit steadily alone, is quick witted, recognises acquaintances, knows her name and turns when called, gets excited when she sees food (just like Gwion! Hopefully no feeding problems then!), still gets up early 5:30-6:00 am., and goes to bed at 7:00 pm. Loves to be held by adults and plays with her toys!

Now that our ITT’s have arrived (yesterday 8th Sept) we’ve confirmed and paid for our flights and travel, it’s just sorting out the packing! I finish work tomorrow and am taking a year’s adoption leave.

We fly to Beijing on 21 September, arriving on 22nd, and fly straight to Nanchang and meet Ceinwen as soon as we arrive! We spend the next few days in Nanchang completing the adoption and sightseeing and fly back to Beijing on 28th September. We get Ceinwen’s visa from the British Embassy on 29th, and then have lots of sightseeing trips around Beijing before we fly home on 6th October.

We did want to spend a few days in Beijing first, before flying onto Nanchang so we could recover from jet lag, but because we are in China over a major holiday (their National Day is 1st October and all government departments close for a few days), we had to get all the adoption work sorted out before everything closes on 30th September. So we have a small holiday at the end of our trip, with Ceinwen, instead of at the beginning without her.

Well that’s all now until we arrive in Nanchang. I hope you enjoy our trip to Ceinwen.