November 2002

The Melançon Family

Samuel and Claudie Melançon travelled with their parents, Anne and Benoit, in November to meet their new sister Amelia. We asked Samuel if he would write a report. He also convinced his sister to share in the project. And so, the November trip from the eyes of Claudie and Samuel ….

Claudie

My name is Claudie and I am 8 years old. I just came back from China with my brother Samuel and my parents to meet our little sister Amelia. I will tell you some facts about my adventure to China, then my brother will tell you some of his adventures.

Amelia is very intelligent and a very nice sister. She sleeps through the night. She changed a lot since we first meet her. When the 8 nannies from the orphanage arrived in the room, I recognized her right away from the pictures we had received in Timmins. For the first 10 minutes she did not cry, then she started to cry and we decided to go up to our room to give her a warm bath. That’s how we were introduced to each other.

In the following days we did a lot of walking in Nanchang. Because of my fair skin, long brown hair and blue eyes, everybody on the street called me beautiful. While I was trying on pants in a boutique everybody would come to see me and tried to dress me up. There were no dressing rooms and I had to undress behind the cash counter. Many people were asking me if I was Canadian. A waitress in a restaurant even asked me for my autograph. I was very shy from all that attention. My dad took a picture of the restaurant staff and me since they were asking him to do so.

While I was in Beijing, in the shopping market across from the State Guest Hotel, I needed to go to the washroom. It took us about 30 minutes to find the washroom since we did not speak Chinese. Finally a teenage girl showed us the way to the closest washroom, which was 4 levels below. The stalls in the washroom had no doors and there were no seat on the toilet and no toilet paper available.

Samuel

My name is Samuel and I am 10 years old therefore I am the big brother. I really enjoyed our adoption trip to China because it was out of the ordinary.

My sister is really calm and happy with us. We will take good care of her since we love her so much. She is a very happy camper and I like to make her laugh and during the trip every family were asking me to make their child laugh when it was time for pictures.

It was outstanding to see the number of people in China. I could not imagine so many people at the same place. The great wall was crowded with people. The stone steps of the stairs were all carved by the pedestrian traffic of all those years, but we had a great view from up there. We could see for miles. Its main purposes during wars were to spot enemies and to communicate between the beacon towers by smoke signals when enemies were getting closer.

At our every step there was always something new to be discovered. Yulin brought my sister, my father and myself to the fish market at the indoor market in Beijing. It was pretty cool to see all those fish and snakes. We saw soft shell turtles that my sister tried to touch. Yulin stopped her just in time since she told us that Claudie could have lost her finger. We also saw sharks, crabs, lobster, shrimps and many fish that we had never seen before. We even saw eels, which we had the chance to taste at the following dinner.

I really enjoyed my stay in China. I believe that I will go back some day when my sister Amelia will be older to show her the country that she is from.

Anne and Benoit

This life experience has been wonderful for us. Not only did we come back home with a much desired child which is in good health and adapting well to our family, but also to have shared such an amazing adventure with Claudie and Samuel. China is much different than anything we could expect in North America.

Thank you Yulin for sharing with us the rich culture of China and making the adoption process as smooth as possible.