Our Last Night in Guangzhou

(Originally posted 1-15-2004)

The trip is winding down ... this was our last night in Guangzhou. But first I'll tell you about our day.

Breakfast buffet in the White Swan dining room and then off to the races. We spent our morning checking out all of the wonderful things that we could buy to bring home and show Abby more about her homeland. The quality of the paintings and hand crafted items here is so incredible, and for prices that are so unbelieveably low. How do they make a living?

This afternoon we met as a group at the famous White Swan "red couch" for the traditional adoption group photos of the girls and families. We had the 4 younger girls on the couch for some squirming and fussing, but Carly (almost 3) would not come near them! Can you blame her? She did get into the group pic, which I love.

Then after pics we headed to the American Consulate with only passports in hand (no cameras or bags, backpacks, etc allowed) and stood in a room of 70+ people and babies. This was the 3rd ceremony for the day, it is a very busy week at the Consulate with it being closed for a few days now for ML King bday and then for Chinese New Year. A representative of the Consulate came out and asked all the prents to raise their right hand and affirm that the information contained in all of our documents was true to the best of our knowledge. We answered yes as a large group and that was it ... for all the red tape and forms to fill out and fees to pay,
that was that! A very important step but very non-ceremonious.

We walked back to the hotel and then met up a short while later for a group dinner. Echo took us to a nearby traditional Chinese restaurant, and the food was wonderful. There were 11 of us (plus the 5 girls) and the entire bill for food, drinks and tip was $80 US total. Good food and good prices, we are going to miss that when we return to the States!

I will post more details of our journey homeward tomorrow ... we will be here in Guangzhou until mid-afternoon, then head to Hong Kong by train. We arrive home on Northwest Airlines at 5pm on Sat Jan 17 for anyone close enough to Peoria who would like to join our small welcoming committee ... more tomorrow from Guangzhou!