Sorry this is a day late. We were exhausted Wednesday night and were all in bed by 8:30 p.m. I’ll try to recap.
We have settled in nicely in Guangzhou. All adoptive parents must pass through here as this is where the American Consulate is located. It is a much different city. It is very tropical, full of neon lights everywhere, and they are used to seeing adoptive parents so we don’t get surrounded as much or get the stares. It is tradition that adoptive families stay at the very beautiful White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island, so the island caters to adoptive parents. We are traveling during the trade fair, so we are located about 15 minutes away at the very luxurious Dong Fang Hotel. It is HUGE! The trade fair is actually attached to our hotel, and the first floor is full of vendors selling their wares to the Targets, Wal-Marts, Spiegel, you name it. If only I had a “Buyer” badge! We tried to buy the cutest piggy bank. We asked the price and they said 35 cents. We’re like, okay, we’ll take it. Well, it’s wholesale and they were thinking we were going to order like 50,000 of them or something. It was so funny trying to buy this darn bank. Needless to say, we didn’t get it.
Wednesday started by meeting in the lobby at 9:00 a.m. to go to Shamian Island to have the babies’ visa photos taken, and then on to the medical exam, which consists of three stations, ENT, weight/height, and a “medical” exam. AnLi did great, no crying! They said she weighed 19.5 pounds. When they took her temp they said “okay, normal”, but then felt her head and gave us a look. Wendy, our coordinator, talked to the doctor for us, and he told us to keep her on the Motrin/Tylenol rotation until we get home.
We then loaded up and went to the pearl market, which is a mall six stories tall with every type of bead/stone imaginable. We got some Hubei turquoise and had a really nice pearl necklace strung for AnLi to give her for her wedding. As they were knotting the necklace, AnLi spiked another fever, so Brian and I took a cab home and put her to bed.
We’re anxious to get home and have some type of normalcy. It’s hard to keep the babies on any type of schedule when we’re being bussed here and bussed there every day, all day. We’ve gotten really good at boiling water and doing our dishes in the hotel. The luxury of a dishwasher!
