Seeing Guangzhou

Our hotel, The White Swan

We found a great Italian Restaurant on the island. Charlotte enjoys pasta! Yay!

The families in our group who adopted from Guangdong Province in the lobby of the White Swan. We finish our adoption process tomorrow!

Charlotte was the youngest child in our group. What a pretty group of kids!! ;-)

Getting tickles from Daddy.

Having fun while walking around the Guangzhou Zoo.

At the zoo here you can go down into the monkey pit and feed the animals. This monkey jumped up onto his head. We decided to pass on the fleas. Ha! Ha!

This was a beautiful park in Guangzhou with walking paths that surrounded a large lake. Lots of adults were gathered in different areas dancing, singing karaoke, exercising, playing games, doing Tai Che (sp?) etc. We saw this in every public area. The Chinese are not embarrassed to do things in front of others/in public. We don't do this as a society back in the US. It's kind of cool!

There were lots of these types of exercise machines in the parks. This small park on Shamian Island even had a running track around it. Adults and children were always out using them. Charlotte wants to give this machine a try!

This was another beautiful park we visited with our group.

That's one large sculpture!

Charlotte loved the drums!

Our guide told us that this is one of the oldest dragons in Guangzhou dating back to the Ming Dynasty (about 600 years ago).

We visited "Seven Goat Hill". We kept thinking that our guide was saying "Seven Gold Hill" and we were surprised when we climbed to the top of the hill and saw this. :-) Evidently, Guangzhou is called "The Seven Goat City" in China. I think there is some kind of legend that gods came down and gave rice to the human race and somehow goats are intertwined in the story.

Hanging out at our hotel room. Like all babies, Charlotte loves the remote control!

What a cutie!!

This day we were visiting a traditional Chinese home. This one was built during the 1920's by a wealthy family. Most of these homes were torn down during the cultural revolution so this one that survived is a museum now.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday were Wednesday were all sightseeing or "free" days for us. During this time paperwork was processed and then we go to the American Consulate on Thursday the 12th (tomorrow) in order to finish everything up. We can hardly wait to get home and settle back in with Charlotte and see Camden, Brady and Amelia! :-) It was fun to see the city while we were there.

Visiting Charlotte's Orphanage

Look at those comfy Chinese child car safety seats!! We wonder how she's going to like being strapped in when we get home.

A little blurry because we were driving, but this shows the rural mountainous area that Charlotte came from. It was a very pretty area.

Charlotte immediately began running around and playing with her old buddies.

This was Charlotte's crib. She was in a room with three other little girls.

We were visiting during lunch time so Charlotte got one last meal. She and this little girl stayed together the whole time we were there. They had been roommates since arriving.

Charlotte dancing in the bouncy seat. She had a fun day!

Today we hired a driver to take us from Guangzhou to the city where Charlotte was born, about three hours drive away. It absolutely poured (a repeat of yesterday but worse), and we saw several accidents, but thankfully, we arrived safely. Charlotte looked a little puzzled as we drove up to the orphanage building, but as soon as she saw her old playmates she got so excited. We could see her true personality come out which was very fun. She ran from one child to the next and was smiling from ear to ear. We could tell that she was the Alpha Dog (we had been told she was the leader of the group) and some of the kids looked like they were thinking, "Look she's back, watch out!!" Ha! Ha! We had a lovely time visiting and it was so good to meet Charlotte's orphanage director, nanny and other ladies who work there. We are so thankful that they took such good loving care of her. God was blessing us even before we knew about our daughter Charlotte. We thought she might be upset about leaving, but she did really well and was fine to come away with us.

Six Banyan Tree Temple

Like all other 14 month old's Charlotte loves to explore and dig through things. She has had lots of fun with the suitcase.

This pagoda was at the Six Banyan Tree Temple.

You could throw money into this big pot for good luck.

People burn a lot of incense at the temples we have visited so far. The air is thick with smoke.

This temple has three huge Buddhas that are gold with priests serving in front of them and people bowing down. It was a good reminder to us that there are still million of people who serve gods made out of stone and wood and metal. It is easy for us to forget this and drives home the second commandment of the One True Living God.

In this photo you can see the sky had just begun getting dark. It felt like night in the middle of the day.

This man made beautiful paintings using only his hands as tools. We bought four paintings that represent the four seasons, so we've found our souvenir to bring home.

This is actual a silk embroidery but it looks like and oil painting. There was a room full of such masterpieces.

We went to a noodle house for lunch. In this picture you can see the man pulling one continuous long noodle as he throws it into the pot of hot water to cook.

This man was cutting noodles off of a big lump of dough and it would go flying and land in the pot of hot water to cook. Very cool to watch and very tasty too! :-)

We have lots of free time as we wait for our paperwork to get processed. We will be doing sightseeing and shopping trips with our guides. On Wednesday we went to the passport office to order Charlotte's Chinese passport that we'll use to go home. Today we visited the Six Banyan Temple and the Chan Family Temple/Museum. The Chan family were wealthy rulers in this area and they established their own complex to train their boys for official office. It was turned into an arts and crafts museum during the cultural revolution. While we were at this museum the sky got incredibly dark. It was the middle of the day but it looked like the night. A few people in our group said that it looked like tornado weather. Then it started to rain and, boy, did it pour!

Civil Affairs Bureau for "Official Adoption Day"

Charlotte downing her morning bottle.

Hanging out in the playroom of the Civil Affairs Office while we waited for our interview.

We stopped at a local shop that was like WalMart. We thought this was an interesting snack! Chicken's feet!! There were other parts of things too that we didn't recognize.

The Starbuck's on Shamian Island was the nicest one we've ever been in and offered a taste of home much to Charles' delight. :-)

Playing at a park a few blocks away from our hotel.

A little boy came over to say "Hi!" to Charlotte.

We spend a lot of time walking around during our free time. It's a beautiful neighborhood.

All tired out!

I've never seen someone down liquid as quickly as Charlotte did last night and this morning when she had her bottle. She can drink 9 oz. without stopping once! We had to go back to the Civil Affairs office today to meet with an official and the notary in order to finish the Provincial paperwork. First a lady asked us a few questions: "Are you happy with your child?", "Can you tell me what her Chinese name is?", "Do you know which city she comes from?", "Do you want to adopt her?". It was a very quick and easy interview. Then we waited in a playroom forever for a man who reminded me of the annoying Emperor's official in the Disney movie "Mulan" (and I'm being kind). When we finally entered his office he "stepped out" for a few minutes and ignored us completely as he passed us on the way out. Everyone else in our group was done and had been waiting for us in the bus for a while by the time we finished. Now our adoption paperwork with China is complete and we wait until next Tuesday when everything is ready to pick-up and take to the American Consulate. Today, March 3rd, will be Charlotte's official adoption day.

GOTCHA Day!!

Charlotte loves her Cheerios!

Happy Dad, Mom and Charlotte during our first meeting!

Charlotte seemed to like the things we brought for her to play with.

The ladies from the orphanage just popped into the room handed her to Mom and then left quickly! Charlotte did such a great job and never cried once.

We woke up this morning and Charles said, "Can you believe that we're going to get Charlotte today?". It's been such a long process, 21 months total, and 5 since we reviewed her file and requested her for adoption. We met up with our group at 2:00pm and drove to the Civil Affairs Bureau about a 15 minutes drive from our hotel. By the way, our guides here are Kelly and Judy, sisters who will help us over the course of our stay. Everyone was so excited! We took the elevator to the 8th floor and when we walked out people were standing in a big room that had smaller private rooms off of it. Just as we walked in, a Chinese lady was handing a small girl to her family. The mom was crying and had her arms outstretched. It was an emotional scene to enter upon. There were people and children everywhere. We were whisked into a smaller side room and our guide Judy explained that we needed to get our orphanage donation and provincial paperwork fees ready. I hadn't even had a chance to take off my coat when all of the sudden Charles said, "There's Charlotte!". I turned around and some ladies were bringing her in. She let me take her and she never cried once the whole day. She was wearing the little read outfit that we had sent her in December for her birthday. It had the name "Charlotte" embroidered across the bottom of the shirt. It was so sudden I didn't have a chance to cry. We got some toys and books out and sat down to look at each other. Dad had a turn holding her and she snacked on Cheerios, but she couldn't seem to work out how to use the sippy cup. After we took care of the paperwork we headed back to the hotel. She ate great at dinner time. We went to a restaurant that was close by and had chicken congee (a watery rice porridge). Charlotte gobbled it up and slept soundly!

We arrive in Guangzhou

Look at all that cash!! It's a lot less than it looks like but made us feel like we'd won the lottery. Ha! Ha!

The lobby of the White Swan Hotel has a waterfall in it. It was a very nice hotel and close to most of the things we needed during our two week stay.

The view from our window overlooking Guangzhou.

We got up at 3:15am this morning so we could have our bags outside our door by 4:00am. We had an early morning flight to Guangzhou, Guangdong Province where we will meet Charlotte tomorrow. Our flight was only 3 hours which was nice and the entertainment system worked!! Yahoo! We flew with two other families who were also with Great Wall China Adoption and getting their children in Guangdong Province. Our hotel, The White Swan, is famous with the adoption crowd as there is a red couch that everyone takes a photo on when they get their children. It's located on Shamian Island...which is really connected to the main land on one side. It sticks out like a finger with one side only separated from the mainland by a large canal. The Pearl River which is quite large is on its other side. You can walk around the entire island in about 15 to 20 minutes. It was really beautiful with lush landscapes and parks, lots of bronze statues, cute restaurants (Subway and Starbucks) and shops catering to westerners and lots of old western architecture (it was the location of many western embassies during the Opium War). We had to convert some money into Yuan to pay our orphanage and Chinese government fees tomorrow and we had a huge stack!! The conversion rate is about $14 US to $100 Chinese Yuan. We are so excited to finally meet Charlotte tomorrow.