Final process

Wow! What a day!! We flew from Nanjing to Guangzhou last night and arrived at our hotel room at about 10:30 pm. The most noticable difference here is the weather. It is warm and humid. We can keep are jackets & long sleeves packed for the remainder of our trip:).

We got to meet up with our original group at breakfast this morning. Four of us have boys and three of us have girls. They are all completely adorable! This is the best hotel so far - a 5-star. It is 45 stories tall - breakfast is on the top floor. It is a revolving restaurant and reminds me a bit of the Space Needle in Seattle. Guangzhou is much more Americanized, and this is good because we are all getting a bit homesick. We actually broke down this afternoon and ate at Pizza Hut next to the hotel - it was fantastic!

We saw a bizarre and scary thing at the airport last night. We were going through security, and we heard this lady screaming at the airport security policemen. They were over in a little room with the door open. We all kind of looking at Lily wanting to know if everything was OK. She just smiled and said, "It's alright, they're just talking." Well, all the sudden a policeman practically throws this lady inside the room, the door slams, and it sounded like they were beating her! All the sudden, the people in line started yelling at the closed door. I thought there was going to be a riot, and I realized for sure that we were not in America! We were able to pass through quickly, but I wonder what happened to that lady.

We took the bus to an island where there is TONS of shopping. It is also where the medical building is where the kids had to have their physicals before they can get their US Visas. It was chaotic. There were many adoptions groups there. The kiddos had to go to 3 stations, the ENT, the weight & height, and the external examination. It was painless although many kids screamed just because they were scared. Jonathan did great. We are meeting our guide, Rosa in the upstairs conference room in about 1/2 hour to complete about 2 hours of paperwork which will allow us to get Jonathan's US Visa. Rosa goes to the consulate and turns it all in on Monday, and we all go back on Tuesday to complete our final process of adoption - the swearing-in ceremony. Then we pick up the visas and fly out of here on Wednesday!

At this point, we are all ready to get back the great US of A! It will be good to get our kiddos on a regular schedule. I can't begin to tell you how good natures Jonathan is! He's feeling more comfortable with us now and even blessed us with a couple 2-year old temper tantrums :). He is a busy guy, though, and has worn me out. He bonded quickly to me, and is now finally warming up to Scott. The adoption agency warned us that the babies will attach to one parent more than the other at first and it's usually the Mom because they have very little interaction with males in the orphanage. There is one family in our group whose little girl has attached to the Dad, and she won't even let Mom touch her. I feel so bad for that Mom, because that would break my heart. Jonathan lets me hold him, hug him, and kiss him to my heart's content!

Something hilarious happened yesterday. We had to check out of the Nanjing hotel at 2:00, and we weren't leaving for the airport until 4:30. Lily took us to a history museum of Nanjing. CJ (the other adopted boy from Nanjing) threw a complete coniption fit about something, and Marcie (his Mom) decided to take him out of the museum to get some fresh air. He was in a full-out tantrum (CJ is 3 and a half) when Marcie told me later a Chinese lady came up to him, said a few words, and CJ stopped crying immediatly and straightned up. Marcie was in shock. We asked Lily what the lady might have said to him. Lily giggled and told us she probably told CJ that the police would come for him if he didn't stop crying! I guess these kids are scared to death of what the police will do to them - the parents use the threat of them coming to keep the kids in line!

Another funny thing happened. We were waiting for our plane, and we were all very hungary. There was a restauring nearby in the airport, so sat down to order something. Marcie ordered some noodles for CJ, I ordered some noodles for Jonathan and a club sandwich for myself. Well, they brought out these HUGE bowls of noodles with a fried egg floating on top and covered our table with all sorts of food I've never seen before. There were these things that looked like meatballs, but some were green and some were beige. There was salted duck, some green stuff, and the club sandwich was a chinese kind. I'm not sure what was in it, but I didn't recognize a thing! We called Scott and Marcie's father-in-law over and started eating it all. It was delicious, but I have no idea what it was. There was way too much for all of us to eat.

I like Guangzhou alot better than Nanjing. People glared at us alot there. I don't care what Lily says, they were not happy to see us adopting their little ones. It is much different here in Guangzhou. One thing all Chinese people do is dress their little kids way too warm! They have layer upon layer of clothing on. In Nanjing, when we went outside one day, I had Jonathan all dressed warm. I was holding him, and a little bit of his leg was showing between the end of his jeans and the top of his socks. A man came up to me, got angry, and pointed at Jonathan's leg. Then when we went to the museum yesterday afternoon, we had an old man scream at us and bang his cane on the ground because he didn't think the kids were dressed warm enough (they didn't have snow pants on) - it was 45 degrees outside! I thought he was going to cane us!!!

I have a feeling these next few days will fly by. I'm so excited to get home. We miss our girls terribly. You would not believe all the Christmas decorations and Santa Claus pictures they have set up everywhere. All the attendents and waitresses are wearing santa hats. They love the idea of gift giving - and red is a very 'lucky' color - they love Santa. They don't understand that it's 'politically incorrect' in America to say Merry Christmas. I haven't seen one 'happy holidays' sign yet! Praise God!!

Well, I've go to sign off now. I'll write again on Tuesday after our swearing-in ceremonly.

Love to all,

Julie