Journey with Julia

The White Swan at last!

Well, we are finally in Guangzhou, due to an error somewhere along the way our itinerary had us coming here yesterday afternoon, however we couldn't get the babies passports until 5:30 last night so we had another night in Changsha and left there early this morning. Julia did great on her first plane ride, of course that one was barely an hour long, I feel so bad for whoever sits near us on the Hong Kong to Chicago flight on Friday. LOL. Not that she screamed (cried for just a minute on the descent but she was very tired and fighting sleep too) but she plays hard! Her favorite games seem to be bouncing, waving and hitting Mama....not meanly hitting it's play to her and mostly when she's excited...we're working on it. lol.

Yesterday in Changsha we went to the Museum, fascinating stuff. I loved it! We saw the 2001 year old woman, it's truly amazing how her body was mummified and perserved. Nothing at all like an Eygyptian Mummy. I'll have to add those photos at another time (if any of them even came out) not sure what Ray did with the other memory card.

I do have a few pics of our first day in Guangzhou to post though, as you can see I wasn't kidding Julia was exhausted and I walked through most of the airport carrying her while she slept, naturally she sleeps after the plane lands. I finally had to just lay her across the top of the luggage. LOL. it worked for a little while.

It's very beautiful here, I don't think the pictures will do it justice but it should at least give you an idea. The White Swan is actually located on Shaiman Island along the Pearl River. If you step into our hallway there is a good view of the river unfortunately for us our room gives us a view of the street, which actually isn't that bad either, in some places you can barely see the street for the trees. We passed a nice park on our way to the medical exam and it feels much safer crossing the streets here as compared to Beijing and Changsha.

Guangzhou reminds us a lot of Charleston, only even more shopping! First thing we purchased was a stroller in one of the hotel shops! Just a small one, but no more lugging through airports for us! She would perfer being carried but seems okay once we get moving. We bought Julia some silk dresses tonight after dinner. It's cooler to go out in the evening of course and these shops out here in front of the hotel are tailor made for adopting parents. We were a minority in Changsha we saw one or two other small groups there adopting, here it seems everyone is pushing a stroller. As is most of our group now. 3 of us purchased strollers after arriving here today. Carrying is fine for short distances, but they wanted us to take a 15 minute walk to the medical exam (which Julia sailed through by the way! as a matter of fact I think she's the only one who didn't cry at all, most of the babies seemed upset by the ear nose and throat exam) so it was then that we became the stroller brigade. We also realized how far it is to gates and what not at the different airports and frankly my back just couldn't take anymore. She's getting better about letting Daddy carry her but since he has to carry the baggage as well.....you get the idea.

There are so many souveniers everywhere here, it's hard to know what to buy for some of you and for Julia to have as she gets older as well. We found some silk dresses for under $5 each and of course some squeaky shoes to match for under $4. We're going to try taking one of her pictures back tomorrow to have a marble etching done if we still have time. They do beautiful work here! Since tomorrow is a free day it's going to be spent doing just a little bit more shopping, taking some things out to the laundry, finding some lunch, and mostly doing a lot of relaxing and hopefully even a little swimming. We'll see how that goes, Julia is still afraid of the water but each bath gets a little less stressful. She seems to be the only one with this issue so I can't help but wonder why. We'll likely never know...

I babysat this afternoon while our one mom traveling alone went to do the paperwork, the rest of us just got to send one person. So Ray went for us, (thank you Honey!) both girls did very well together, at least for the first hour they took turns crying instead of doing it together, that is until Ray came back without her Mom (they left together) and her and Julia both woke up at the same time. Ray tried to take Julia so I could comfort Hannah but she was having none of that, so I ended up with both of them, Julia of course calmed as soon as she was in my lap and then proceeded to help me pat Hannah's back to comfort her. It was very sweet! Guess she doesn't mind sharing as long she makes it clear that she belongs there too.

One final note! We have a BONUS here at the White Swan I can finally view the blog!!! It was so nice to see everyone's comments at last! We miss all of you too and while we have definitely been having a wonderful time here we can't wait to be home. Almost there, we will have the oath taking at the embassey on Thursday afternoon and be headed home on Friday morning. Please say lots of prayers for the trip.