Wednesday

Today we had our appointment at the Consulate and I have to say I was pretty surprised at how well it went. For some reason I thought we would be there for awhile and the people would be sort of uptight. Not at all. We were all in and out in about an hour and everyone could not have been nicer. We all took our oath for our children, they reviewed our paperwork and said our visas would be ready tomorrow afternoon. Once we receive them we will be leaving for Hong Kong and meeting an old friend of ours at our hotel there. It will be nice to see Tim as we have not seen him in a few years. He used to work with me but now works and lives in Hong Kong.

The rest of the day we walked through some shops near the hotel and hung out in our room playing with Tia. She loves to play on the floor or bed with us. It is amazing how much she has grown in only a week and a half.

We had dinner with John, Stacy, Grace and Conrad. We went to Sabah which we have gotten take-out from several times. It serves Malaysian cuisine which was very good. We decided to eat there instead of take it back to the hotel. It was quite nice.

This may be the last post until we get home. Thanks for following our journey and I will post when we get home!

Tuesday

Today we went to the Guangzhou Zoo. We had a very nice day there. The three families that are here together from our agency figured out the subway and we headed to the zoo! I have to say I was pretty nervous to begin with but the only thing we did wrong was on the way back we came up the "B" side which put us across the highway from the hotel. We went back down and then came up the "A" side which put us right in front of our hotel. It was very nice to spend the day with our group and go at our own pace. Tia slept through the beginning but woke up just in time to see the pandas. She enjoyed watching everyone and everything. She is so curious about everything.

We came back to the hotel hoping Tia would take a nap but that lasted about five minutes. She of course fell asleep about a half hour before we were supposed to go to dinner. Surprisingly she woke up happy when I picked her up to put her in the stroller. I couldn't have her sleep too late or she would not go to sleep tonight. We have our consulate appointment first thing in the morning so we have to be up, showered, fed, dressed and ready to go by 7:45 AM. She had to go to bed on time for that to happen!

Monday

Today Tia was feeling much better. I think she was just a little overtired and needed a day of rest with just her Mom and Dad.

We went to the Temple of Six Banyan Trees. It was wonderful. The pictures do not begin to capture the beauty and peacefulness there. It is in the heart of the city of Guangzhou, but once inside the gates there is a peacefulness that settles in. I would have loved to stay longer but it was so hot and humid. Plus Tia had a leaky diaper on the bus over and I had pee pee on my pants. Not fun on a hot and humid day. We got off the bus and I was putting Tia in the stroller and I look up at the bus driver and he is looking at us and chuckling. I think he is looking at Tia until I look at him again and he points to my pants. Then I realized two things. One, I have pee pee on my pants, and two, he is laughing at me. At that point I just started laughing too.

Once back at the hotel Tia took a nice nap for about two hours. After she got up we were playing on the couch with her Dad when Tia got a little quite (yes, she found her voice!). All of a sudden we smell something and I look down and guess what is leaking out of her diaper? Yup, but that is not all it did. She had an explosion! We stripped her down and put her in the tub. All I could do was laugh again. I got laughing so hard I was crying. We have definitely made it to parenthood! No pictures of that though!