We are home!

It had been a very long day, but we are finally home! Our flights were all on time, our luggage did not get lost and Delilah was a great traveler. Poor baby is totally exhausted (as are we!) and she fell asleep in her new crib without even noticing that she was in a new place. We shall see how long she sleeps... hoping for most of the night. Forrest and I have been awake since 5 am China time on Saturday morning. As I type this it is nearly 1 pm in China on Sunday. So we have been awake for about 30 hours! No wonder I feel like I can barely type this..

So all is well with our family. The boys were very happy to meet their new sister and we were SO happy to see our boys! On to the next adventure.... Forrest and Tracy

Our last post from China!

Hooray! We are going home! We had a wonderful time here and feel very privledged to be bringing Delilah home with us, but we are ready to be back home with our boys! Tyler, Luke, Weston and Drew-We miss you so much and can hardly wait to see you on Saturday. :)

We had a nice day with our guide Kelly. She took us on a tour of Bai Yun Montain which is also known as "White Cloud Mountain". We rode an electric tram up part of the way and then walked up a little more before turning around and heading back down. It was not as hot as it has been but it was warm enough to keep us from going all the way up to the top. After the mountain, Kelly took us to the older part of town to see some of the shops.

When we got back to the hotel, Forrest and I went out to find some lunch. In Changsha we ate alot of room service because the prices were REALLY low and the food was really good. Here the room service and hotel resturants are a little out of our price range so we have been eating out alot. Forrest is still good with the Chinese food. I have felt like the need to have anything "American" this week. Finding places to eat is the challenge. We have been eating alot at "Lucy's" which has both Chinese and Western foods. The trick is finding Western foods that really are like home. Everything they try to make "American" is just a little different...not always in a good way.. Today we went to a resturant that had a menu with both Chinese and American foods. Forrest had his usual spicy beef something or other and I asked for a "tuna sandwich". Well I THINK there was some tuna in it somewhere. It was mostly onions, pickles and thousand island dressing. Even Delilah (who eats anything and EVERYTHING) wouldn't eat it without crying. :( I ate the french fries and then remembered that there were milkshakes on the menu. I ordered a mint milkshake and the waitress (who was new to English) didn't understand. That should have been my indicator.. The milkshake was not like what we have at home-it was milk with mint flavor and floating ice cubes. It was then that we remembered that milk is on the list of things to avoid, along with the ice so we didn't drink it--chalk it up to another experience in China. :)

We have a 5 am (China time) wake up call on Saturday morning, which is actually 8 pm Friday night for those of you in San Diego. While you are sleeping we will be flying and getting closer and closer to home. Our next post will be from home! Forrest, Tracy and Delilah

Outdoor Markets and Children exercising

Since our group has all gone home, Forrest and I have alot of free time. We went for another walk today and found a local school with all the children exercising to music. There were at leat 5oo children-all dressed alike-all dancing with the exact same choreography. There were "teachers" walking along the rows making sure no one was getting out of line. Apparently exercise is very serious because a few of the kids were getting a little to silly with their movements and they were quickly reprimanded. :) There were so many kids that I had to take photos in sections of the crowd. I could not fit them all in one frame.

The next photos are from yesterday when Forrest and Delilah went to the outdoor herbal and pet markets. No we did not buy anything! The first picture is of all the different turtles for sale as pets. We have seen turtles sold as food but these were definitely for pets. Happy to hear that. :)

This photo is just one variety of puppy that was for sale. There were about 100 different puppies there for sale. These are priced at 100 Yuan which is about $15 American dollars.

This photo is from the herbal market. Apparently live scorpions are good for your health. You paid for them and then the woman would select the right amount for you using chopsticks.

These are dried sea horses. Forrest said they had HUGE containers of them everywhere. Not sure what you do with them though..

Later this afternoon we are going to the U.S consulate for what should be our final appointment. We are taking an "oath" and picking up Delilah's Visa. I think tomorrow is another free day and then we come home on Saturday! We will report more tomorrow... Tracy

Some extra pictures-including the SPLIT PANTS!

I was a little under the weather today so I don't have a whole lot to report about the day, but since I never have enough room to post all the pictures I want to each day I thought I would catch up a little with some that I wanted to share.

The first two photos are from an old historic house that we visited. The statue was beautiful all in gold and "jewels". The Koi were in a pond in the same courtyard.

The next picture is Delilah in her favorite thing-the old beat up stroller that we have on loan. She loves being in it and I don't know what we are going to do without it at the airport on the way home..

The next photo is one I HAD to take to show the famous split pants! Look carefully and you can see that the little one is not wearing a diaper. The pants are split so they can go whenever they need to, wherever they are!

And the final photo is of a product that was for sale in the infant dept of Walmart. It is a mini swimming pool for babies! The babies heads are the only part above water held up in the floating ring and they just float alone in the trashcan sized pool. Amazing what China thinks is safe!

More on the herbal market and pet market tomorrow.. Forrest took some photos while he an Miss D were there, while I recovered from being sick.. AGAIN! Tracy

Red couch photos!

It is tradition when adopting from China and staying at the White Swan Hotel, to take photos on the "red couch". Today was our day. We dressed Delilah in a traditional Chinese outfit and lined her up with the other children. Not everyone was happy to be on that couch, but Delilah took it all in stride. :) We also took a photo of the families together in front of the waterfall. It is a really beautiful location for photos.

Later in the day we went to the Pearl Market which is basically a 6 story mall filled with small pearl (and other jewelry) shops. Our guide Kelly took us to one that she knew was reputable and we were able to select pearls based on size, color and quality. I had never shopped for pearls before but I knew I wanted to get something for Delilah to save for when she is older. We selected 2 strands and watched as they hand knotted them into a necklace and bracelet for her. The store had big bags of pearls everywhere! I have never seen anything like it!

Miss Delilah LOVES being in a stroller so we try to walk as much as possible and we finished our day with a walk around all the shops. The shop keepers are all very friendly and REALLY good at talking you into buying things. Some even use their pets to get your attention. We walked by the tiniest most adorable puppy and we stopped to take a picture of it. The owner held him up and smiled for us, but then invited us into the "dog's shop". How could we say no?

Tomorrow we are going on a group excursion to a market that will have herbal medicines and pets.. That is too interesting a combo to pass up! :) Tracy

White Swan Hotel and another visit to a "Walmart".

Well we have been to Walmart, but today we ventured to Carrefour which is pretty much the same.. but is was a chance to get out and see the interesting Chinese products so we were up for the trip. Our group first visited the Chen Family Temple which was another beautiful location with lots of trees and intricate details on the buildings. We then got back on the bus and headed to carrefour. We found a couple unique things and also had to buy some diapers. I was so impressed with myself for finding them right away.... only to realize later that we bought "pull ups" by mistake. :( Delilah has a friend here that was adopted on the same day. He is 7 yrs old and he loves to share his Chinese snacks with her, so now she is totally hooked on these tiny vanilla pancake cookies. Luckily we found 2 bags of them today! We will be bringing them home as well as roasted green peas, which are better than they sound! We had some on the plane the other day.. it is the Chinese version of honey roasted peanuts I guess. :) We took a few pictures of the water fall in the hotel lobby today.. We wanted you all to see how beautiful it is.

The medical exam went well. I would call the process organized chaos. All the families wait in one room to complete 3 stations. One was a general overall physical exam, one was an Ear Nose and Throat exam and the last was weight and height. Delilah weighs 20.4 lbs and is 29.5 inches tall. She was very quiet and easy to examine but she was also silent and seemed to not be able to do anything we know she can do... like hear. We have found that when we are alone with her she is a crazy, rolling, laughing wild girl, but the minute someone knew is watching her she stops everything and becomes a ragdoll that tries to hide her face. She seems to be really shy.

Tomorrow is the red couch photo day! All the families will get together and we will line up the children on the "red couch" here in the White Swan Hotel for a group photo. I can hardly wait! Until tomorrow.... :) Tracy

We made it to Guangzhou!

This afternoon we left Changsha at 3pm. After only an hour of flying we landed safely in Guangzhou. We exited the plane on the tarmac and had to board a small bus to drive to the terminal. I was lucky that a man saw me with Delilah and offered me his seat. Forrest stood holding on to a bar and together we balanced our 4 carry on bags + our carry on baby :) Our guide Kelly met us at the airport, she picked us out of the crowd easily... that seems to happen alot here! We arrived the famous White Swan Hotel and it is as beautiful. There is a HUGE waterfall and Koi pond in the lobby. There is a bridge to cross the pond and we will definitely be taking some family photos there before we leave. We checked in and left right away to take a walk around the many shops and resturants that surround the area. We ate dinner at Lucy's which is known here for its American menu. It was a nice change. :) There are adoptive familes everywhere we go here. All the shops cater to adoptive familes and all of the stores have very friendly English speaking employees. The first store we went to loaned us a stroller for the week, free of charge. They offer great deals on souveniers, have a laundry service and were very sweet with Delilah. They gave her a tiny jade bracelet and a story book. We went to another shop where the store owner wrote Delilah's name along with the Chinese characters and meanings free of charge just for visiting his store. Of course we did not have trouble finding some things to buy from him. :) So far we are really enjoying it here! Tomorrow we have a 9:30 meeting time to go for the children's medical exams. Hoping that goes well. I will update again tomorrow.. Tracy