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

A visit to a 1000 year old University

Today I am feeling much better! Whatever bug I picked up was a bad one! Forrest has done a great job being a single parent for the last couple days. :) I definitely could not have been here without him.

We went with our guide Amy on a tour of the Yue Lu Academy, it is one of the oldest universities in China. There were beautiful trees and flowers everywhere. The buildings were very intricate and we had a chance to hear a song performed just for us.

Delilah is doing great! She was staring directly into my eyes today and babbling. I decided to try saying "Ma ma" and she said it back! It was more like "Mmmmmaa" but that is a start! She was definitely listening and trying to mimic what I was saying.

Forrest was eating noodles today and Delilah was watching him so he grabbed a noodle with the chopsticks and put one in her mouth. It was hanging out so he went to pick it up again and before he could do it.. Slurp. The noodle was gone! The girl likes noodles. :)

Tomorrow we leave for Guangzhou and we will meet up with our original group again. We are looking forward to seeing all the children with their new families. We also can't wait to see the White Swan Hotel that we have heard so much about. Until tomorrow... Tracy

Goin for a walk

We had some down time today away from our guide, she was off helping some other people. So I decided to be adventurous. Tracy wasn't feeling that great today so she stayed at the hotel with the baby while I went for a walk. I thought I would go to a local shopping plaza and check it out. The plaza was about 2 miles from the hotel but the city here is very pedestrian friendly. There are lots of pedestrian bridges and tunnels designed to keep people away from traffic, similar to the Vegas strip. The primary modes of transportation here are bicycle, moped and motorcycle. Traffic here is insane, there is very little regard for traffic laws and the local police here dont seem to care about enforcing it. Motorcyles and motor scooters frequently drive on the sidewalks with pedestrians, you really have to be alert. I finally made it to the plaza. This was one of the largest shopping areas I have ever seen. The say there is over 2000 stores here, although most of them were very small shops. It was a little intimidating going without a guide but I managed. Well, it is getting late and I need to go to sleep so we will post tomorrow. Until then:-)

Park and Museum day

Today we went to Martyr Park and the Hunan Provincial Embroidery Museum. The park was fascinating, we arrived there at around 9:00 am. It was very similar to Balboa Park, there were thousands of people there doing all kinds of things like traditional chinese dancing, singing, playing instruments, Ti Chi and exercising. There was a giant lake in the middle of the park where you could rent all kinds of boats. There was several small fishing ponds filled with Koi fish. You could rent a fishing pole for about 1.50 and catch the Koi fish and take them home for a pet if you wanted. It was very bizarre. We then went to the Hunan Provincial Embroidery Museum. Apparently the province of Hunan is where traditional chinese embroidery was invented and perfected. The museum was full of lots of incredible embroidery pictures, the neatest ones were the double sided pictures. There would be a picture of a tiger or something on one side and when you flip it over there was a completely different image on the other side. Overall it was a good day, the weather has been very nice in the high 70's low 80's. The baby is doing well also she is very laid back and doesn't fuss much at all. It's almost time to go eat dinner, maybe we'll have some chinese food tonight. We miss all of you and we'll talk to you later:-)

A visit to a museum

Today we spent the morning at the Hunan Provincial Museum. It houses the artifacts from the tombs of Hunan's Royal Family. The family ruled the province in 200 BC and the tombs were unearthed in in 1973. They actually had the mummified corpse of the mother which was..well..interesting. Forrest was a celebrity today and was asked to pose with a local for a photo. We also were surrounded by a HUGE group of school children who wanted to practice their English on us. They were all very cute waving and yelling "Hello! Hi!" Enjoy the photos! Tracy

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