SATURDAY!!
Woo Hoo!!! We are going home!!!
We are now leaving the hotel and on the bus to the airport in 20 minutes!!!
Look out Texas here we come!!!
Friday May 16th
Today we visited the US consulate. The consulate moved to the new buisness district in guangzhou so we had to take a 45 minute + bus ride down town. Lots of traffic. The consulate visit took about 1.5 hours and then 1 hour to get back to hotel.
We put are hands up and said that our paper is work true. YEA!!!!!!
Then we recieved our paper work in brown envelope that we can not open until in US immigration and Raya's chinese passport with immigration visa of course.
1 more DAY and we are HOME!!!!! Raya becomes a citizen as soon as we clear US immigration. YEA!!!! Can not wait to see the Kids, granparents and everyone else.
Thurs. May 15
Today our guide went to the Consulate for our CA (Consulate Appointment). Everything went well and we received most of Raya's needed paperwork.
Tomorrow we will be going to the Consulate to take the oath. Then we will wait for Raya's American Visa and we will then have all of our papers complete and ready to travel home on Sat. We are sooo ready to be home. It is nice here but it is not home without our other children and family with us. There is only so much shopping and eating you can do. We are tired and cannot wait to go home and get into our new routines.
Kisses to all our children!! Cannot wait to see you all.
Tuesday, May 13th
Raya slept though the night and was very happy this morning. We quietly watch her play for awhile in her crib from 6:30-7:00 am then we went to breakfast.
Today we went to the Jewelry and electronics district stores. The Jewelry district had about 500 stores packed from floor to ceiling in all sorts of stuff. AMAZING. You can by stones and pearls and watch them put it all together as you watch.
We met a lot more familes that went to more remote places in the country today. The earthquake is the big talk now. Some familes have gone thru alot and are glad now to be in Guangzhou, Lots of medical things plus some disease that are around now. Kind of like paradise here after be in interior china but they all talk about how nice people they met are.
Our guide is from the area the quake hit hard and says people just used to run outside thier 1 story home. Now things are much different here big buildings everywhere.
Monday, May 12th
Raya is doing much better today as we start to understand what her schedule is or was. She was up at 3:00am and still cranky. Linda gave her a little bottle of juice (still trying) and she wanted to hold it herself sitting up. A minute later she feel over asleep (thunk) but continued sucking on the bottle. Well that is how it must have been.
We went to the medical exam today. YEA! Getting Closer to coming home!!!!
There was an earthquake today more central in China. Linda says she felt like she did when she was first off the plane so we did not pay much attention to it. Others noticed the closet doors rattle a little. We are all OK but pray for all those affected. I was told that area in china hit hard is remote and hard to get too.
Sunday, May 11th
We went to the park today where the olympic torch ended in Gaungzhou. pretty neat! Raya was a little cranky to today and just had a hard day. We finished the US side of our paper work in the afternoon, 2 hours for a couple of forms and planning the next couple days. Tommorrow is Raya's medical exam and some photo's for passport.
Saturday, May 10th
It's Saturday! We want to go home. We finished all the chinese side of the adoption process on friday and went to the Police station for review of our documentation. They want make sure we are who we say we are and that Raya is Raya. All that is left is the US side just a little more paper work and some waiting around.
Raya is doing great and her system is just starting to straighten out (constipation), Stress from bus ride and all that is going on + working on diet. She loves to play and is very active. She knows who we are and loves to be held. She has a super grip (WOW).
We went to the ZOO today (morning) and returned to the in the around noon. The weather was nice around 80 but not humid like all the other days. I should be in the 100's this week.
Everything is going well home. Granparents are doing wonderful with the kids!!!! We miss them all very much!
Friday May 9
We have free time to shop around Shamian Island all morning. At 3pm we need to meet again to take a bus to the Guangdong Police Station to apply for Raya's Chinese passport. We cannot take pictures here so I am just going to post a picture from us playing this morning.
May 8th Dinner
We went to dinner as a group tonight for Cantonese food. It was really good. They do have fresh ingredients in the front of the store so if you wanted to you could choose your fresh ingredients. Here are some of the things we could chose from. We passed and chose Chicken and Beef.
May 8th
Today at 8:30am we jumped on the bus to go back to the Adoption Registration office to complete more official paperwork. This took several hours and in a building with very little airconditioning. After finally finishing all the interviews and paperwork she is officially now our daughter in the eyes of the Chinese Government.
On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a store. It was the Carriefour it is like Walmart. 3 floors. 1st floor is the ground floor and then 2 floors going underground. Still crazy hot in the store. No air conditioning here either. Interesting to shop there but kind of hard to figure out what you need. Mostly in Chinese.
So after that we hoped into a taxi and rode back to the hotel.
Had a quick lunch and went to the playroom to see what crazy legs could do. She can crawl but was very nervous in the playroom. After this big day she was very tired and so we decided we would give her a nap. Well she has desided that she doesn't like to sleep in this crib and Mom needed to work to get her to sleep this time. Oh boy she is very different from Jaime. She is going to be a piece of work.
May 7th
At 10:ooam we filled out some paperwork in the conference room of our hotel and were told important information about how Gotcha day will work. This took about an hour and a half. After that we were told to meet at the bus at 2:00pm so we could ride to the Adoption Registration Center to meet the babies and fill out more official paperwork.
We were sitting in the room and the orphanage people walked in and past us into another small room carrying the babies. We were the 6th family to recieve our baby out of 8 families.
Raya seems fine with us and was not upset just more curious about the things around her.
We had a few minutes to talk to the orphanage director and other workers to find out small details about the 3 girls that had come from the Maoming Orphangage. We were told that Raya likes to crawl around and is very busy. Oh dear!
During the day we learned a little more about her personality and what she is like. Yes, she is busy. Non stop. Her legs are always moving and kicking, I said she reminds me of the character on Happy Feet always dancing and moving his legs.
We are going to be in for it. She is a very busy child so far.
Wednesday May 7th
Downloaded some pictures. It is now 3:00 am. Waiting for RAYA! 12 hours too GO!!!!! Can not wait to hold her! Linda is awake also. We can not beleive we are here it has been a long wait.
Tuesday May 6th
We woke up at 5:00 am after getting to bed around 1:30 am. The 13 hour time difference has got us a little mixed up. We spent most of the day walking around talking to people and stretching our legs after the long flight. We are very excited about tomorrow and just can not sit still.
As we walked around Shamian island we met a lot of interesting people, Linda says I talk alot. A lot has changed since we have been here last but the people are just as friendly especially the younger generation.
After walking out of our local starbuck's we found out that the olympic torch was going to pass by tomorrow. The way we found out was that a local TV station was looking for tourist types to interview and wanted to see what they know about the event. Well they picked me! Trying to avoid an international event I tried my hardest to answer the questions correctly. WOW! Funniest home videos watch out! Well, we will find out tomorrow how it came out on the 8:00 PM news.
We also met a wonderful couple from Maryland who had picked up there son 5 days ago. What a story they have! I will have to have Linda tell the story. He was just starting to come out of his shell and is 2 years old. He can laugh up a storm. He has special needs, which I did not notice until I was tickling and playing with his feet, but this boy could still get around pretty well and is full of life and now has a awesome loving family!!!! WOW. And I get to be an Uncle well at least in chinese.
Tomorrow is gotcha DAY!!! 3pm. Can not wait to meet RAYA.
Our first flight was from Dallas/Fort Worth airport to LA that hop was about 3 1/2 hours longs. LA airport was a very confusing airport but after about an hour of being redirected to different parts of the airport we finally found were our next flight would be from. We were sooo hungry at this point so we were thankful to find McDonalds and had pancakes. It is funny we started out at 7:30am in Tx. and landed in LA at 8:45am. Our next flight was at 1:00pm to Guangzhou, China. So after about 30 hours of traveling we finally made it to our hotel room in Guangzhou.
We are staying at the White Swan Hotel and it is beautiful!
May 3, 2008
We are finally all packed and ready to go. I cannot believe we fit it all in. We are as ready as we can be for a 14 day trip. Oh dear keep us in your prayers.
Thank you to everyone for all your kind wishes and please continue your prayers for us and our family we leave at home.
We will try to write soon.
Love,
Linda and Dennis
