Don't Hurt Me For Your Pretty

We're not exactly sure what this means, but found it to be one of the most interesting signs that we've run across so far. It was along the path in a park that we walked through this morning. We think it was telling us to keep off the grass...but something is clearly being confused in translation. Moments like these make international travel a real hoot.

The park that I mentioned above was the same park that our family spent some time walking through three and a half years ago when we were here in Guangzhou adopting Jamae. On that trip, we stayed in the China Hotel, which is on the north side of the park. This time we are in the Asia International, which overlooks the same park from the south side. We decided to venture out through the park...inspite of the fact that the heat and humidity was once again nearing the unbearable range. As you can see from this picture, Mitchell was beyond the point of even faking a smile for the camera...

Sometimes saying "cheese" is just too much to ask.

It was "fun", though, to return to the exact same spot that we took our favorite family picture with Jamae in January of 2005. That was bowserfam7...here is the updated version of bowserfam8...


This afternoon we took our trip to the U.S. Consulate for the final hurdle in the adoption process. Our guide explained to Ming how important this appointment was, and he seemed to be bouncing off the walls with joy. It was cool to see. There was no remorse or "looking back" in his spirit. It was full steam ahead...let's git 'er done! Even when the official explained in english for us to raise our right hand, Ming seemed to fully understand the situation and immediately raised his high in the air. That's enough to make a parent proud!

We wish we could include some pictures of all of this, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures. Given that we had to pass through metal detectors, we just left the camera in the bus. There were several observations, though, that you might find interesting...
•The "gathering area" was packed full of adopting families. I'm going to estimate that there were at least fifty families. It
was almost all baby girls. That was Jamae 42 months ago.
•We were told that we would probably have to wait at least an hour...but we were in and out in around a half an hour. I just
think we timed it really well.
•Ming was the only boy that we could see being adopted that was over, say, 2 years old. And there were only 2 other
non-infants that we could see, both girls. One of the girls was Hong Hui (pronounced "way"), who was in our group of
three families. She turned 13 in May, so is around 4 months older than Ming.

Speaking of our group of three families, we thought you might enjoy knowing who the other two are. One is the Hammond family from Dayton, Tennessee. They are here to adopt an infant girl named Lia.

You can follow their story at: http://www.famham6.blogspot.com/

The other family is the Dodd family from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in Texas. They are here adopting 13 year old Hong Hui.

You can follow their story at: http://www.doddsfamily.net/

Something that is pretty cool about our little group of three families is that we were all here three years ago adopting little girls. And here we are back again. Here's a picture of all of us, along with Rosa our guide. We took it this afternoon before the Dodd's left for the airport...they are in the air as I write this on their way home


We're in the midst of packing up to leave Guanzhou in the morning. We have to leave the hotel at 6:30am, and our flight leaves for Hong Kong at 9:30am. It's just a 40 minute flight, so we hope to be to our hotel at Disney sometime before noon...and into the park by early afternoon. We should have some fun pictures to show you tomorrow night. Thanks so very much for checking in, and please continue to hold us up in your prayers.