It's Official!

We got everything done at the American Consulate today, so Lily is officially a Stansell (whether she should be happy about it or not is still up for debate). Once she goes through immigration and customs at Dulles she'll be an official US Citizen.

Ok, here's the day's recap:

Got up, had breakfast. I went shopping while Mom and Lily tried to go to the zoo. Unfortunately it was raining (a very little bit, and they're wimps), so they had to bail. Instead they went and goofed off in the playroom for a while. Then we did some more shopping (do you see a theme here...) and went to lunch. After lunch we went to the consulate. Lots of the moms cried, but Mom kept it together. What a good girl she is.

After the consulate we had another amazing dinner. Then (wait for it...) more shopping. Now it's packing time, then off to bed. We leave the hotel tomorrow morning at 10, and our flight from Guangzhou to Beijing leaves at 12:55. We leave Beijing around 6:00, and arrive back at Dulles around 7:45PM Wednesday night (less than two hours after we leave, but it's almost a 14 hour flight! Amazing! Our plane goes almost the speed of time!). Mom and I are both anxious to get home, but aren't looking forward to the 17 hours of flights tomorrow. If I learned one thing on this trip is that China is far.

Here's your daily dose of pictures (including my favorite thus far...I'm becoming quite the Ansel Adams)

Monday Update - Cruise on the Pearl River

Monday was a day in three parts: the morning was uneventful, spent mostly in our room waiting for Visas and paperwork to go through, the afternoon saw me get a haircut and mom get in some more shopping, and in the evening we took a dinner cruise on the Pearl River.

Since we spent the morning hanging around the room there's not much to report from there. Some excitement in the afternoon though, when we went to a store we'd already been to a couple of times, and the three young Chinese ladies that worked there basically adopted Lily as their little sister. They talked to her (calling here "mei mei", or little sister, while she called them "jie jie", or big sister), gave her cookies, and even gave her and mom matching bracelets. That kid is quite a charmer.

Our cruise on the Pearl River was really the highlight of the day. Lily has enjoyed watching boats go by on the river during our breakfast buffet. Seeing them up close, from another boat, was SO MUCH BETTER! We had a blast just watching her. The dinner portion of the cruise was not so good. I'll just say that stewed chicken feet was one of the items on the buffet and we'll leave it at that...

Photos from the cruise

And a video of Lily's reaction to a boat going by.



Tomorrow Mom and Lily are off to the zoo in the morning, then we're going to the American Consulate for the Oath ceremony in the afternoon.

Sean

Sunday Night - More Video

Long day, very tired. We had breakfast at the hotel's buffet (and there's video of it below), then Mom and Lily went to church. After church we went out shopping, picking up some good stuff, then off the to the pearl market with our whole adoption agency gang. That boiled down to 2+ hours of Mom buying things, me trying to stay out of the way, and Lily not liking me. So Mom had a blast. Me, not so much :)

After we got back we had dinner with a couple of families at a place on the other side of the island. Excellent food, again. We haven't had a bad meal anywhere. Either all the food in the country is good or we've been extremely lucky. After dinner we went to Starbucks for dessert. Then we picked up our laundry and finally made our way back to the hotel. And boy are we tired. Well, Mom and I are. Here's a recording of Lily singing in her crib instead of going to sleep.

Tomorrow morning we have to wait in the room for Lily's visa to come through. Then I'm sure more shopping. Finally we're taking a dinner cruise on the Pearl River. Another busy day.

Here's the video of Lily expressing her artistic side at breakfast: