Last day in Guangzhou

Today we go to the US consulate for the swearing in. This will be the last official piece of business we have to do. We leave the hotel at 6 tomorrow morning. A new group of people arrived last night who are adopting from this province, Guangdong, so they get to spend the bulk of their trip here at the White Swan. Nice. We met a family from this group this morning and we're going to give them our stroller we bought at the walmart in Nanchang. It was 179 RMB which is approx $21.

Yesterday was Sadie's birthday and we had a nice party in the lobby bar overlooking the river. Sadie wore her tiger hat for the whole party. Our agency bought her a nice cake. It was really nice to be able to share her first birthday with all her cousins. The tiger hat is worn by children on their first birthday because it captures all the good luck, long life and happiness gifts raining down from heaven between the ears of the hat. I think Sadie captured a lot of those good vibes yesterday.

At least one of the parents in each family in our group is sick now. There's a nasty sore throat/cold going around. Jackie had it be is getting better. If I had to give one piece of advice to families coming over I'd say bring a lot of medicine for yourselves and the baby. Tylenol, ear drops, antibiotics (don't let anyone tell you not to bring the antibiotics - when you or your baby is sick in the third world you'll be extremely happy you have them). Don't bring a lot of diapers or baby food because you can get all of that here. Don't bring a stroller either.

In Beijing, Nanchang and Guangzhou we had no trouble buying all the western gear we needed from medicine to candy. And most of the people who work in the stores speak english. You should definitely bring a laptop too. The hotel computers mostly suck, are slow, in Chinese and are sticky to the touch. Today I got lucky with this computer - it works well and is in English. Its well worth the extra lugging around you'll have to do and you'll save yourself a lot of RMB and frustration if you bring your own computer.

Tomorrow is going to be rough. I'm dreading the two flights we have to take but its comforting to know there will be many other families returning from China on the flights and they'll all have screaming kids with them. But tomorrow night Sadie sleeps in her own crib in NYC.