Joshua was not feeling well when we arrived. He was a little car sick. They were having a birthday celebration! His good friend was just adopted this past Monday!
His was the bottom bunk
squatty potty in his bathroom
His preschool room
His teacher
Fred, after picking up the kids onto his shoulders, multiple times:)
We are in the home stretch now! This morning we had our consulate appointment, which is the whole reason adoptive families have to come to Guangzhou. Everything went smoothly and we are just waiting to get his passport back with that precious visa stamped in there! We leave Guangzhou tomorrow afternoon by train for Hong Kong, where we will fly out on Friday morning. We will be back in Atlanta around 3:30 Friday afternoon!!! Can't wait to see my boys!
Not only are we getting closer coming home, but we are growing closer each day to this amazing boy. As one of the moms in our group said, "It seems like he's been with you forever." It's starting to feel like that. He's very comfortable with us and has been in good spirits the whole trip. We've dragged him around through busy train stations, metro stations, busy streets. He's left his province to come to a much different area of China than he has ever seen, met many new people who ask him how he's doing, does like his mama and baba?, etc.
He's also been hanging out at the executive lounge at the Marriott and has been on a nighttime river cruise and to a safari park (which is similar to the Animal Kingdom, without the rides.)
The day before, we went on a city tour. Here are some pictures from the oldest Buddhist temple in Guangzhou.
Yesterday we took the subway from our hotel to the safari park, which is a big, glorified zoo with many animals. It's very cool and reminded us of the Animal Kingdom, except no rides. (Although they DID have the drive through safari, which included everything from lions and tigers to wolves and brown bears.
We had lots of fun despite the heat and humidity (that's what really gets ya.) And the day would have been less tiring had we not tried to exit the park at a different end than we entered. We figured it didn't matter because we had decided to take a taxi back. Once we got out of the park, we saw all the taxis lined up, but then a guy came up to us trying to find out where we were going... red flag... taxi drivers should never come up to you. The guy started saying something about "no meter" and we figured we'd be ripped off, so we decided to keep walking and try to find a legitimate taxi or just go to the subway. Well, that would have been a good plan if we had walked in the right direction and/or if there had been a subway station near the other exit, neither of those things happened. So after walking a ways, then turning around and walking some MORE (on a never-ending sidewalk along the outside of the park) we got back to our original entrance :::sigh::: Then we had to walk even MORE to get to the subway station. For the record, once we got back to our original entrance we asked a taxi driver to take us to our hotel, but he either didn't know where it was or it was out of his range (Guangzhou is a HUGE city, 2nd largest in China). So drenching in sweat we decided to trudge on to the subway station (thank goodness we had our stroller for Joshua.) The girls were tired, but they were real troopers and we told them to keep focused on the cold Pepsi they would get at the Marriott lounge once we got back to the hotel. (That worked for Shannon... Ella, not so much, but she kept up with us.)
Looking back, I'm thinking it wouldn't have been such a bad idea to have worked out a price with one of those guys, but we really had no idea how much a taxi ride should have cost because we didn't know how far we were from our hotel.
Needless to say we made it back to our hotel, safe and sound... albeit sticky and tired. The subway is very easy to use here and they have 8 different lines that get you around the city. It's very modern and very busy!
Safari Park...
This is what I wanted to be doing
Some new things about Joshua:
He no longer puts on his shoes to go to the bathroom
He eats everything with a fork or chopsticks, even donuts and sandwiches... he must think we have terrible manners
He still sits down on the potty to pee because he's used to a squatty potty (google it). I thought since he used one of these, he would of course stand to pee, but Fred saw how he used one at the train station restroom, and it's a different technique than I thought (TMI ?)
He has taken on the roll of "little brother" like a natural and loves to tease his sisters by rapidly ringing the doorbell on their room about 17 times to get them to come
He loves his mama (and the feeling is mutual)
He calls us mama (or "ma") and baba and calls the girls as well but "Ella" is easier for him to say (It was so cute to hear him calling, "Ella!!" across the pool
He is pretty good about keeping himself busy by playing with his toys or coloring
He's figured out the iPad games with no problem
He says little phrases in Mandarin and they sound so cute (but I have no clue what he's saying)
He has a very sweet demeanor and is also bouncy and playful
He's ours and we're his.
We really are so blessed.
I see such love in his eyes as well as all of you-he has been your son from the beginning...it just took a while to get there! It's all so amazing!
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