Consulate Appointment

We are sooo excited to come home on Friday. We are pretty home-sick and just want to sleep in a soft bed. The beds here are extremely hard. We are looking forward to Hong Kong and Disneyland and wish we were going today.

It is extremely rainy here and the heavy rains have caused major flooding in several areas of south China. It has rains for weeks in south China with no end in sight. This is the rainy season but it has not flooded like this in a long time. South China was struck by an unusually cold winter blast that claimed the lives of many this past winter and now the heavy rains have already claimed more lives. The earthquake death toll is still rising and causing devastation. I really hope this area gets a break soon. The people are so poor here and the rains are destroying all of their crops. I wonder how these people will even survive.

We took Sydney to the arcade in the hotel...WOW she loved that! I played her in air hockey and she would scream as loud as she could and would do a little dance every time the little puck went in. It was so funny. We couldn't stay really long because she was getting a little over-stimulated and too hyper. We will try to go to the pool today if we can find a pocket of time with no rain.

Today the kids will have the famous "red couch photo". This is where all of the adopted children in our group wear traditional Chinese clothing and all sit on the red couch for a photo. This will be a challenge for us since she does not want to wear that type of clothing. I got her a 2 piece blue outfit hoping that it will "boyish" enough for her. It will be a big task but hopefully she will cooperate.

Today is our Consulate Appointment. This is the day that our entire trip was built around. Yesterday we completed more paperwork and prepared everything for this appointment (with the help of our guide). Our guides will take all of the family's paperwork to the U.S. Consulate today. Tomorrow we will go to the U.S. Consulate and take an oath on promising to take care of our child. Then we will receive our daughter's visa so that she can enter the United States of American and will become a citizen upon arrival. Yay!!!! Then we can leave the next day!!!

We will see everyone soon!!

We will arrive DFW at 8:45pm on Friday night. We are flying on American Airlines from San Francisco. I will have more details soon!