Around Guangzhou

We started our day with the hotel buffet breakfast.  It was a nice selection of asian and western foods.  While at breakfast we saw glimpses of what we will look like in 2 days when we have Lauren with us.  All American families will end their adoption journey in Guangzhou since this is where the American consulate is.  We are here the whole Guangzhou is a modern city so we are counting on good public transportation two weeks, because this just happens to also be Lauren's province.  There are four other families in the group from the adoption agency we used.  I look forward to meeting them tomorrow.  Dad is already excited  because one of them has a dutch last name and he is convinced that they are dutch.  By the way, Dad is practicing his chinese, with anyone and everyone.  (He probably only knows about 10 words!)

After breakfast we decided to walk around the hotel and see what shops were around.  Wanting to be more productive, I decided to call the person I used to send care packages to Lauren to see if she was available to take us shopping.  She was and so she met up with us at the hotel and off we went!

The first stop was the pearl market.  I wanted to buy Lauren a string of pearls from China.  It is somewhat of a tradition for girls who have been adopted from China to be presented the pearls when they are older as a gift.  So I thought we could get that out of the way since I did not want to be shopping for pearls with a baby.  Ann, my shopping buddy, is a no nonsense shopper.  She asks you what you are looking for, then goes straight to the shop.  She negotiates with the shop owner and tells you not to open your wallet until she finishes negotiating.  After we finished selecting our pearl strands, we headed to the Jade market. 

 After shopping Ann declared that we needed to see a little bit of real China, so she took us to a temple.  There we went inside a building where there were rows and rows of Buddhas.  We saw people praying to the various  Buddhas and monks chanting.  Incense was offered anud coins thrown into the fortune fountain. 

 Dad found out that there was a Catholic Cathedral in Guangzhou, and of course we went to mass.  They have an English mass so that was the one we attended.  The church was surprisingly full.  It was a good thing we got there early to get a seat. 

Coming back was an adventure.  Ann had warned us that taxis were hard to find from the church.  And that proved to be true.  When we did see a taxi, we were beaten by the locals.  One has to practically walk into the middle of the street, cross the crazy traffic, to get into an empty taxi.  Cars were stopping and I think asking us to get in, I was leary, but because we were desperate, finally just got into one since somehow Dad had negotiated a price of 20 RBM for this guy "Tu" to take us to the hotel

Now we are back, after one more adventure of eating out for dinner.  Stay tuned because tomorrow Lauren will hopefully make her debut on this blog.  Please keep us and especially her in your prayers.  While we have waited six years for her to come, she has not.  We hope that it will be a smooth transition and that her heart will not break so hard being taken away from everything that she has known.  We will leave the hotel at 11:00 am so that we can go to the bank, and we are scheduled to meet her at 2:30 pm.  Hope to see you here tomorrow!