Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Today is our last full day in China. We started the morning with a late breakfast and then Angie headed over for her massage. She and 4 of the other mothers had a wonderful 90 minute massage for only 60 Yuan ($7.80) each. However, a large rat did scurry across the room and up a pole while they were getting their massages. But, apparently this rat is a pet, as no one seemed to mind.

I had the task of getting Lina a gift. We all decided to get her a single gift from our group and, with Simon's help, we decided to get her a new cell phone. Simon accompanied me to the cell phone store. It was located in downtown Guangzhou and I found the taxi ride through the city to be fascinating. Becca seemed to enjoy it as she sang for part of the trip. I thought we would go to a cell phone store but the entire street was filled with cell phone stores. Each store had about 20 different independent vendors and our vendor had over 100 different cell phones to choose from. We ended up purchasing a Samsung with all the bells and whistles for Lina.

We spent most of the afternoon driving to and from the American Consulate to obtain Becca's visa. Since the Consulate office is across town, the roundtrip took 1 1/2 hours and the actual visa process took about 15 minutes. There were about 40 other families from other adoption agencies that took the Oath with us. I couldn't get any photographs since cameras were not allowed.

After finishing, one of the families had to head to the airport as their plane takes off tonight. I suggested the rest of us go out to dinner one last time and we chose Qiao Mei Restaurant. This time we didn't have our guides with us so the dinner was quite amusing to the other patrons. Our servers didn't speak English well, so we ended up ordering dinner for our table rather than individual orders. This is one of the places that serves the more unusual foods in addition to traditional Cantonese food. Once dinner was over, we did some more shopping and then went back to the hotel for a short sleep. We have to be up by 4 AM tomorrow.

Becca enjoyed her day with us. When she was with me I coaxed her into submission with a biter biscuit and then exercised her enough so that she would fall asleep, which she did - I needed her to be nice and quiet while purchasing the cell phone. She did act up a few times today and I found out why my wife's maiden name was STRICKland - just substitute a T for the K. Anyway, I love the way she interacts with us. When she cries, has a dirty mouth or a runny nose, she simply wipes her face back and forth on my shirt. She opens her little mouth wide when she's ready for food or food is nearby.

Well, I better cut this short as I have some packing to do and then have to go to bed.