Shamian Island, Consulate Appointment and Lantern Festival

Feb. 20- We got to go site see through Shamian Island. I have heard great things about Shamian Island it was one of the places I was really looking forward to seeing while in Guangzhou. Shamian Island was originally where all International Adoption's took place...all the families stayed on the island and it was basically adoption central for Guangzhou. Things have since changed and there are more hotels and things within the city that it isn't needed however, it's still a nice place to walk around and visit. It has tons of statues, these huge gorgeous trees, beautiful french inspired buildings, lots of shops and then of course the riverfront. It reminded me instantly of a southern city similar to Charleston with all the vegetation, brick walkways and beautiful buildings. We even got to see the private school kids walking down the street in their uniforms and walked in on an outdoor phys ed class...all the kids had their matching outfits on and were running laps or doing exercise moves at the instruction of their teacher and a whistle. Lets just say it looked a lot more organized then a US phys ed class. There was also a pretty little Catholic church...so you know we had to stop in!

Theo had a hard time when we had to wait for all of our group to finish shopping, he wanted to rip all of the toys off the shelves and play with them and when I wouldn't let him we had multiple meltdowns. NOT fun but once we moved on to walk by the river he perked up again letting us follow along as he felt he "lead" the group.


Feb. 21 - Consulate Appointment FINALLY!!

We had to wake up early and be ready for our consulate appointment on this morning. So we all actually dressed up a little more than usual and headed down to the bus about 8:30 for our 10 a.m. appointment. We soon learned that the traffic is horrific in the mornings which is why we had to leave so early. Thankful for a guide who recognized that for us and planned accordingly. We were ushered to the security portion but that was as far as our guide could take us so she handed us our folders and sent us on our way.

It's really a very straightforward and boring process, no real reason to dress up, you stand at a window verify your documents (go wait), one parent comes up gets the low down of the process and says an oath (go wait), then it's your families turn for your "interview" basically they want to make sure there were no surprises once you arrived to China and that yes this is the child you are taking home with you...then you are DONE!

We then went back for our normal afternoon of lunch (McDonalds from next door and soup bowls for Theo) and then played on the playground. We then made plans to meet up with our favorite Read family and go walk through the Lantern Festival lights that night.

The Lantern Festival did not disappoint! It is a lot like our Christmas at the zoo but on steroids, the lights and music are really bright and vibrant... the park is huge too so our $3 to get in did not go to waste. Plus Theo just ran through the whole park wearing off a lot of energy!