Our last full day in China

Well it’s kind of hard to believe but this was our last full day in China. Tomorrow is our swearing in at the US consulate. We will then get all of Mina's final paperwork for her to go to the US. When we land in LA on Wednesday night she will be an American citizen. We leave Guangzhou at 9pm and arrive in LA around 7pm. Petty cool. We leave later than we arrive. Hmm, must be some kind of time warp. Anyway, we are staying the night in LA and have a 12 noon flight to St. Louis and should be in around 5:45pm on Thursday. As much as we have loved China, we are ready to come home. The hotel room is getting much too small and Mina needs some new toys to play with. There are only so many times you can read the same 12 page picture book. We miss real American food, TV that is not in Chinese, and most of all our own squishy bed. The beds here are rock hard. Suz misses the cats and we all want you to meet Mina.

Today was again a pretty mellow day for the most part. Mina and I went for a walk this morning while Suz waited in the room in case there were any problems with any of the paper work. We had our group photos at noon and that was a fiasco. Our group of 14 families was kind of large so trying to get all the babies in one photo was very difficult. Suz and I just kept laughing at the whole event. It was kind of a joke. We made a trip to the 5 banyans Buddhist temple in the afternoon. It was very beautiful and serene, and hot. We made our food sacrifice to Buddha and lit some incense for Mina. We had one of the monks bless her. This would have been her religion had she grown up in China and we felt it was important to do this. In the evening we had a nice but hectic dinner with all the families that came to China with our agency. Over 57 families. It was a Cantonese style Dim Sum dinner. A lot of different things to try and it was all very good. After that we did our last minute shopping and called it a day. Mina was a bit fussy today. I’m not sure what her problem was. Just an off day I guess. She really struggled going down for her naps and at bedtime but I guess we should get use to that.

Nothing much else to report. This will be the last post from China. If I am able I will try to post on Thursday night from LA but I’m not sure if I will have internet access at the hotel. We will just have to see. Looking forward to seeing everyone soon in St. Louis...

Michael, Suz and Mina...