Today we found out that all went well at our US Consulate appointment. We are on schedule to go to the consulate tomorrow and pick up Katie's passport with her visa and other immigration documents so we can bring her back into the United States.

Our only other official task today was taking our group photos. We did the famous "red couch" photo today...

You have never seen such quick picture taking as occurred today after all the parents walked away leaving 9 babies aged 15-months and under sitting on a sofa. Most were wearing traditional Chinese outfits that are readily available for purchase here, and I think we got a couple of decent shots off before they started to topple.

I don't think I mentioned this previously, but we also have one little girl in our group who is being adopted at age 11. There are so many other adopting families here at our hotel that I have met/seen a number of families adopting older children (by China's definition, over the age of 2) and children with special needs. I really admire these families and their willingness to take on extra challenges in order to make sure these children are part of a loving family and have access to resources in the US that would not be available to them in the orphanages here.

Since we had downtime this afternoon and the weather was finally nice, we finally made a family outing to the waterfall pool that Alex has been wanting to do. I am guessing that this was Katie's first swim in a pool, and she seemed to enjoy it much more than she does her baths.

As we get closer to coming home, I should prepare those of you who will have a chance to meet Katie in person that she has a scream that can shake the rafters when she is not happy about something. Some of the other parents in our group have said the same, and I am wondering if the squeaky wheel sometimes got the grease (so to speak) at the orphanage. She also has a great big smile where she crinkles up her eyes and nose when she is happy that will melt your heart. As you can guess, we are trying to maximize smiles and minimize screams to the best of our ability.

This evening, Dan and I went with some of our group to have a Cantonese dinner across the street from the hotel. Our guide helped order for us, and the food was one of the best meals we have had in China. For dessert, there were deep-fried sweet potato balls that were absolutely delicious, and I am someone who always skips the sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving. They were almost like sweet potato doughnut holes.

To get to the very nice dining room area of the restaurant, you had to walk through a small front room where you can pick out your own dinner. Most of the options were still living. I wish I had had my camera with me since you would have to see it to believe it. To give you an idea, some of the options were sea snake, water beetles, slugs and numerous other items that almost ruined my appetite. Our guide said that she does not eat any of these, but there are some people who like to have them as a snack with Chinese rice wine (after which, one of the men in our group prounounced them "Chinese bar food"). We tried a bit of the rice wine last night on the boat tour only to discover too late that rice wine is 60 to 80 proof. One sip made my internal organs burn for half an hour. With that in mind, we are still wondering if you eat water beetle to cover up the taste of the rice wine or if you need to be drunk on the rice wine before you can convince yourself to eat water beetle. It is a classic chicken and the egg scenario to which there does not seem to be a good answer.

Tomorrow we are headed off to the US Consulate in the afternoon for the swearing in ceremony and to pick up Katie's documents. Most of our group is heading out immediately afterward to catch flights to Beijing, Shanghai, etc., before flying home from there the following day. We are flying directly from Guangzhou so will have one more evening here before we head home on Thursday.