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Our Trip
December 3, 2001 - Day Sixteen: Countdown to Blast Off. click HERE for Day Sixteen Photos
Kind of weird to think that in 72 hours we'll be at the Inchon Airport in Seoul, waiting to board the 747 that will take us to San Francisco and complete stage one of the two stage journey home. It was interesting to talk with the other couples today and see that we're all of the same mindset: as much fun as it is touring China and being on the ultimate international vacation, we all want to get home and get our children back and assimilated into our far-more-boring lifestyles at home. Tonight we're watching "That 70's Show" on Starworld, which is the English language cable channel for Asia. From room service I had another fantastic cheeseburger and Ann had the Margarita pizza. We hit the road this morning at 11:30 am, hit a tea house, and then some lunch at a downtown Goungzhou hotel. It's going to be sad to say goodbye to the group. Some very cool people. From that we bussed down to Shaiman Island, which is a district of shops and hotels on the Pearl River. We hit Jennifers, which is the pre-eminent shopping destination for adopting families. You'd have a seizure if you saw the prices. We loaded up on gifts for the friends and family at home and then walked en masse over to the American consulate with other adopting families from a half dozen other agencies. One by one we filed in, went through intense security (which starts a block away), and went inside. On the wall at the security desk there was an FBI memorandum about the anthrax letters and some specifics to look for. This went to all the U.S. installations around the world. Kind of interesting to see up-close. Once we were inside the compound, we were lead into a hot conference room and forced to wait for about half an hour for a much-vaunted swearing-in ceremony, which they were kind of vague about describing. Imagine about 60 small, over-heated, tired babies in a cramped room. It was a meltdown of monumental proportions. The cacophony of screaming had reached a crescendo when some harried women entered the room, instructed everyone to raise their hands, recited something which half the room couldn't hear, we all said "yes" and then she left. We'd been promised some kind of naturalization ceremony by a high consular official. I found out later that she was asking if we all swore that our information on the visa forms was accurate. And my guess is that she was some poor person selected at random from the steno pool of the Agricultural Development section of the consulate. Back
at the hotel I discovered that the bar sells boxes of Cuban cigars.
Hmmm… Ann's Comments: Paige summed up well what we did today. Because I'm still sick I'm not going to add detail to what he wrote. We went to lunch at a Cantonese restaurant with the group. Amy, our tour guide, was talking about the special food that is served at Cantonese restaurants. One favorite dish of the locals is Dragon Phoenix Tiger Soup. "Can you guess what the ingredients are?" she asked. No one could. "The dragon is a snake, the phoenix is a rooster, and the tiger is a cat. So it's Snake Chicken Cat Soup." Another favorite of the women is rat. Supposedly it's good for women's blood/blood circulation. Someone asked if she eat rat. "No, but other women do." She said that the Chinese believe that anything that has its back to the sky can be eaten - from insects to lizards to turtles to animals that people in the U.S. may eat (cow, fish, chicken). After lunch we went shopping and Amy took me to a pharmacy (I think I split one of molars). Asked for something like oragel (not sure the spelling - the stuff that numbs your teeth and gums). They didn't have it. But they have an herbal remedy that does the same function. The pharmacist explained through Amy that you take one of the tiny seeds (about the size of a mustard seed) and put it on the tooth that is affected. Of course when I tried the seed wouldn't stay on the tooth - it just floated around in my mouth. This provided a lot of humor for the pharmacist. Apparently people don't have as much difficulty with the medicine. Within five minutes my entire mouth was numb. It was if I had just visited the dentist and he injected ten shots of Novocain in my mouth. Amazingly powerful for such a small piece of who knows what. Sophia is doing well. People on the street and in the stores where we shopped kept commenting on how beautiful she was. They also said, "Healthy baby. Big baby." And she is. We feel so fortunate. That's
about all for today. Time to rest now. |