Friday, Dec 8 in Guangzhou

We have arrived in Guangzhou, and what a blessing it is. We arrived at about 5:30pm and while walking up the ramp from the plane we began shedding layers! In Nanchang, the "clothes police" (the old Chinese women who berate Americans for not dressing their new children warmly enough) would be having fits over what they would see here. Honestly, they go absolutely wild when it comes to dressing children in the colder weather. When we got Sarabeth, she had 2 shirts, 3 heavy sweaters and a winter coat. She was roasting! Her cheeks were beet red. The best sight in Nanchang was when we'd see a child with multiple layers---and then be wearing split pants, thus allowing a cold draft to hit their nether regions!

Sarabeth enjoyed her first airplane flight and seeing the clouds from above. She was excited the whole day. She fell asleep as soon as we hit the van enroute to the hotel. By dinner time, she was ready to go again. We had dinner at Lucy's shortly after arriving- at an outside table! Lucy's is a favorite of the Americans here. We have been eating Chinese food at every meal for most of the last week, and thoroughly enjoying it. At Lucy's, we had fettucini alfredo w/chicken (Mary) and a double cheeseburger w/fries (John). Sarabeth LOVES fries with ketchup. It was apparently a treat for her to go to KFC in Nanchang with the fosters for FF and Coke. Again, she is having no trouble eating or swallowing. What a relief and an answer to prayer.

Tomorrow morning, we have Sarabeth's medical exam, which is a requirement of the US Immigration process. We will also have her photo taken for her US Visa. The rest of the day is free. We need to have laundry done and some gifts to buy, so I'm sure we'll be visiting many of the shoppes here on Shamian Island. There are several other families from Heritage Adoption that are funneling into Guangzhou this weekend. There are plans for us to have a group dinner at the Cow Bridge (an excellent Thai restaurant just down the street from our hotel) either tomorrow or Sunday evening. I'm already looking forward to it!

We've not been taking many pictures the past few days. We'll try to rectify that tomorrow and get some more shots uploaded onto the blog. For now, good night and we'll blog again tomorrow.

John and Mary