Sleepless in Thomasville

Tomorrow is Gotcha Day!!

Today we spent the morning walking around just to venture out a little on our own. We didn't go that far but did see some interesting things. There are so many people on bikes, electric scooters, buses, etc. They even have two lanes on each side of the road for just bikes, motorcycles and scooters.

After lunch, we had a brief travel meeting and then all loaded up on a bus to go to Wal-Mart. I would have taken pictures in there but didn't know if that was going to be frowned upon. I couldn't even begin to tell you what a "different" experience we had. Picture three floors - bottom had individual stores; second - grocery items (Matthew and Lisa's husband, John, decided to check out the "fresh/whole" meat section-hanging dried snake) and the checkout counters; third floor - clothing, electronics, baby items, etc. Now, that sounds easy enough but the fun is where you get a shopping cart and take an escalator between floors with your items. Really neat. Our guide was awesome, he stayed with two or three of us unexperienced shoppers and showed us what we needed to buy (he even had them put together our strollers for us that we bought) for the arrival of our girls tomorrow and helped us find chinese children's music, dvd's that are popular here with their age. Can you believe the DVD's were $1 to $3 (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles). Carson can teach Julia some English while she teaches him a little Chinese. I couldn't believe Mom and Nancy left our little group and finished their shopping on their own. Now, they did say that they both almost face planted on the escalators. That would have been a few too many injuries for the day seeing as Nancy already took a rear slide down the marble steps of the hotel today. These two are definitely serving as free entertainment.

Tonight, David (our guide) offered to take us to a really good Chinese restaurant. We enjoyed some authentic food along with another Lifeline couple. It was about $4 for our meal and appetizer and $1.25 for the cab over there. We have also grown very fond of Min ( I hope I spelled that right). Min is Barb's 3.5 yr old that she adopted at 24 mos old. Min has grown very fond of Matthew and looks for him often (my friend, is what she calls him). Barb has been a fountain of information when it comes to the do's and don'ts. We have met several great couples in only a day and are very excited about sharing the rest of this experience with all of them. It was truly a blessing that we got to travel when we did. I couldn't imagine not being with this group of people.

Tomorrow morning, we will do some paperwork and then try to do a little more shopping for items that are unique to this area. At around 3:30, we will board a bus and travel about 15 minutes to another hotel where they will give us our babies. You can see the excitement in everyone's face as it gets closer. This time tomorrow night, we will have our daughter.

Matthew is doing great and is being a real trooper with trying new things. He is going to have plenty of girls on our floor to entertain tomorrow evening. It will be great because Barb's room is right next door and she is adopting "emily" from the SN's list. Julia and Emily know each other because they are from the same orphanage. I was told today that the foster mother would take Julia back to the orphanage each day to play and then take her home at night.

We miss all of you and although I cannot see your comments, I will read them all when we get to Guangzhou. When you try to do a comment and it ask you for a user name and password just ignore it and hit submit. Lots of love, Leah - Next blog will have video of Julia!!!!!!

Picture #1 -Nancy, Mother and Matthew in the little park we found on our walk.
Picture #2 -Typical food market on the street corner (notice all the bikes).
Picture #3 -Our guide, David, and Matthew in the hotel lobby. (David has been so good with Matthew. He was always making sure that Matthew was right with us in Wal-Mart..too kind)
Picture #4 -Our hotel - Wharton International
Picture #5 -Chinese version of Edward Scissorhands in the little park we found. This guy was an expert at shaping the bushes into different designs.