Shamian Island

One blessing of the trip is that she sleeps all night.   Once you get her to stop crying and go to sleep that is.   Fortunately she normally only cry's for 15 to 30 minutes.

In many ways this adoption has been our hardest ever.  More on that another day.   Joshua has been a huge help and Maria is the rock star.  Hannah loves Maria and will go to her when she will not go to any of us.  She has the most wonderful laugh and when she plays you hear her just giggle.  I hope she is happy and will soon realize that she is loved and will be cared for.

she likes her new shades.

She will let Daddy feed her and help her.  She is not much on letting Mama do much of anything for her unless she is mad at me.

We ended up with a fairly nice room here due to my travel status.  One of the perks of this room is a wonderful massage chair.  I want one.   We have all enjoyed it including little bit.

The views here are lots of buildings.  It feels more like Manhattan than China in some ways. 

Lots of construction going on.  This is right outside our room and they start work before 6 am. 

This morning we went to Shamian Island the home of the White Swan Hotel.  We stayed there our first 3 adoptions.   The last 2 it has been closed for renovations.    The lobby and common areas kept their character.  Jade statues, the wonderful water fall and for all of my adoption friends they kept the Red Couch.  That area was closed but our guide David got them to let us in for photos.   A lot of memories in this hotel.

They kept the jade items and look of lobby.

Very nice of them to honor the adoption community by keeping the red couch.

Here is the story of the red couch.  We had photos with 3 of our kids there in the past.

of course we had to take a photo this time.

The Coy pond is great at the White Swan

This grandma and girl were posing for photos so I had to snap a picture.

here we are at the water fall.

The outside of the hotel from the shop area

Then down to the street for shopping.  There are only 3 shops left.   Michael's, Amys and one other shop.   We visited all 3.  The shop keepers in all of them remembered us.  We did a good bit of shopping with Amy and her daughter.   One of the things we do is purchase a gift from China for each adoption anniversary up to her 18th birthday.  We also purchase chop sticks for each of our kids to give to them when they get married.  I was able to give Stephen and Anna theirs a few months ago.

Amy and her daughter packing some items we purchased.

of course we had to have our photo taken with Amy.  An old acquaintance from here.

We walked around the island a little but there is a lot of construction going on.  The park is mostly closed due to construction.  Lucy's restaurant is also closed (what an institution).  We took photos with some of the status just like we have done on previous adoption trips.

walking in the park.

one of the statues.  We always see kids playing here.

The statue to honor adopting families.  A balding American man with 2 cameras and a ?? woman pushing a stroller.  Oh that is us??  We have taken our photo here each trip.

The park is gutted and being totally redone.

hacky sack.

a statue showing the changing dress of Chinese women over time.  Even shorter now days

of course the guy with a camera.  

Then back to the hotel.  Traffic here is unreal.  Our driver was trying to get to the hotel and cut across 6 lanes of traffic.  Driving here is unlike you see anywhere else.  I normally have a lot of respect for Chinese drivers for where they can put a car but this trip have seen more stupid drivers than ever.  You also see a lot of people on cell phones driving and it is getting dangerous here.

We saw this guy on the island.  He saw us with the kids and smiled and gave us thumbs up.  

This guy has a load on this little motor scooter.  Amazing the loads they haul here.

Some giggles on the ride back to the hotel.

I want one of these.  Cool looking police car.  Laura maybe this can be your first car.

Traffic jam in front of the hotel.

See how the cars are all jammed in.  We are cutting across all this traffic.

For lunch we went to a Ramen house up the street.  It was very good and reasonably priced.  Maria loved it.

No we did not drink the water or use the ice.  They just brought it.

We walked around a mall across the street and were pretty low key this afternoon.

Here is the skyline at night.  The tall skinny building in the distance is Canton Tower.