Mass mayhem

We hung out in the room for a while after breakfast, and then Henry and I again went swimming for a while while Melissa, Mae and Val went out to finish up on the shopping. Then we all went downstairs for the famous "red sofa" pictures. With 17 families, it was total, complete, utter mayhem I tell you!! Almost impossible to get good pictures, but some were actually pulled off. Apparently, 17 is one of the largest groups, if not the largest group that has ever been formed. Mae was a real character -- trying to flip over onto her stomach, etc. Afterwards, a group of us who have become close walked back the 5 blocks or so to the great Thai restaurant we went to as a whole group the other night, called the Cow and Bridge, for a kind of farewell dinner. We all got really great meals again. I didn't order the chicken feet, but I did snap a shot of the delicious looking goose foot that's on the menu (there are pictures of everything in the menu, fortunately). Check it out! Henry sat next to a five year old girl, Georgia, and they seemed to have a great time chatting each other up. One interesting fact we forgot to write about earlier -- getting napkins at sit-down meals around here is like pulling teeth!! You either get nothing, or you get like a wet nap, or you are offered tissues. Not sure what the deal is there. And in Beijing at no less than three restrooms, the attendants would offer like a six foot piece of toilet paper for drying your hands after washing them, all folded up nicely into about a ten inch piece. We would invariably end up walking away picking toilet paper pieces off our still wet hands! As we were about to leave the restaurant tonight, the sky opened up. We waited it out about 10 minutes to no avail, so we made a break for it and all got thouroughly soaked. It was actually kind of fun. Not before a guy at the restaurant offered to walk a group of us back under a patio umbrella that he showed us he would hold. I don't know why we turned him down, but we did. I don't think we all would have fit under the umbrella, even though it was huge. I ended the night by smoking a Cuban cigar outside next to the river, overlooking the city, to celebrate and reflect on all of our children and our now complete family. We feel extremely blessed and fortunate to have these children and for our entire extended family and our friends.

We're off to the U.S. consulate tomorrow to get Mae's visa as the last thing we must do here in China for the adoption. As soon as Mae hits U.S. soil on Saturday (1 day!!), she becomes an American citizen. We'll have to get up at like 4:00 or4:30 am on Saturday morning to go to the Guangzhou airport to catch our flight to Hong Kong, so there may be a very short post tomorrow or no post at all since we'll have to be in bed relatively early (it's 12:33 am now). We'll see.

As for the photos of the day, here they are -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/caira/sets/776559/
Check out the red couch photo of Mae with her legs up in the air; that is her buddy Mya on the left, clearly disgusted with Mae's inappropriate antics! A fun red thread, Melissa and Amy (Mya's mommy), got acquainted through email before travel to China. Once we got here, the two families hit it off immediately and have had so much fun together. When we received the photo album and disposable cameras back from the orphanage, Mya and Mae were side by side in almost all of the shots...clearly forever friends! An explanation is required for another picture -- the one of me acting like a fool was for Henry. Before he went to bed, he set a booby trap for me with a robe belt, a wooden sword, and a stuffed panda. Val promised him she'd take a picture of me getting caught in it. So that's me, caught in the booby trap. Ahhhhh!

Love,

R, M, H & M