To Guangzhou

As we continued our journey to Guangzhou, Shane started to play more with his father. Their favorite thing to do together was for Shane to stand in the hotel window and watch the cars go by. His father would stand behind him and hold onto him. They did this several times a day. Shane would say "toot toot" or that is what it sounded like. It certainly heard the sound of horns blowing as the traffic was heavy and we heard horns blowing quite a bit. He continued to say "toot toot" repeatedly when we returned home so his Aunt Sharon nicknamed him "toot toot" and still calls him by the name. We left Hohhot after about 7 days and flew to Guangzhou. We like Guangzhou! The weather was warm and balmy. The White Swan hotel was beautiful. It has a large playroom with all sorts of toys and we spent quite a bit of time there. Shane could run and play freely. Another good thing about Guangzhou is that many of the Chinese spoke American. This was not the case in Hohhot. For those of you who don't know this, Guangzhou is the location that all adoptive parents go to finalize their adoption at the American Consulate so there are usually lots of other adoptive families there. The picture you see is the famous "red couch" picture that adoptive families take prior to leaving China. The only "snag" in Guangzhou was that our home study paperwork listed our P. O. Box as our address and I had put our actual address on the paperwork in China. The American Consulate refused to issue us Shane's Visa so we could not return home with him. Thank God for Susie and Jennifer! It was 10:00 a.m. in China and 11:00 p.m. at home when we received the word that the American Consulate was questioning whether we had moved during the adoption process. Long story....short...Susie was able to get in touch with Jennifer and Jennifer promptly faxed an addendum to the American Consulate stating that we had not moved during the adoption process. We left Guangzhou on schedule and all was well. Oh, by the way John's favorite place to eat in Guangzhou was Lucys. They have American food including hamburgers! Gotta run for now!