New Friends

Another family from our adoption agency have arrived here in Guangzhou. They just got in from Hubei province with their newest daughter Aliviah who is 2o months and very cute. Gail & Steve Maag are from Michigan and they are here with their other 2 adopted daughters Abby (6) and Anna (5) plus Steve's mom. Gail & I have corresponded via email when we were notified our Consulate appointments were on the same day. They have 2 grown children and now their 3 girls from China. We have had a great time shopping and eating out with them. Katie is especially happy to have the girls here.

Today (Monday) is Patrick's physical exam which is required by China to depart the country. It's a basic exam and usually doesn't take that long. You basically move from station to station complete the process.

Not much new here. Patrick continues to do well. He had a bit of a cold but that has cleared up. He is trying more and more to repeat what we are saying. He tries very hard to be understood and get the sounds right. He still does a lot of very serious jibber jabber like he is trying to tell us something but we can't figure it out. He can be a wild boy when he gets wound up. I can see Hailey telling him to settle down and behave. Josh will have to teach Patrick to take care of his toys. Patrick likes to try to kick and jump up & down on whatever he's playing with at the time.

We complete our U.S. Consulate paperwork today with Bob. He then takes it to the Consulate tomorrow. If all is correct we hear nothing. Then Wednesday at 4pm we have our Consulate appointment where we do the oath in a group that all our paperwork is true, blah, blah, blah then we are free to leave. We are going to take a bus from Guangzhou to Hong Kong vice take the train. The train was a great experience but we could not find elevators and we had to schlep our luggage up and down escalators. This was difficult to do especially since Katie had to handle her own luggage. It would be even more difficult to do with Patrick so we are opting to take the bus this time. The bus will drop us off at the Hong Kong airport where our hotel is located.

I have attached a video of Katie blowing bubbles and Patrick going crazy over them.

Happy Memorial Day! I hope your weather is better then ours.
MB