the good and not so good

Adoption has been a wonderful way to build our family, very challenging and we are very proud of our two girls. With Lia, is has been more of a leap of faith with her part of China's Waiting Child program. We are trying to give her the best care we can with the little info we have and some of it has been contradicted since we have arrived. We spent 3 hours last night at the Childrens Hospital dealing with some medical issues which have arisen and needed to be looked at before they got worse. Our guide helped us tremendously and we got there and back pretty quick!! Lia has been a trooper through it all and still is a smiley happy girl. She is doing better but unfortunately we had to cancel our trip to her orphanage today as we needed to stay close to the hotel to manage her care. We are really really ready to come home.
 
Onto better things. We had a great day yesterday prior to our tour of the hospital. We went to West Lake and had a great boat tour. We did get swarmed (the first time that is) about halfway through when a bunch of people discovered we were on the top deck and more and more people came to take pictures of the white people with Chinese children. There were about 30 people (more during the second event) who asked us all sorts of questions about our girls. We have met quite a few people who have wanted to talk to us and have enjoyed our broken conversations but this was a bit much as there was no where for us to go when we had enough and the crowd was a bit too much for my comfort.
 
Our second swarming was at the hospital in the evening when I was trying to get instructions for Lia's care and over 40 people came out of all sorts of places to see us. It really made me feel like a freak show as it was the second time for the day.
 
Again, onto the better stuff. We went to a tea museum and had a fantastic time. We had a tea ceremony and both the girls had tea. Lia had all 4 kinds of tea, they must have been giving to her at the orphanage. That was a highlight of our trip which of course meant getting out the Visa card at the gift shop. We have some really nice items for Lia when she is older. Lia has started giving us hugs and kisses!!
 
We had a very quiet day today and are off to Beijing tomorrow. Both Brian and I have said we feel more comfortable in Beijing in all the places we have been in China.
 
Tonights thanks go to Sheri and Janice who are helping take care of our cats while we are away!!
 
 

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