Day 9 Thursday, April 19

Thank you all so much for your comments and encouragement to my meltdown blog last night. Trust me, your words mean more to me than you'll ever know. A very special thank you to Gail Robinson, the counselor/social worker who did our home study last fall. She pointed out that Allie's crying is a good sign that she is able to bond, and that the grieving she is dealing with shows that she probably had a very good relationship with her prior care-givers, a positive sign indeed. In other words, we should be more concerned if Alison didn't have a period of grieving/crying over her new life. Wise words from a smart woman (and one who deals with abandonment issues every day.....thank you Gail).

Well, I am glad to say that we had a much better day today!! Not nearly the crying of the past two days, maybe just a little fussing now and then. We got outside a lot today, and Allie seemed to really enjoy riding in her stroller and taking in the sights and sounds.

Cordelia took us to a big shopping mall--4 or 5 stories high---in the heart of Guangzhou. We found some terrific prices on authentic pearls, so we bought both Tami and Allie necklaces and earrings (and one bracelet too). Tami mentioned we should give her the pearl necklace to Alison on her wedding day, and I almost fell over...."Let me pay off this trip first before we go thinking about establishing a 'wedding fund'". :)

Next, we hopped back in the van and drove to a huge inner-city marketplace where they sell just electronic stuff....stall after stall of cell phones, cameras, computers, video games etc. I have never seen so many phones in my life. Unfortunately, prices weren't much better than in the States, but we did find one thing: a 4 gigabyte memory card for our camera for 125 yuan (about $16). There was also one store that sold CDs and DVDs, so we bought some children songs in Chinese for the room.

When we got back to the hotel, we took Cordelia to lunch at a local Cantonese restaurant. I have to say that I like the Chinese cuisine in the north better....but the pidgeon we had was quite tasty. (And Tami liked it when I served the head to her on her plate).

And we've discovered Chinese cartoons today! They are really bad, a combination between Japanese animation and South Park. :) After breaking parental rule #1 (letting Allie sleep with us), we now have broken parental rule #2 (TV for toddler). Actually, it wasn't very much, just enough to give Tami a five minute break to take a shower. I told Tami that we are in survival mode on this trip, so any tool we can use---television or otherwise---is fine with me. Allie was really fascinated by the images, and even went up a few times to touch the screen. I'm hoping she won't do that to my 42 inch DLP when we get home (yeah, right)....

I am finding that the upload to Flickr is much easier tonight, so I'm loading as many pictures as I can. Keep in mind that they are going to be way out of order, since I will go back and post some from the first leg of our trip in Beijing....but you'll be able to get a better sense of our trip.

And we discovered one more thing today: badminton is just huge over here. We have found crowds of people on the island hitting birdie after birdie back at each other. Some have nets, others just love to whack them at their partner, which more often than not is older. The other big past-time on the island is a form of "hacky-sack", except it's not a sack at all, but a rubber circle with feathers sticking out of it. Very curious, but these people are just so good at keeping it in the air for a long time. I am hoping to get some shots of that this week too.

Tomorrow is a tour of a Buddhist temple, and a huge park/garden in the heart of Guangzhou.

Thank you for all your prayers, friends. I can see that Allie is bonding more and more with us with each passing hour.