Palm Trees and Paradise!

Wow, Guangzhou is awesome and so is this hotel. The Guandong province we are in right now is actually even further South than the Jiangxi province we just left. This province faces the Southern coast of China. We have palm trees everywhere and a nice breeze. The weather is great. The hotel is unbelievable, I'll post some example pics of the interior. According to a Chinese business newspaper China has begun to embrace Christmas at least from a standpoint of capitalizing on it. They made 8.1billion Yuan from Christmas last year. This success must be well-known because our hotel and the surrounding businesses are all decorated and emphasizing Christmas. Neat. Breakfast was very Americanized and delicious. Everywhere around the hotel are shops catering to Westerners. You can get baby clothes and kids clothes made from silk or cotton, paintings, have your name written in Chinese on various products, you can get bracelets, jewelry, jade, pearls, amazing carved stone chess sets, Chinese wall hangings, Chinese boxes, dozens of different hand-painted porcelain items such as tea cups, tea sets, vases, and more. Everything is reasonably priced and somewhat negotiable. Jamie and I did some more shopping today and were able to pick up a bunch of things without breaking the bank too badly.

Shamian island where we are staying has a Western European architecture style- it is very cosmopolitan looking. Lining the street are palm trees and neat statues that were apparently put in 2 years ago to please tourists, it worked- they're neat. I'll show one. There are shops below large buildings and in the middle of the street is a narrow but long park. Kids, adults, and seniors congregate in groups in the park. In the morning you will see adults practicing Tai Chi which is a non-violent martial art they use just for exercise. Others stand in rows and in uniform precision dance to music they bring along in a boom box. It is so neat to see all the activity. I saw some seniors actually exercising and stretching by leaning on some of the kids play equipment in the park. One older lady actually hung from the monkey bars as part of her exercise and stretching. It is so interesting how these people love to congregate outside together in social circles to exercise and talk together. We found a cool Western hamburger joint called "Lucy's" that is famous with Americans who come in and after we enjoyed that feast we saw in another nearby park some people ballroom dancing outside under an awning to some music they brought along. Just fascinating!

Today we had an early morning of going to an adoption medical center to get Noelle examined as a pre-Visa requirement. We also got her picture taken as part of that process. We were able to pretty much take it easy today, Jamie even had a little nap.

Noelle is doing well, she is totally recognizing her name now and she is finally turning over from stomach to back. She is still struggling with having "tummy time" which is developmentally important but we are trying to just make that happen anyway. Since she just sat in a walker all her life there are going to be delays we just have to work through. Overall we have been pretty blessed with few of the delays though. Her speech could be delayed as well since she only started hearing English a week ago, we'll see. We are working with her a lot. She loves to be around adults and kids. We got to have some more play time with her friend Lilly today. Lilly is the daughter of a Christian couple we met who live near us in Arlington! There are two other couples who are adopting along with us who live locally in Fort Worth and Carrollton.

When we first got Noelle it would take her more than 30 minutes to drink a bottle. Jamie had this very sad "hunch" that since this was the only way Noelle could be held by an adult she purposely learned to drink slowly. This was devastating to think that this could be true- so sad to think she would have to learn to drink her bottle slowly to get any attention. Well, she now is held all the time and is drinking her bottle in 10 minutes. Jamie's guess was right, this is so sad that she just had to survive like that but I am so glad that we got her at 9 months so she didn't have to deal with a lack of attention any longer.

Tomorrow we go to the pearl market since some of the couples want to buy pearls and then we are going to another porcelain shop.

Hey by the way the shots of water are from our window!!!