Wrapping it up

We are in the final stretch before heading home.  Today (Wednesday) we went to the US Consulate to give an oath and make it legal to recognize Lily as a US citizen when our flight lands in the USA.  I think there were 44 families there today, and everyone was happy to get to this point.  Lot's of congratulations to everyone, and to make it even more special, the Barrett family was in the same group as us to take the oath for Erin.

Thursday our agency representative will pick up Lily's visa, and we are scheduled to leave Guangzhou around 4:30 in the afternoon to head to Hong Kong.  We have rented a van with a driver, and are sharing it with another family in our group.  We will spend Thursday night at the hotel at the Hong Kong airport, and catch a noon flight out of Hong Kong on Friday.  We go to Chicago, then to Minneapolis.  Now I'm the one not feeling so good, so I'm hoping the prescription meds we brought with will do the trick.

Backtracking a bit, on Monday morning, we got off the island, and walked to a huge new pedestrian shopping street. Along the way, we passed by the traditional Chinese medicine wholesale market, where you could buy seahorses and starfish..

Dried herbs (I recognized a bunch of Ginseng, and Star Anise, but beyond that, would be hard pressed to know what all of this was).

And of course, live scorpions with some escaping!

After the medicine shop street, we went down the Pet shopping street. The Chinese are really into their pets now, and since most live in huge cities, they have to be small pets. Small dogs, cats, birds, fish are all popular. Rose loved seeing the puppies for sale! She wanted to adopt every pet she saw up and down the whole shopping street.

And turtles!

Auntie being silly behind the bird cages Rose was checking out.

And more puppies for pets that Rose gravitated to.

Keeping fish are quite popular too, here are a bunch of fish for aquariums.

This is the new pedestrian shopping area. But Nancy loves seeing these huge loads carried around on bicycles (which we don't see so much of any longer in China, regular vans and trucks made by Western countries are much more common now, all the old scary 3-wheeler falling apart vans are gone now).

And the Asian Games are coming to Guangzhou next month. Rose is posing in front of a display of the mascots for the Asian Games.

The "girls" went shopping for pearls at wholesale in this huge shopping mall, but this is a picture of them in the bead store that they went to next after the Pearl store.

Auntie M had her birthday on Monday, and the White Swan delivered this delicious cake to her room to help her celebrate. She made it a party, and called up Papa Johns for a delivery (by bicycle to the White Swan!) and had all of our travel group gather up in her room for the evening.

Molly, our guide thinks that this red couch at the White Swan is much prettier than the traditional one down by the Swan room. Here's our whole family.

And the two sisters.

Isn't Rose so pretty?

Next we did the traditional White Swan Waterfall group pictures, heres some of the girls together..

Even the White Swan has the Asian Games mascots in their lobby for the big event..

Auntie hanging out with Lily wearing her "Auntie is my BFF" shirt.

On Wednesday, we went to the US Consulate offices in Guangzhou (apparently moving yet again for more space sometime next year). Along the way, this huge Western style Apartment building captured our view..

But no pictures allowed at the US Consulate. 

I started this post yesterday (Wednesday) and am now posting it today (Thursday).  We had a nice breakfast with our travel group, and have some packing done, and are going to go as a family to the pool for one last swim.  Lily likes the pool, and of course Rosebud LOVES the pool!

Checking out at 4:00 pm today, don't know if we will be posting again before we get home.  Home sweet home!  Keep us in your prayers for a safe and uneventful flight home, especially for Rose and Lily - it's a long flight (14.5 hours from Hong Kong to Chicago) and then a 4 hour layover until our flight from Chicago to Mpls.  Thankfully we all seem to be feeling well, and are ready to come home!