Ready to come home!!

Well, sorry we haven't been very good with posts this week.  It's been a tough week (and internet access is sporadic in our hotel room).  Our little Meimei has been doing a lot of grieving and dealing with anxiety and sickness.  Nighttime has been especially tough.  She hasn't been able to get into a real sleep until sometime between 1:00 and 4:00 am each night.  Tough on the Mama too since she has to provide almost 100% of the care and comfort.  Tough on the Baba as well because at home guess who puts the kids to bed almost every night and is on nighttime duty every night.  That's always been the Baba's job and he loves it.  But we ARE making progress.  Today she let Baba carry her for about a block while we were on a walk together (first time with no tears).  It was even her idea!  We had a lot of fun together tonight being silly and and playing and twirling around and playing hide and seek while Mama was packing and resting.

Tomorrow we fly home!  We are so excited to see our Naomi and Kalea again!  Being apart from them for 15 days (including Christmas) has been the hardest part of the entire experience.  Harder even than dealing with all the emotional challenges of a newly adopted 3-year old from a communist orphanage.  Tomorrow morning early we fly from Guangzhou to Shanghai, then a six-hour layover, then an 11-hour flight to Honolulu.  We're pretty nervous about how Meimei will do on the plane.  But, one way or another, in a few hours it will be over!  At least this stage of the adventure, anyway.  China has been fascinating and amazing.  We've especially loved Guangzhou.  But now it's definitely time to go home!  Hui Jia!!

Our hearts are full of gratitude for the love, prayers, and generosity of so many family members, friends, neighbors, and ward members who have made this whole thing possible.  Especially my angel parents who put aside their own lives and came out to Hawaii on their own dime to stay with and take care of our girls.  These things don't go unnoticed in Heaven.  "For inasmuch as ye have done it onto one of the least of these... ye have done it onto me."  Because of all of you there is one less orphan in the world tonight.

At the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou.

How do you get the tigers to be active for the visitors?  Throw chunks of raw meat at them.

Feeding the giraffes.

 

So... you want me to slip?  As long as I'm careful about it?

On the "safari on wheels" train.  The bears and tigers are scary.  Can you tell?

What he saw...

What she saw.

Alright, Naomi, there's a "squatty potty"

Guangzhou from our hotel room.

From the street market by our hotel, in the medicinal district. Yes, those are dried seahorses.  Unfortunately, my picture of the dried cockroaches didn't turn out.

The Six Bayan Trees temple.

We took a Pearl River dinner boat ride.