Friday,
November 7, 2008
Today was pretty laid back; our guide asked us to stay in
the room until she could go to the police station to pick
up Maili’s passport and bring it to us to check for
accuracy one last time. We spent the day in the room
resting and packing for our morning flight to Guangzhou.
Later in the afternoon we received the translation of the
journal kept by Maili’s foster family. It is obvious that
they loved her very much and wanted the best for her. I
was able to send them photos online yesterday through a
third party so that they could see that she is happy and
well. Michelle picked us up in the evening to take us for
a walk down the street to a local restaurant, where the
food was excellent and we got a private room. I wish we
had discovered this restaurant several days ago; it was
much better than the hotel food we have been subjected to.
Maili has been her usual active, charming self today. She
is still testing the limits but not as much as yesterday.
She seems to
be starting to get the concept that no means no but she
still feels the need to check occasionally. She will start
to do something she knows she is not supposed to do and
then stop right before she does it instead of going
through with it like she has been doing. Of course poor
Holt is good and fed up with her antics and ready to send
her back to the orphanage. He has tried to be patient with
her but today his patience is wearing thin and like most
big brothers he is wishing he was once again an only
child. She wants to copy everything he does and hold his
hand to go everywhere but now that the novelty of that has
worn off he’s a little put out by the whole thing. He
likes being able to escape to Meme and Pa’s room when it
gets to be too much for him. Unfortunately Maili is
usually right behind him since she loves to go visit them
in their room. When that happens he will try to leave her
in there and come back to the room for some special time
with Mom and Dad. I know it must be difficult for him not
to be the center of attention all the time now. Being a
big brother is hard work, according to him.
I think we will all be glad for a change of scenery
tomorrow when we move on to Guangzhou to join the other
families in our travel group. Holt will have other kids to
play with once again and it will be fun to swap stories
and share experiences with the other newly formed adoptive
families. We have only run into one other adoptive family
in Tianjin, a family I met online who are with another
agency and adopted a little boy from the same orphanage.
They will be traveling to Guangzhou tomorrow as well but
we may not run into them again since they are at a
different hotel.
By tomorrow’s post we will be in Guangzhou. Hopefully the
connection will be better there, since it has been rather
unpredictable here. On a positive note, my blackberry
decided to begin receiving e-mails again; it suddenly
dumped 28 messages on me after two days of being offline.
I have no idea what was up with that but it is great to be
receiving guestbook comments and e-mails instantly again
so keep them coming.
|
I like my new necklace
Mirror mirror on the wall
Playing with the ball
Catching bubbles
This is fun! |
