Saturday, November 6, 2010
WELCOME TO GUANGZHOU!

We had an early day today. All of the families met at 9:30am to go to the medical clinic down the street. We stopped at a little shop to make the visa pictures. Then we went to the clinic. It was chaotic, stressful and pretty much a joke. For the ear, nose and throat exam pretty much they just looked at her and marked "passed" on her sheet of paper...no real exam. During the eye exam, I could tell that she had a harder time with her left eye and they wrote "passed" on her paper. Then, the kicker was the doctors. She had 2 doctors that looked her over from top to bottom and their diagnosis was cerebral palsy. Not!! They tried to convince me that arthrogryposis is a condition and cerebral palsy is a disease that causes the condition. Not!! Anyway, after going back and forth for a while, they finally agreed to change her paper to arthrogyrposis as a condition and not put a diagnosis of disease so that our paperwork would match up and we would not have any problems with the American Consulate. I was very thankful to them and said "thank you" in Chinese and then we went on our way. Not before she received 4 shots + her TB test. Bless her heart! She did well on the first 2 and then cried on the last 2. I felt so sorry for her. But once we had lunch, she perked up and has been fine ever since. She was so brave through the whole thing. I was so proud of her,..being poked and prodded is no fun!

After the exam, we ate lunch at Subway (Woo hoo!). Annalyn likes the meatball subs! I think she likes any kind of meatball. She liked meatballs in Wuhan too. We are very blessed to have 3 parents in our group that speak Chinese!! One parent is Chinese who married an Irishman.

It was really neat seeing all the parents with their children today. To me, every child looked like at least one parent very well. It was truly amazing. Today, we saw just how truly blessed we were. The babies all seem to be doing pretty good, but the older children in the group are 5, 7, 8 (Annalyn) and 10. The 5 year old is deaf and is doing really well. The 7 year old is having a really hard time! She has been in the orphanage for 7 years!! God love her. And the 10 year old is doing so so...not near as adjusted as Annalyn. Her parents said that she was really scared the first few days, but is doing some better now. Everyone was amazed at how well Annalyn interacted with us and her sister. It's like she has always been with us. It's truly amazing. I know that one day it will hit her, so we are enjoying it while we can! She is truly a joy...a little hyperactive at times, but not all the time. She is very considerate, generous and just has an overall sweet and funny personality.

The island that we are on is just super and gorgeous! We LOVE it! Everything is within walking distance! Love it! Oh, I almost forgot, did I mention that we are on the 27th floor!! out of 28!! LOL! It is not helping my sinuses! LOL! Yesterday, I was sneezing a lot (humm, from the smog, cigarette smoke, too much processed food, or the enormous amount of different kinds of flowers in our hotel?? Who knows? probably all of the above!) anyway, it just exploded last night when we arrived at the hotel and today has been pretty bad. Here I was worried that Mike would get sick and I am the one with the allergy problems...LOL! There is another man in our group with the same type allergy symptoms. We keep passing the tissues between the two of us! LOL!