Today makes it official - Sofia is a Newsome

Today, we traveled back to the Center for Chinese Adoptions to complete the necessary paperwork and do interviews confirming that we were happy with Sofia and we wanted to adopt her. With a few strokes of the pen and verbal confirmations, Sofia became officially the latest member of the Newsome family.

The pictures above were taken just after signing the documents as we were leaving the building.


After we left the Chinese Adoption Center, we went to a 1,500 year old temple called Guangzhou Liurong Temple. The main temple is the tall one below. It was nine stories tall (I walked all the way to the top - The boys made it four stories and I had to take them back down). Stairs took you up but then you had to walk around outside of the temple to get to the next stair case (that's why the boys didn't like it). The lady included in the pictures below is Judy, she is our guide while we are in China - she's been absolutely GREAT! Judy has been our blessing here. She arranges all our transportion (in a private bus just for our family) and is educating us on the history of this city, country, and other information.

The stair photo is from inside the temple and the city photos are taken from the top of the temple.

While at the temple (where there are actually several temples, a rare week day occurance happended and there was a "service" going on with the Monks and people chanting their prayers. It was incredible. The main service was held in the following temple where three Buddas reside. After the service a monk blessed Sofia and allowed us to have our picture taken with him inside the temple.

( We have several other pictures we'll share with everyone when we return home)

After a rather busy day where Sofia officially became our daughter and we visited the temple, we were off to the hotel again. ( Don't stop reading there a nice surprise in the later photos )The hotel is on Shamian Island in Guangzhou. Let me tell you a little about the city and people of this great place.

Guangzhou is located west of Hong Kong. The population of the city is approximately 12 million and its a very clean city. It is the largest city in South China (outside of Hong Kong) and is a very busy port city. Some of the buildings appear to be older but very seldom due you see any litter on the streets. The people here are incredible. They are very nice and helpful. I feel safe (even walking around at 5 AM) here.

So back to leaving the temple. On our way back to the hotel the boys had told Judy (our guide) that they were hungry. Judy had our driver make a special stop for some wonderful Chinese food specific to the boy's order - See below :

That's right, Mc Donald's. Same food and taste you expect to get back home at Mc D's. Seriously, Judy asked us to join her for a what I assume will be an exceptional Chinese dinner later in the week. After Mc D's, it was back to the hotel where Dawn took Sofia to the room for a nap and the boys and I went walking around.

The following photos are some shots I took of the boys while Sofia napped :

We closed our second day out with dinner and back to our room. Here's a photo of Sofi in the hotel lobby, tired and ready to go to bed:

We'll see what tomorrow will bring us. We have some afternoon appointments but other than that, we're free to do whatever we want.