Day 11 - WOW, What a busy day..... with a great ending

It's great to be back in Guangzhou. What a difference two years make. The kindness of the people is the same (as it is everywhere in China) but the air quality is not - - It's dramatically improved from the last time we were here. You can see the blue skies and white clouds this time. The population is now over 20 million and you'll see later what the translates into during our shopping trip.

Today was a very busy day with several planned group activities. We jammed the following into 6 hours. We visited: The Chen Family Academy, The Six Banyan Temple, The Pearl Market, The Jade Store, and had lunch at a great 5 star restaurant overlooking one a park and the mountains.

Here's a few pictures from our visit to The Chen Family Academy (The center picture includes Uncle Morgan - our guide/friend from AAC Adoption Agency and Vickie and Faith Grows):

The following pictures are from the Six Banyan Temple. I love this place as it leaves you feeling very calm. While at the temple, we had a blessing for Lize - which is rare to get a blessing from a Monk when you're not a Buddhist. We did this with Sofi as well and we treat it as a way to say goodbye to their past religion and life (while we will never take away their heritage and ancestral culture and once their old enough and want to learn about it, we'll help them in any way we can including trips back to China) and moving forward to a future of promise, hope and faith.






Then we were off to lunch (Good thing I didn't have any of those "CRAZY" shorts on I don't think they would have let me in - by the way, I love the comments about them). Here's some pictures of us and the location ....what a great view - Thanks Morgan!

After lunch, we were off to do some shopping. We purchased some pearls for the girls. You get a chance to see what a not so busy street looks like on a Sunday afternoon at the mall entrance (those of you who know Dawn well know how excited she was with the small crowd)....

We got back to the island we're staying on and then went shopping for Lize's squeaky shoes. Once we got them on, she was so excited. She was running and walking all over the place just to hear the "squeak" - she especially loved the hallways in the hotel. Here's a couple of pictures:

Our day ended with a dinner with Judy. As you may recall, (for those who followed our journey to Sofi two years ago) Judy was our coordinator during Sofi's adoption who became our friend. She and her son met us for dinner on the island at one of Judy's favorite restaurants.

A funny thing happened during dinner. Lize began saying a couple of phrases that she's been saying quite often and Judy busted out laughing. When we asked what was so funny, she told us that Lize was saying, " It's mine! and I want it!" Judy was impressed with how smart she was for only being two.

Another funny thing happened on our walk back to the hotel after dinner. Judy's son touched Lize's hair and Lize whipped head around and said, " Don't touch my hair". Judy again busted out laughing and once she interpreted what Lize had said in Chinese, we did the same. What's really funny about this is that Lize tells Dawn this every time she tries to put her "pretties" in her hair. (we thought she was just using Chinese baby talk.....what do we know?)

Here's a picture of us before going to dinner: