Greetings from Guangzhou

We arrived in Guangzhou yesterday evening. What a total difference between here and Nanchang. Guangzhou is so westernized! The streets are clean, there is a lot of shopping, KFC, Pizza Hut and a ton of Americans! Anyone who adopts in China stays here in Guangzhou at the White Swan Hotel. We are really glad that we were able to stay in Nanchang near where she was born. It was the real deal and gave us a first hand look of a chinese city viturally untouched by western influences. We had a beautiful hotel and the food was excellent too!

So here we are at the White Swan Hotel and it really is five star. There is a elevator attendent on every floor so wheather you need to go up or down, the attendant pushes the elevator button for you. There is a huge American breakfast buffet set up on the first floor. We enjoyed it but were kind of missing the Chinese buffet in Nanchang. Oh well - we won't be choosey.

Today we took the baby to her Dr's appointment. They weighed her (20lbs) and took her height (28inches). Then they checked out her ears, nose and throat and last but not least they checked out her tummy and heart beat. According to these Dr's, she has a good clean bill of health! We have an appointment the day after we arrive home to get her checked out by our own peditrician. Also, over the last few years we got to know a couple, Catherine and Thom. Thom is the guy James went out with looking for a bar to "tip" back a few - if you remember James' blog; and Catherine is a peditrician so we're really fortunate to have her in case there is anything medically that we might need her advise on etc. They're a very nice couple and they have a "cute as a button" daughter , LiLi. So...anyway, after the appointment, we walked around the streets and the came back to get ready for the famous "Red Couch" picture. We dressed her up in a traditional Chinese dress that we had hand made the other day. Oh my God - She looks absolutely adorable in it. Okay, scroll down and take a look. She was so happy in her dress :O). Then, we went to a Buddist Temple where the babies were blesssed by a monk. That was really cool. We all had to take our shoes off before we entered and the knealt down in front of the alter. Behind the alter were three big Buddahs that represented Past, Present and Future. While the monk did some chanting, he blessed all the babies with this little green leaf that had some type of liquid on it. Actually, he sprinkeled us all with the liquid - so we're all blessed by the monks. It was quite an experience to see and be part of this ceremony. After that, we walked around and took pictures outside and even got some shots of the monks. We were not allowed to take any pictures in the temple.

We're only here in Guangzhou for one more day to get some shopping done. Then the next few days we'll be traveling back to Beijing and then finally home. So...to sign off on our very last blog, we want to thank everyone that checked in with us, we really enjoyed all your comments. We're happy that we could "take you along" on our trip.

We've had such a great time on this journey and finally holding our precious angel in our arms was by far, the best part of it!!! We can't wait for you to meet her - you're going to love her to pieces!

See you soon.

Love - Three Peas in a Pod

P.S. - okay, this might not be our last blog - we just had to buy more time with the internet service so I have until tomorrow night - so...please check it out and post more comments - we love to hear from everyone

P.S.S. - did you enjoy the Super Bowl? We were thinking about everyone having a good time at the parties. Hope you had a good time :o)