Swearing at the Consulate

Okay, it's not what it sounds like. For those of you who've been here and done that you know what I mean. For those that haven't, part of the adoption process is the appointment at the American Consulate here in Guangzhou. All of the parents from the group go to the consulate at the same time and receive their child's visa stamp for the passport and swear an oath as a group that the information that has been provided is correct. We all stand up and raise our right hand and do the "swearing in" at the same time. It was pretty cool. The drive to the consulate took longer than the actual swearing in itself. Note the food delivery "vehicle" parked by our bus just outside the consulate; picture of Paul, Avery, Kevin, Sydney & Piper after the swearing in; picture of our little ham showing off her "magnet earrings". Thanks to Robyn for the pictures. :) After we returned, Robyn, her mom, and Sydney and I decided to take a taxi into town to try to find another Olympic store. We did manage to get a cab and get to the shopping area where the store was supposed to be?. However, we did not find the store. Anyway, not quite what we had in mind. There was a teeny, tiny little store with a few coins and such. Definately the smallest we've seen. What we did find was that we do not communicate well in Chinese, even with our miming. Also, there were few Chinese people we found that could speak even some broken English. All in all it was an interesting adventure, but not very successful. We are packing up tonight and leaving EARLY tomorrow morning at 5:15am. Our luggage has to be outside of our room at 4:30am. That is ridiculous! Oh well, looks like we'll have lot's of time to sleep on the loooooong plane ride home and I did pack along the Benadryl! :) See you all soon. We arrive in OKC @ 7:00pm Thursday evening.