Before we left the Garden Hotel this morning, we asked our friend Wade if he would take a picture of us in front of the waterfall at the hotel - kind of our farewell picture.
The trip from Guangzhou would have been great, had our driver not been practicing for the Indy 500. I am sure he was travelling well above the speed limit and he was weaving and bobbing through cars and trucks. Unfortunately, all that weaving and bobbing got the best of Hannah and she was not able to hold onto breakfast (she has never had any trouble with motion sickness before), Lois had taken Dramamine and did OK, but definitely was not feeling her best. Andrew, on the other hand sat in the backseat (with Lois) and scarfed animal crackers all the way to Hong Kong - I guess that answers the motion sickness question (at least for now). I did OK and tried to console Hannah, keep a wet towel on her forehead, ... She finally fell asleep about an hour from the Hotel ... Once at the Hotel, she seemed to be fine ... There is just no easy way to get home from Guangzhou with 2 kids and luggage - all the options have pros and cons. We thought the van would be the best way, and it might have been, had we not had Dale Earnhardt, Jr for a driver ...
Oh well, the adoption process is a journey and this was all part of our journey - one day we will look back at this and laugh about our trip to Hong Kong ... We arrived at the Hotel around 2:00 and started looking into our options for the afternoon. The kids were absolutely stir-crazy and needed to get out and burn off some energy, so we elected to go to Victoria Park. I can HIGHLY recommend this park for families, particularly with children. There are several well-stocked children's play areas scattered about the park with lots of different things for the kids to do - it was great and just what we needed. We let Hannah and Andrew run around and slide and play until about 4:00 or so, then started the hunt for dinner. Here are a couple of pictures.
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| There was a "model boat pool" next to the playground where men were racing really fast boats. You can see the rooster tail from the boat in the top left - Andrew was mesmerized ... |
A couple of funny stories from today. In the Taxi from the park to the mall, Hannah asked why I was sitting up front. I told her someone needed to tell the driver where to go (or in our case, hand him a pre-written piece of paper with the name of the mall in Chinese :>) and also to pay him. She, of course asked "Why", and I asked her if she had any money to pay him. She of course said "No", to which the driver responded (in perfect English, mind you), "Then you will have to stay in my Taxi and clean up". We all laughed (and were a bit surprised that he was following our conversation; in China, you never expect the local people to be able to understand you, I guess that is not the case in Hong Kong :>) The other funny story is that I popped in one of the "Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness" DVDs, just to make sure it would work on the computer before the long ride tomorrow, and guess what? It's all in English! No Chinese voice over - there are Chinese sub-titles, but no Chinese audio. I checked all of the DVDs we bought, and they are all the same. Are you kidding me? We bought DVDs in China and they don't have Chinese on them? Who knew - it never even occurred to me to check the language on the DVDs ... Oh well. Hannah has been watching cartoons in Chinese and still seems mesmerized by them, even though she can't understand them; hopefully, Andrew will feel the same way about English cartoons ...
And so there you have it. Tomorrow we will say goodbye to Andrew's homeland (really we did that today, though I guess technically Hong Kong is now part of China). It is sad and exciting all at the same time. Lois told Andrew that we were going to fly on a plane tomorrow for a long time and go to America, and he seemed to understand - he was very well prepared by his Foster family and we are grateful for that. I am sure there will be more grieving once we get home and the reality of no longer being in China sinks in - nothing will be familiar, the language, the faces, the smells, the sights, the sounds, ... It is just mind-boggling to think of all the changes Andrew has been through in his short 4 years.
There have been a few bumps in the road the past two weeks, but mostly lots of great memories and most importantly, a new family of four has been born. Thank you for following along, for praying and for encouraging us. We would appreciate your continued prayers as we start our long journey home tomorrow (a little over 24 hours total). Particularly for Hannah and Andrew (who does not like to wear seat belts, sigh ...) That is a long, confining flight for a four year old used to running around all the time ...
We hope to keep this blog somewhat up-to-date, but I remember how hard it was to do that when we got home with Hannah; with two at home, who knows ... But keep checking back, we'll eventually post something :>)
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