Today we went on a Guangzhou city tour with several families from CCAI (our adoption agency).  Every family traveling to China for an adoption enters through a port city (Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong) depending on where your child is in China.  Since Molly Kate is from the Guangdong province (southern China) we entered through Hong Kong with one other family.  7 other families entered through Beijing.  After 2 or 3 days touring your port city, you travel to your child’s province and pick up your child.  Families typically spend 4-5 days in their child’s province before flying to Guangzhou, the capitol city of the Guangdong province.  Every adoption trip ends in Guangzhou because that is where the American Consulate’s office is located.  Each family must apply for their child’s visa and take an oath at the Consulate’s office before leaving China.  Since Molly Kate’s province is the same as where the American Consulate is located, we were able to stay in Guangzhou for the majority of our trip (short of our 2 days in Hong Kong).  All of that to explain why our group suddenly went from 2 families to 9 families. 🙂

On our city tour we made three stops.  The first stop was a Buddhist Temple. The temple is 1500 years old. It is still an active temple and there were people inside lighting incense and praying to many of the different Buddhas.  The second stop was the Ancestral Temple of the Chen Family.  They had many different rooms that you could look through – traditional furniture, ivory and bone carvings, embroidery, and arts and crafts.  Our final stop was the Provincial Arts and Crafts market.  It had very nice traditional Chinese arts and crafts – everything from jade jewelry, traditional dress clothes and shoes, tea sets, etc… The list could go on and on.  We got back to the hotel around 12:45.  Molly Kate did great.  She rides pretty well in the stroller but likes to be out of it at times too.  She still loves to walk around holding our hands but today she wanted to be held. All she had to do was put those little hands up in the air and she got what she wanted. 🙂

Tonight we ate dinner with the same group from CCAI.  Our two guides took us to Macau Street restaurant.  They said it was Portugese and Cantonese food.  Zach and I had secretly joked that we would probably be stopping by McDonald’s on our way home. 🙂  After spending two hours there, we both agree that it was our best meal yet!  It was also great to sit around the table and talk to super nice people that are on the same journey we are on. A great end to a very good day. 🙂

 This is the happy Buddha at the entrance to the temple.

150 year old leaning pagoda.

Molly and I in front of the Buddhas.

 

Molly Kate and I outside of the house of Chen.

 It took them 8 years to build the house and you can see why when you notice the tiny details everywhere.

Pretty girl happy in the stroller.

 

 She was a Mommy’s girl this morning and wasn’t sure about Daddy holding her.

 

 But this afternoon when we got home, she quickly turned into a Daddy’s girl.  She loved playing with him in the hotel room and “wrestling” on the bed. 🙂

 BIG smiles

 

What was left of our meal that was served family style. I don’t know what anything was called but it was SO good!

 Molly Kate started reaching for us a lot today.  She also loves this marble floor right outside our hotel door.  It takes us forever to get her in the room. She loves walking barefoot on it and hearing her feet smack the floor. 🙂