May 24, 2007

Site Seeing




When you look at these pictures, start at the bottom and work your way up to go chronologically. We started our trip in Beijing seeing Tiananmen Square with the famous picture of Chairman Mao. This led us into the Forbidden City where the Ming and Qing dynasties had their palaces from 1421 to 1924.
We included the picture of the tiny car to show how different traffic is here. I am truly shocked that I haven't seen an accident yet. Our guide told us that there is no word for excuse me here, and you can tell when you are in a crowd or a traffic merge. Pedestrians, motorcycles, bikes, buses... come within inches of each other regularly.
The next picture is of one of the Olympic Stadiums being built for 2008.
Next, you see the Great Wall which we made it to the top of with our friends from Dallas, The Nelsons.
Next, you see us arriving at the airport in Guangzhou which is where we have been for the past 11 days.
All the rest of the pictures are taken in Guangzhou, you see a typical looking apartment building. Apparently very few people live in single family dwellings here. There are some schools right by our hotel and it is fun to see the kids march/dance in unison. The picture on the bus that we spent so much time on is of our guide Rui as she passes out our official adoption papers. The next sideways picture is of the 9 story high tower at the Six Banyan Trees Temple which we climbed ducking through the stairwells all the way. Above that is at the same temple where all of our babies received a blessing from a monk. The top picture was taken at an unbelievably colorful garden. We included the picture of Suzy with the Chinese lady because whenever we went off of the Shamian Island where we are staying, we wore these badges around our neck that explained in Chinese where we were from and that we planned to be loving parents to our adopted daughters. Inevitably, the response would be a thumbs up with a big smile. They also wanted to touch the babies which we were told is because they think the girls have good luck.




















































































































1 comment:

Rhonda Jeanne said...

Toby looks very confused in these pictures....did you tell him that y'all were really jetting off to Hawaii for 2nd honeymoon? (kidding, of course)
Ellie is just adorable. I wish a could squeeze her!