Day 9 Dalian

Another fun day! This is our last day of no work, travel or paperwork. Tomorrow we will meet Kathy and the driver at 9:00 to go to Tiger Beach and then will check out of the hotel in time to catch the 11:40 bus back to Shenyang. Poor AiJun is not looking forward to that bus again since he had motion sickness last time. I brought Bonine and he took it before the last bus ride, but it did not seem to help. We'll try it again tomorrow and he will eat a lighter breakfast. We will arrive in Shenyang at about 4:00 and will have the evening free. I think the dumpling restaurant will be on our agenda again. That was the best meal we have had in China. We have to go back to Shenyang to pick up his passport and some other document. These things have to be done in the city that is the capital of the province whereas other things have to be done in the city in which the child was abandoned which is Dalian for us. On Monday Kathy will pick up the documents and passports for us and we will fly in the evening to Guangzhou.

Today we visited another city park which was absolutely beautiful. It had lovely gardens, a fishing pond, and all kinds of boats and water actitivites. There were many statues and a huge "happy buddha" which seemed to be made of brass. This park also had rides so AiJun has his first roller coaster ride which Jake coaxed him into. We were a little worried because of the motion sickness, but he was fine. This was also his first experience fishing and he caught a fish right away! That is something he definitely wants to do in California. It has been nice to do kid friendly activities the last two days because there is a lot of sitting around with paperwork times too. AiJun has been very proud to show us his city of Dalian and it truly is a superb place. Last night we ate at a revolving restaurant on top of a new hotel across the street. We had such great views of the city and the lights were awesome.

We have so many beautiful photographs to share with you, but we are having a hard time getting them on the blog on our laptop in this hotel. Tomorrow we will be back at the Intercontinental in Shenyang and we know it works fine there. Our guide told us that blogs are basically not allowed in China so perhaps this is why we are struggling. We will upload what we can today and then more tomorrow.

Dave and I both have slight colds - no big deal and not surprising since we have been in so many different places and climates in just a week. It was really cold here yesterday - felt like a Chicago wind, but today is mild again. It will be in the 50's in Shenyang tomorrow and then back to the mid 80's in Guangzhou the next day.

Kathy (our wonderful guide) came up to our room this afternoon and went through all of AiJun's school books etc. that he brought with him. It seems that he has been an excellent student and it is nice to have some of his work to show the staff at his new school. We encountered a book table at the park today and we bought two books that he wanted and he loves reading them. We will buy some more Mandarin books in Guangzhou and we are fortunate that our community library at home has Mandarin books. Kathy also translated for us a conversation with AiJun about his American name being Gage and it is fine with him. We were happy about that because we really like the name but, of course, would have allowed him to choose something else if he did not like it.

I had another fit of giggles at the restaurant where we had lunch today. There were so many horrible sounding things on the menu, I was sorry they gave us one that was translated to English. Some examples: duck jaw, sliced bullfrog, braised fungus and jellyfish pee. I am sensitive to the fact that it may be insulting to laugh at these things, but sometimes I just lose it. I know it is going to be a challenge at home to fix things that Gage will like and that we are comfortable eating. He really likes hot things so I will have to season some of his foods separately.

Thanks for following our journey. It means so much to us to have this connection with the precious people in our lives. Your love and prayers have helped so very much. We love this boy and look forward to forever with him. We'll be in touch tomorrow from Shenyang.