Touring Guangzhou and a Meltdown

It's 6:30 am here on Monday, 4:30 pm on Sunday at home.

On Sunday we spent the morning touring Guangzhou with our agency. The weather was warm and the sun even came out. First time we've seen the sun since we've been here! Another family from our agency has joined us here in GZ. They adopted 22 month old Alice form a different province. They are Chinese Americans. They have been waiting 7 years for their daughter! She is absolutely adorable. I'm sure they will tell you worth the wait!

 

Penelope was pretty happy just hanging out in the stroller.

These were offerings people had left for the Buddha.

The architecture is amazing. I know it sounds obvious, but it really is something to think of how old everything is here. We are such a young country in comparison.

People were burning incense everywhere. Or guide told us they hope the smell attracts attention so they can be heard.

Elijah & Joshua. Adorable as ever. Love this family!

Penelope is the oldest but by far the smallest.

 

 

Monks inside the Temple. They offered a blessing for the babies. We didn't participate but it was a very interesting thing to watch!

Elijah knew what to do! So smart.

 

This was the only female Buddha.

These people brought their new Cadillac for the Monks to bless. Not kidding. Obviously as Christians, this is a completely different belief system than our own, but we certainly could appreciate the ceremony and the beauty of the area. We will be very happy to be back at FBC, thank you very much.

Next we went to the Chen Academy. The Chen family is one of the largest in China. They built this as a place for their children to study and a place to conduct family business. It is now a museum. The detail on the buildings is unbelievable.

 

This artist is actually from the Chen family. We had Penelope's name put on this beautiful scroll.

 

Penelope and Alice hanging out.

 

 

Laughing at mama!!

 

 

 

Back to the room where she had her 1st McDonalds! She liked chicken McNuggets.

 

We went out to dinner with a bunch of other adoptive families. Mexican! It was really good and so fun to visitwith other families who were all living this same experience.

We went up to the concierge lounge for a little dessert before bed. There is no diet coke in China. Only coke zero and Pepsi max. Sigh. Penelope was a happy girl. This may be my favorite picture so far!

The happiness did not last. She had a total melt down last night. She was up till 2 am screaming. We tried everything. She finally fell asleep watching Michelle Obama on TV. Thank you, FLOTUS.  Not sure what was going on with her. Maybe she didn't feel good. Maybe she was over tired. If I had to guess, I'm guessing she is grieving. Whatever she wanted, it wasn't us. More likely she wanted her crib mate and her nanny. And that's ok. Because today is a new day. Hopefully each day she will continue to grow more comfortable with us and trust us more. We haven't seen much of this face. For the most part she is calm, but really just so quiet that we don't know what her personality is like. We were a little glad to see some fire from her. Tired but glad. Today is a new day. Only 4 more days till we come home!

 

Posted with Blogsy