Day 9 - Guanzhou

[Darese writing now]
Well, after yesterday’s blue mouth disease scare, today was calm. Oh, Joe didn’t share that fun story yesterday? Well before dinner, Hannah had rolled over and bumped her mouth on something. She was fine, but as Joe was checking on her, he realized that the roof of her mouth was bright blue. He kind of freaked out and thought we should immediately find the hotel doctor or call the pediatrician at home. I suggested we at least check in with our friends here first to see if we might be missing something. When we called Jill, she asked if Hannah had been chewing on anything as her daughter Kailee puts a lot of things in her mouth. She had previously been playing with a blue tag on our luggage, and the mystery was solved – it was a piece of bright blue tag. Needless to say, Joe is still being teased about the awful blue mouth disease!

Today our guide David met us at 10 AM and we headed out for a little touring. We went to a beautiful Buddhist temple in Guangzhou, the Six Banyan Tree Pagoda, where a monk blessed all of the girls. It was very sweet and the girls were very quiet during the ceremony. From there, it was off to more shopping. We went to a large mall/marketplace and saw jade and pearl wholesalers and many different types of shops. The trip ended with another visit to Pizza Hut!

This afternoon we visited a lot of the little shops around the hotels. They very much cater to the visiting families and offer many great deals on wonderful Chinese clothes, arts, crafts, and pretty much anything else you want.

[Joe writing now]
Okay, Darese is done writing from now on. I actually just came in from enjoying a Cuban cigar with Bill, one of the other new dads. It was really good, and sure beats those cigars we smoked in high school and college that used to burn your mouth!!

It looks like Darese covered the day, and the blue mouth thing WAS a big deal when you're dealing with a 10 month old from a country that you'd never been to before, so please give me a break with that, okay??

Tomorrow, our guide will deliver all of our paperwork to the U.S. Consulate here in Guanzhou. It will be a big day for us, and we're hoping everything goes smoothly. Assuming everything is fine, we'll have our official swearing in on Tuesday, and pick up Hannah's visa then.

We didn't take a lot of pictures today, but here are a few. We hope everyone is well, and look forward to being home Wednesday afternoon!!

Joe and Hannah (and Darese, too, I guess)