About Time

I know... It's about time I posted... We've been home for 11 days now and I think I am just now catching my breath. The first 5 days home are a blurr -- gosh that jet lag and time change is a killer! Just about the time I thought I had it licked, it got me again.

The trip home was LONG... Did I say LONG? Let me say LONG again. The girls did really great all things considered. I on the other hand was over it. And just as our final plane pulled into New Orleans 30 minutes early, we sat on the tarmac for oh 30 minutes waiting for another plane to leave our gate. I thought Tony and I were going to stand up and scream! But enough of that... We are all home safe and sound.

Emma is absolutely beautiful and doing so well. She's much more verbal than Mia was which scares me to death because Mia is SO verbal now. Emma's first English words were mama (that's the same in Chinese), boo (she was playing peek-a-boo with Zach), Bye-Bye Daddy, Prissy (but say it with a B and minus the R) and last night as Tony was tickling her belly, she very clearly said "Stop It!" and laughed out loud. It was hilarious -- and the more we laughed the more she'd say it.

Here's some highlights from the past several days...

Emma got the hang of opening presents in less than 3 seconds -- much to Mia's disappointment as she was hoping to "help" her little sister open her Christmas and birthday gifts from the family. Check out the Sonya Lee Tea Set from Aunt Katie...


She immediately sat on one of the little chairs!

Emma loves music and banging on her new xylophone from Peter, Kristin, Sara and Chloe.

She's a peanut -- about the same size at 26 months as Mia was at 19 months -- so sometimes it's hard to remember she's 2 years old. Even at 2, walking in high heels seems a little much, but this little priss sure can strut her stuff.

There's not much "peace" around here... but Dad won this round!

Cousin Alex came over for Emma's first sleepover. Alex was so helpful and Emma took right to her. You can tell Alex has a little brother -- she's really good with little ones.

No it's now Halloween, but a girl should be able to dress up anytime!

Heading Home in the Morning

We are about to walk out the door to head to the U.S. Consulate for the official swearing in... Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed and if I remember correctly this is a rather non-eventful end to a very long journey. Emma won't officially be a U.S. citizen until we touch down on U.S. soil (in Minneapolis) on Friday and go through Customs there. We'll be sure to take pictures of that one.

This will be our last post before heading home. My internet expires (paying by the day/week at the hotel) in about 2 hours and we won't renew since we leave the hotel at 5:45am in the morning. Our flight departs Guangzhou Friday, January 16th at 8:30am. We fly through Tokyo, switch planes to Minneapolis, change planes again and head to New Orleans. We'll arrive in New Orleans at 4:20pm on Friday, January 16th. Crazy, huh? We travel for something like 23 hours yet, we get there the same day we leave. Who says time travel doesn't exist?

Love you all... can't wait to get home!

Yun Tai Garden

After picture taking on the Red Couches, we visited the Yun Tai Garden. It was a spectacular day -- and the grounds beautiful. Guangzhou is so similar to Louisiana climate-wise, it's uncanny. Even the landscaping is similar -- there's everything from ginger, to sweet olive to camelia's. I even saw Mexican heather and lariope as ground covers.

Isn't this a great picture of one of the groundskeepers?

This is the four of us being silly -- making funny faces like those on the totem pole.

Now this is a teapot!

The Red Couch

Today was Red Couch Picture Day. This is a tradition all families staying at the White Swan participate in. All the adopted kids don traditional Chinese clothing and get their pictures taken individually and with their group on the infamous red couches.
Here's our beauties... and the four of us!

Buddhist Temple & Qing Ping Market

Yesterday morning we visited the Buddhist Temple in Guangzhou. There's a few, but our guide, Helen, chose this one as it's famous for it's Six Banyon Trees. It was beautiful and peaceful. And barring the one obvious and most important difference between Buddhism and Christianity, their are similarities between the faiths. The Buddhists are big into incense and they light three sticks and offer those up representing three lives -- past, present and future.

There are 108 Buddhas altogether with one big Buddha whose over it all. Out of the 108 Buddhas, there is only one female Buddha.

There are male and female monks -- they live at seperate temples. Becoming a monk is a personal choice; and even children can decide to become monks and go and live at the temple for training and education. Monks live on donations only... lay people make monetary and food contributions on which the monks rely entirely. In preparation for Chinese New Year, volunteers and lay people were everywhere cleaning the temple, airing out cushions, scrubbing the floors. Due to all the work going on, there were no services but there were plenty of folks there lighting incense and praying individually.

Afterwards, we walked through the Qing Ping market which is just across the water from Shamian Island where we are staying. It's an open air market with hundreds of vendors selling all kinds of stuff... from mushrooms, to herbs, to medicinal teas to mushrooms, to live animals... for adoption purposes only!

Those are deer tendons... complete with toes still intact!

It was really neat to see... a bit confusing because there is stall after stall after stall with each vendor selling the same thing, but apparently they all do a significant amount of business as all Chinese pharmacies buy here as well as buyers from other parts of China. Mia wanted to buy a puppy so bad... thank goodness customs won't allow it as I think that was the only thing that saved us!

Late yesterday afternoon, I took an excursion with Suzy and Cathy. We took a cab to an electronics mart where we racked up on games and dvds. We took the subway back to Carrefour for luggage to bring all our treasures home on Friday. Then jumped back on the subway and headed to the hotel. It was neat to see and be a part of the "real China" without a guide. Needless to say, the three of stuck out in the crowd!

For dinner, the four Tulli's ate at the Italian restaurant La Dolce Vita on the island. It was surprisingly delicious! Emma ate her first Italian spaghetti -- LOVED it AND mastered a fork all in the same meal!

Tony and I enjoyed TWO bottles of wine -- okay, they were half bottles :) -- but they were delicious!

Here's Mia being a goof-ball... gotta love her!!!!

Liu Yuan Park

Today's outing was to Liu Yuan Park -- a public park that cost 5 yuan to get in. That's less than $1pp. It's beautifully landscaped and surprisingly the plants used in Guangzhou for landscaping are very similar to those at home. Due to the tropical climate, we see lots of ginger, Chinese palms, boganvilla, agapanthas... One really interesting thing here is the Banyan tree. It's roots grow down from the limbs and into the ground. It's really cool.

There was also a small section for the kids that had rides and children's activities. The girls had a great time riding the train and the carousel.

Mia had fun playing in a ball pit with a slide. Fun is fun no matter which language you speak.

Afterwards, we had another wonderful dinner -- tonight was typical Cantonese and as always, Helen ordered... we just sat back and enjoyed it all. This restaurant was right next to the park. They featured fish and seafood and had tanks with live lobster, crabs, lobster, eel and different fish -- customers made their selections from the tank and a guy stood in the center and prepared the fish right in front of you before sending it to the kitchen. We are talking FRESH FISH!

Two Artists at Work

Our two little artists drew these over the weekend...

Emma did a great job on her first picture -- she prefers markers to crayons.

Notice the Chinese characters in Mia's drawing. She copied them off the Pizza Hut take-out menu in our room and spent over 30 minutes trying to get them exact.