Guangzhou Day Three -- Continued

Scott stopped by our room late this afternoon after we had finished filling out adoption paperwork in Anli's room and asked if I wanted to go with him to the driving range. I was like "what driving range?" Turns out the White Swan hotel has a frickin' driving range on the hotel roof (you drive into nets but have an incredible view of the entire Guangzhou skyline and the river next to the hotel with big boats coming down it).

After being totally worn out from our walk into the old part of Guangzhou and also still getting over my cold, I was not particularly up for being outside in the Guangzhou humidity hitting golf balls. But sometimes, the story is just too good to pass up. So we headed up to the roof and a hotel sports club attendant got us some golf clubs and a few buckets of balls. We were the only ones up there and it was really funny. I wish I could have been nonchanlant about it -- just hitting a few golf balls in the afternoon like any other Sunday. But we were hitting golf balls IN CHINA. On the roof of the WHITE SWAN HOTEL. Overlooking a river filled with HUGE BARGES with big RED CHINESE FLAGS on them. The day before we filed our final adoption paperwork with the US Consulate after more than a TWO YEAR WAIT. It was just so wild and hard to keep a straight face as we hit balls up there and it felt really good. We did a couple of buckets each and then the heat got to us and we called it quits. As we were up there, I was trying to think: how do you even begin to describe this scene? I really wanted to start this blog posting with something casual like, "So Scott and I were hitting golf balls off the roof of the White Swan hotel and he said to me..." But I couldn't pull it off. Too bad we forgot to bring our cameras up there. It would have been good video footage. As we were coming down from the roof, Scott reminded me that today is the one week anniversary of when we got our babies in Nanchang. Has it only been a week? It feels like a lot longer than that. I feel like R and I are different now -- we are three instead of two and it feels great.

Now we're in our room and just winding down the day. Compared to the crying baby scene and R and I both feeling really sick and rundown yesterday, everything feels much calmer and better today. I don't want to temp the fates but I think I have mostly beat my cold. R is still caughing pretty badly but seems to be feeling a little better as well. The baby is quietly sleeping in the crib and she has been great today. She's eating well and seems to get stronger and more comfortable with us every day. We'll just hope that this continues.

Tomorrow is a light day as Anli is filing all of our paperwork with the US Consulate. R and Etu will likely continue in their quest to buy every cute baby outfit in Guangzhou. Eugenio and I will continue in our quest to avoid those shopping excursions and hope that they leave us enough cash to buy a bottle of water or two. Maybe Scott and I will hit a few more golf balls off the roof of the hotel tomorrow.

I have posted one video -- of J Ro with her new electronic piano toy. Maybe I'm biased, but J Ro seems to have musical talent. She wants to bring the little electronic piano toy with her wherever we go. Tonight, we took it to dinner and played it for her in the restaurant. But I won't count on the college music scholarship just yet. Ok - signing off now. Will try to post more tomorrow.



J.