Today is our final day at the White Swan, woo hoo!  We are not sad to say good buy to the very hard beds and breakfast buffet that never seems to change.  We are sad to say good buy to China, Sun is particularly sad.  She has been very excited about being in China and is the family expert on everything Chinese, "I remember from when I was a baby" according to her.  This time is always bitter sweet for me, we are going home and can't wait to get back to our beds, our home our family and friends but at the same time it is good buy to the homeland of our children.  We are taking Aftan, like we did Sun, from his history, language and culture.  Although neither of them have a family history in China that we can identify they both have history of 7000 years of civilization, a culture quickly changing with industrialization, a legacy that invented everything from the printing press to toilet paper to gun powder. 

Sun has been very proud to be Chinese on this trip and excied to experience everything Chinese.  I hope her pride sustains itself as she matures, if it does it wouldn't surprise me if she returned some day to work or live here.  Who knows how Aftan will feel about the country of his birth, of the central Chinese province on the banks of the Yellow River, that yields corn, wheat and coal and is the birthplace of one of four of the most ancient human civilizations in the world.  His city is not beautiful or glamourous, it is dirty, crowded and industrial, will he someday know his city?  By the time he returnes if he ever does I am sure Pingdingshan will look nothing like it does today.  Even in the four short years since we visited Sun's village last signigicant changes have taken place.  The busy shopping street accross from the hospital where she was found is now lined with shiny new appartment homes waiting thier first residents.

On this trip faith also came into question for Sun.  She was fascinated by the temples and wanted to pray on her knees infront of the gilded Buddah.  We do not practice any specific religion although Sol is a Christian, his faith resides in his heart, but we do not celebrate beyond the cultural traditions of Christmas and Easter which in our house are not religious but secular.  Will my children reach to find greater spirituality in the religions practiced in China?  I wonder what questions Sun will have in the next months and years about this trip and about faith, God, heaven and fate.  Many people spoke to us of God's will or predestination on this trip.  All of these terms make me uncomfortable in the schema of adoption if it was God's will that Sun and Aftan became my children was it also God's will that they suffered such great loss so early in their lives?  Predestination is commonly discussed in China, I am not sure that my love affair with China is God's will nor am I sure that my children are mine because of it, but it is something that I am sure we will discuss as Aftan and Sun grow older. 

I wonder if Sun will griev the loss of China as we travel home?  Have we given her enough opportunities to celebrate being Chinese and also reinforcing her American citizenship?  She doesn't relate to the word American at all, she categorizes everything in terms of Chinese and English or China and Colorado.  I guess her citizenship will have to be reinforced later. 

Sun and Sol just walked in from a final snack and formula run.  The bags are mostly packed.

Some of our travel group members are leaving tonight for LA or Hong Kong.  Most of the rest are leaving tomorrow and we leave Friday.  It is nice to think that we will be in our own beds soon but it is also a little bitter sweet saying good buy to our travel group, who have been wonderful.  Lucky for us there are four Denver families in our travel group so hopefully we will be able to keep in touch and have some play dates.  It is a little different than with Sun's adoption because we were all from the same orphanage and our kids had all been together.  In this group our kids are mostly from different orphanages, some were in foster care and most were never together so the connection is more between the parents than the children.  It is still nice to stay connected with the travel group and see the children as they grow and become individuals. 

We spent another day at the pool.  Aftan loves the water and seems to have little fear.  He walks in the baby pool and tips over sometimes, he doesn't cry or even seem phased he just wipes his eyes and keeps going.  The one problem he does have is that he is a little chubby so his body floats well but his head is a little dense so it wants to sink.  When he falls into the water his feet float up and his head goes under.  We will have to watch him closley and teach him how to swim next summer to keep him safe. 

His other favorite game in the water is splash your sister.  He thinks this is a very funny game, I must admit Sol and I think it is funny too, Sun not so much. 

Today we made it official and took an oath at the US Consulate to grant Aftan citizenship once he lands on US soil.  We will still have to apply for his US birth certificate and finish some paperwork on the home front, but he will be a citizen once we process through immigration in Seattle.  We get his passport and visa tomorrow then we are free to come home. 

Before going to the Consulate this afternoon Sun and I went for a walk off the island and went to the fish market, the Chinese medicine market and the pet market.  All of these markets are just off the island so you walk from European colonial buildings of Shaiman Island (the former trading post for Europeans in Canton prior to the Boxer Rebellion) into "real" china busy with teams of people in busy market places.  The fish market was filled with tubs of turtles, sea snakes, crabs, clams, scalops, salmon, flounder and anything else you can think of with gills and fins.  We even saw what looked like grubs, crickets and slugs.  I think any fish market anywhere in the world would be similar but with fewer turtles. 

We then walked across a pedestrian bridge to the other side of the street and into the Chinese medicine market.  This markte was more of a collection of shops selling dried herbs, roots and animal parts.  We saw dried ginger and ginsing, dried sea-horses and lizzards, as well as barrels and barrels of other dried things we couldn't identify.  Many of the stalls smelled like a spice shop might smell at home.  The scarest thing we saw were a few men on the corner not in an officially sanctioned shop selling tiger paws.  When I first saw them I didn't know what they were but someone we were with said they were tiger paws so when we went back we could clearly see tiger fur on what were the backs of the tiger's paws.  Later I was talking to someone who said they had seen something that looked like tiger paws in another market area and the guide they were with said they were fake.  These didn't look fake, we didn't ask the price which I am sure would have given us an idea if they were fake or not.  We talked about what authority enforces the illegal animal trade in China or any country for that matter and that they probably spend more time in border areas or habitat areas than in street marktes. 

On a lighter note we also went to the pet market and saw some adorable puppies and kittens.  Sun wanted to pet anything she could touch but I only let her pet a couple of the puppies. 

Because we are here for another few days and it is hot we have decided to pretend that we are in a resort in the tropics.  Guagnzhou is tropical and there is a nice pool at the hotel, if you ignore the air quality and enjoy the river view and palm trees and ignore the fact that there are no pool side drinks with paper unbrellas, you can almost picture yourself at a resort. 

Aftan loves the water and Sun has decided she is a water girl now as well.  Her swimming is improving all the time. 

Today we spent some time in the play room then some time at the pool, this evening we took a river cruise and overall it was a relaxing day.   The river cruise was fun, we got to see Guangzhou light up and it was nice to feel a breeze and be on the water. 

Tomorrow is our consulate oath and Wednesday evening we get Aftan's visa which frees us to leave the country.  Too bad we couldn't get a flight out a little earlier.  There are a lot of events going on in China at the moment, there are some Pan Asian games starting soon, then the Guangzhou trade fair and I think something else was going on before we got here, the hotel is very busy and flights were hard to come by. 

Today is day six at the White Swan, we are all starting to get a little tired of living in a hotel.  Usually adoption trips are two weeks one week in the provincial capital and one week in Guangzhou to finish the US visa paperwork.  We are here three weeks because the moon festival had all offices closed last wednsday and thursday and the consulate only has appointments on Monday and Wednsday for adoptions.  Our consulate appointment is today, which means our guides are at the consulate now filing our visa paperwork and we are in our rooms waiting to hear that all went well.  Tomorrow we take our oath at the consulate and then we get our visas on Thursday which clears us to travel.  Sadly we couldn't get a flight out until the first and even at that we have to spend the night in Seattle before we can come home.  If we were able to go sight seeing in other parts of the country I would welcome the extended trip but sight seeing with two kids and pounds of luggage isn't very much fun, so we are staying put. 

Yesterday Sun told Sol and I that if we wanted we could come back and adopt a third child as long as it was a baby sister.  I guess she is taking to having a sibling a little better than I thought.  So far she hasn't told us to take him back, she has been a little jealous about the attention he is getting but we are trying to have special time with just her every day.  Because the baby takes naps and there is a pool at the hotel, making the time with Sun has been fairly easy.