The Exam

(delayed post)
The night went better than planned. The best diagnosis on Megan….. gas. We gave her gas relief drops and she was better soon thereafter. She slept through the night (I love this girl!) so I think we all survived.

Monday was exam day. We traveled to Shamian Island for a medical exam which is required by the US consulate. The whole process, while chaotic with 25 families, was relatively painless. Megan passed just fine. Our heart goes out to some of the families who found out that their children had illnesses. There were a few children that had other things like bronchitis, pneumonia or an ear infection, all of them treatable but no fun.

After the medical checkup we hung out on the island for lunch and shopping with a couple other families. We went to the Cow and Bridge Thai restaurant for lunch. This restaurant came highly recommended so we had it on our to-do list. The lunch specials were 25-35 yuan (that is about 3-4 bucks). That is not bad considering the quality of the dishes. I think everyone enjoyed the dish they got but we were surprised that some of what we considered very common Thai dishes in the US were not on the menu. I took the opportunity to mark another meat off my “to do before I die” list. I had the ostrich in a red curry dish. Very nice but they easily could have swapped out ostrich for pork and I would not have known the difference.

After lunch we hit the baby gift shops in the area. This is near the White Swan hotel which is famous for housing adoptive families. There is quite a baby business that has sprung up outside. Most all of the shops have the same stuff. We purchased some nice things but once you have seen one shop you have seen them all so we quickly tired and decided to head to the White Swan hotel to take a look.

This hotel is quite nice. They have a waterfall in the lobby and a very nice ambiance. What we wanted to see was the fabled red couch. We found many of them on the lobby level. The nicest ones had a line of waiting families all looking to get a picture of their new families. We settled in on one that was not as popular for our photo session. We dolled up our girls in some of the new traditional Chinese dresses we bought for them and began to pose. We had a great time and girls looked absolutely adorable (where does this language come from!? Sorry guys!). Check our pictures to take a look.

We raced back to the hotel, and mean raced. The taxi driver must have been a NASCAR fan or something. Considering how everyone else drives in this town, speed is not something you want to add to the mix. We lived and were back at the hotel in time for a game of hacky sack with the China Team. They were hosting an afternoon of hacky sack and basket ball. It was a great time with everyone and some exercise was really nice.

Another nice dinner in the hotel and we were ready for bed. Megan went down just fine after a bit of a frolic taking a bath. Clean and tired she was out when her head hit the pillow. We met the same fate soon thereafter (which explains the late post)

Tomorrow is a day of paperwork but I am sure we will find the opportunity for adventure somewhere.