Ahhhhhh. Guangzhou

I love Guangzhou. I love Shamian Island. I love the White Swan. I think I love it even more this time than in 2005. The East meets West feel of the place. The climate that reminds me of my time at Rice University. The gardens. The little neighborhood around the White Swan with all the sculptures, coffee shops, Thai restaurant, Italian restaurant, "Western" restaurant. The koi ponds and waterfall. The swimming pool copied from a Hawaiian resort, down to the lava rocks and date palms.

We boarded our Air China flight yesterday morning. Boy, that airline has greatly improved. Gone are the tiny, aqua-colored velour seats, replaced with standard airline seats. Gone, also, is the choice of Western breakfast or Chinese breakfast, although I sorta miss that. The reason for the changes is printed on each of the headrest covers: Beijing Olympics 2008. For reasons that I can't fathom, our boarding music was "Santa Baby" and a hip-hop version of "O Come All Ye Faithful." Very surreal. JW fell asleep on take off and did pretty well throughout the flight. He was not in agreement about the need for a seatbelt during landing, however. But Eiley and I prevailed.

Upon arrival in Guangzhou, we claimed our luggage (100% success rate on luggage arrival so far), and went out to meet Kelly Wu. It was so wonderful to see her, and we gave each other a big hug. I made a little book for her with recent pictures of the girls from the 2005 Hunan adoption travel group. She really enjoyed it, and looked through it several times. She was excited to find out that 3 other families from that group are also in the process of adopting from China again. She proclaimed Xiao Yu (Devyn) beautiful, and she gasped when I had Devyn take out her hair clip to reveal her wild, crazy, curly hair. The last time Kelly saw Devyn, she was "the skinny baby with no hair."

We have already delivered 6 bags of laundry to A Home of Love, and received it back 8 hours later, clean, for only 252 yuan. We totally got ripped off in Chongqing. We borrowed a stroller from A Home of Love, also. We have been to Lucy's restaurant. Mia and Devyn got PBJ. Scott got a hamburger. I got grilled chicken breast. Eiley has been eating sweet and sour pork every day for a week, so she branched out and got sweet and sour chicken. That girl cracks me up.

In a few minutes, Eiley and I will take JW for his medical exam and photo, required for his US immigration. Thank goodness we just got in under the April 1st deadline for the new Hague Convention rules. I won't bore you with my diatribe, but let's just say that more Homeland Security regulations are not necessarily beneficial to international adoptees. If we were under Hague guidelines, the medical exam would be more involved and JW would have to receive vaccinations here today. What a great idea that is: vaccinations in China, or Haiti, or Ethiopia, or Vietnam. Brilliant.

Got to go torture the boy now. More later plus pics.