One Week Down, The Rest of Our Lives To Go

Today was an early wake up call for the return trip to where Juliana has spent her entire life, the SWI of Shaoguan City.  Breakfast was nice; the girls were calm and both well mannered, something that almost never occurs simultaneously now.  Right now we are in the mode of trying to just survive the next event; the next meal, the next bus ride to somewhere, whatever we are doing wherever somewhere is, going back to the room from wherever we’ve been, prying the girls away from the TV, etc., etc.  It seems like all 4 of us are 200% ready for this trip to end.

This was one of those incredibly dingy days China is known for.  One of the reasons for this was quite clear from the drive up to Shaoguan; hundreds of open fires with lots of smoke, some of them quite large.  They were in the fields, in the hills, amongst the houses and shacks that dotted the countryside, just everywhere.  Coupled with the windless air it creates a thermal inversion effect where the smoke just goes nowhere.

Getting off the the three lane toll road (a very smooth ride and a fairly recent huge improvement over what this trip would have been 6 or 7 years ago) quickly told us we weren’t in Kansas anymore.  This picture through the windshield of the van gives you a pretty good idea; quite the contrast from Guangzhou.

Welcome to Shaoguan

There is not much we can say about the visit right now except it was only about 30 minutes;  it’s too much right now for us to process and it was incredibly emotional for both of our daughters.  One good thing is we were allowed to take pictures of many of the kids who have been matched so we can hopefully someday get these photos to their waiting parents.  We also are going to advocate for the most darling 9 year old twin sisters, one of whom was a special friend of Juliana.  Here is one of two pictures where our newest dear daughter looks anywhere like herself during the visit.

Farewell picture from the location of our first referral photos

Amazingly enough we managed to have fairly nice lunch at a Pizza Hut right on the river as we were leaving town; here’s the view.

Pizza with a view across 10 lanes, yes 10 lanes of traffic

Today’s trip was exhausting both physically and emotionally and made dinnertime an hour after getting to the hotel very difficult.  At least going to sleep was fairly quick for both girls.

Tomorrow is the famous Consulate Appointment, our final step to getting Juliana home.  All we have to do is remember our passports and our sanity (and the girls too.)