Goodbye to Guangzhou (we hope)!

Well we will either be leaving tomorrow morning for Beijing or Jen, I and Teresa will set up some kind of ladybug shop here on Shamian Island and live the remainder of our lives here. All kidding aside, it seems the pinheaded U.S. Consulate bureaucrats want our agency to fax them an addendum to our homestudy indicating we can parent a special needs kid. All this because of that dang medical exam from last Saturday and the notation of a heart murmur that is physiological in nature (i.e. not life threatening). We went to the consulate only to leave empty handed with no travel visa and we are due to fly out tomorrow morning. Even when our group's pediatrician was trying to assure consulate staff that Teresa does not need to be classified as a special needs child they still insisted. So basically tonight our agency has to fax over the addendum to the consulate and our guide will have to run across Guangzhou (NOT easy by any means) back to the consulate to pick up the visa (hopefully) and run to meet us at the airport. Oh, did I mention that we don't even have Teresa's Chinese passport for her to fly domestically? Nope, the stinkin U.S. consulate still has that until they release her travel visa. Needless to say we are furious but too darn tired to fuss much about it.

Oh, I forgot to mention we did the red couch thing today. Anyhow, here are some photos. Through all this Teresa has been awesome. This little girl is amazing. I will probably not blog from Beijing as we are there for only one night and then we fly back to the states (hopefully). So, I will keep you all in suspense as to whether we make it back in time or not. I will post from Chicago if we make it.


(These are the 3 girls in our group from the same orphanage, from Left to Right, Teresa, Danielle, and Kailin.)