The Zoo, Grocery Store, Play Room, Swimming and Pearl River Dinner Cruise 10-17-11

Today was a full day!  We had such a good day today.  Much of our day was with our whole group.  We started off by going to the zoo.  The temp outside was perfect.  We spent about 2 hours there.  The highlight of the zoo was seeing the panda bears.

Alexander really enjoyed having other boys (Mark and Charles) to play with!

 Here are the mom's and babies (minus Myah who got missed when taking the picture) of the ladies with our agency. 

After the zoo the bus brought us back to the hotel.  Our family went to Burger King (ick) for lunch.  Ok... they had waffle fries that were pretty good.  We had to cross the street and go under ground and then back above ground on the other side of the street.

After lunch we went to the Supermarket to get diapers.  We explored all of the areas of the supermarket and ended up buying a few treats too!  You can tell by looking at the pictures the food WE DID NOT BUY!  YUCK!

 Notice the brand!

We walked back to the hotel

 Notice the gardeners.  It seems like they took out all the flowers and switched them for new/different flowers.  The ones they took out were beautiful, so I am not sure why they would replace them at that point.

and went to the play room for a little bit.  It left a lot to be desired so we didn't stay long. 

I took Alexander to the swimming pool and Jeff brought Myah back to the room to take a nap. 

After swimming Alexander took a short nap before leaving for the dinner cruise.

The dinner cruise was very nice.  It was a buffet and the food was pretty good!  It was interesting watching everyone get their food.  Our group was the only Non-Chinese people in our dining room.  The announcement about helping yourself to dinner was only in Chinese and it was a mob of people for a few minutes.  When it cleared a bit, we went to get our food.After eating, we went upstairs to see the lights around the river, as we were cruising.  It was very pretty!

 We ended the cruise by seeing a clown do some juggling.

 When we got back to the hotel, Myah and Alexander played on the bed for a bit.

So that is the events of today... now to little Miss Myah.  She is doing great!  She is allowing me to care for her more and more.  She is more playful and happy every day!  Tonight Jeff had her and she wanted me!!!  That was a big step!!!  I think that every day that passes she is able to trust me more and more.

Dear friends, she is such a precious gift!!  God is so good to give us the opportunity to be her family!  Many Chinese people have said that we will give her so much opportunity.  While it saddens me deeply that she would not have those same opportunities here, because of her minor special need, I am oh so grateful that we have been entrusted with her!

As I look at the other children and their families I have no doubt that God laid the path for us all to our precious children!  I am so grateful to Lily (the one that matched us with our children).  I understand that she takes her job very seriously and does so good in matching children with the perfect family!

As we approach the end of our time in China, we are trying to soak in as much of the culture and history as we can.  We want to be able to share with Myah about the land in which she came!!!   Each part of our trip, and each city we have visited brings with us a bigger story to tell her.  There are parts of what we have seen that I don't care for.  There are things that are different then what I like.  In spite of those things, they are all a part of her story, a very important story.  I hope we tell it well!

The final picture is of our clean laundry.  We sent it out to be washed and it came back very nicely folded and placed in these plastic packages!