Looking forward to home

The weather has been okay the past few days. Yesterday they took us to a shopping mall. Most of the hundreds of stores in the mall were closed. Everyone is heading home for the Chinese New Year which is much like Christmas here. The majority of tham take 2 weeks to a month to spend time with family. I think that is pretty neat.

Early yesterday, we found out our appointment at the US Consulate was rescheduled to yesterday afternoon. We went to the US Embassy and performed our swearing in ceremony. Ariana has her US Visa, her Chinese passport, and will become a US citizen when she passes through immigration in the US. Both the Chinese and US government have agreed she is officially ours.

Last night we took a dinner cruise up the Pearl River. Luckily it was indoors. It had outdoor observation decks, but we didn't hang out on those long. It was pretty to see the buildings along the shoreline lit up with neon.

Today we went to the toy market. It was again many many floors with hundreds of stores. All but a few were closed. It is weird to walk through floors and floors of stores all closed up. The front of the stores have garage doors. They just pull them shut. The few that were open were selling New Years decorations. We (I) was hoping to make it to the electronics market, but it seems that nothing would be open. Oh well, no fake ipod knock-offs for me. I guess I'll have to go back to ebay.

Once we got back to the hotel we came back and did some more shopping on the island before everyone left for the holiday tomorrow. All the boys got something special when we get home. Luckily we don't have to spoil Denise anymore now that we have Ariana .

We have no idea what we will do over the next few days. We are told that the fireworks show on the river will be neat. However, there doesn't look like there will be anything open as the island empties out for the next few weeks. Because we weren't able to get an earlier flight, we are the last family to leave. Some left today. Our guide did call Northwest a couple of times to see if other flights have opened up, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. It would be pretty rare this time of year.

Here are some pictures over the past few days.

Hard life.