Okay, once we got through the paperwork / nap, we decided we just had to get out of this room. We went out with a few others and encountered pretty much all the families at various locations throughout the 6 block radius that we have all felt pretty comfortable walking around. I will state for the record, after coming up from the Walmart side of the street, there was not one but TWO spider monkeys hanging out at the top of the stairs!

We were out for about two hours. It was way colder than the 47 and sunny that they keep calling for. I’d say we were at about 38, and of course, as soon as we were about 5 blocks away at a park, it started to rain. It was light, but very cold. So, more department stores… It’s all very Americanized, but there are tons of sales people, everything is really a hard sell, and everything is a negotiation. This is all exacberated by the fact that we don’t speak each other’s languages. Eventually, we wound up getting Gracie these cool piggie shoes (she was born in the year of the pig, so it’s in all the stores right now). Also, we found this cool little red cordouroy snowsuit, very Chinese.

Good news about our outing:

a. I only got yelled at by one Chinese lady, who wanted Gracie to look like Ralphie from a Christmas Story.

b. Gracie was completely chill the entire outing. She was not happy while we were in the room, there was nothing that we could do to appease her. As soon as we got her outside, she was all giggly, waving to her fans and generally content hanging off of mommy’s hip (in the hip hugger).

c. The monkey’s didn’t seem to notice us, so we avoided an attack!

d. I finally realized that I’ve been wearing my newly acquired wool hat, backwards. Hey, Kristen was so full of it when she said that sleep deprivation needs seven weeks to really kick in… We’ll talk after I leave my running shoes in the fridge..

Tomorrow is a travel day to Guangzhou. It’s only an hour flight, but it will be a long day, by the time we pack up the carry ons for Gracie, get to the airport and deal with our first flight together as a family unit, then check into the hotel. We’ve heard that there are some pretty cool things you can get near the White Swan. There is a family portrait carved in stone…(nope, that won’t affect the weight limit at all…), there are poeple that paint the kids from photos. I wanted to try and find some original artwork for the house, I know another family that did that, and it was just very cool. We also really need to get on the “gotcha day” gifts.

Gracie’s passport just arrived, whoohoo! One step closer to becoming parents on the US side!

I had a slight (but silent) freakout at the meeting.

Part of the “paper chase” was the paperwork to lead up to being able to submit the I-600A form (foreign orphan petition) so we can get fingerprinted and get the I-797C document (foreign orphan approval) back.  Our original I-797C expired (they are good for 15 months), so we had to redo our home study in late 2006 / early 2007, re-sumbit an I-600A, get re-fingerprinted at the INS, and then get another I-797C.  That all went (mostly) well.

Angela came down to the meeting with Gracie, but she started to have a meltdown, so she went up for a nap.  I continued on with the paperwork.  While we were filling out forms, there was a question about “major life changes” after the I-797C approval.  Changing jobs is considered a major life change.  I am still having a bit of brain trouble with the 2007 to 2008 transition, and thought that Angela had started at D4 after this.  This would have meant that we would have had to have an addendum to the homestudy that we submitted with the last I-600A.

So, after the meeting I rush back up to the room and ask Angela about the addendum.  At this point my stress-induced asthma is starting to kick in, and I am having a major coughing fit.  She then looks at me with the “you are a dumbass” look and reminds me that the last homestudy reflects the job at D4 (she started in 2006), that we have original copies of the home study that reflect this, and that we are fine.

Needless to say, I am feeling much better now (blogging is cathartic).

Gracie is taking a nap right now, but we think we are going to venture out shopping when she gets up.  I isn’t raining, sleeting, or snowing and it is in the 40s right now and a few of the other families are going to join us.

There is a travel group from AFTH in Guangzhou right now (all of their babies are from that province).  I think they left the day after us.  We just found out that one of the babies has chicken-pox.  Ack.

I still haven’t figured out why the thumbnails and small images aren’t being generated when we upload images.  They were working when we set up the blog, but my hosting provider may have changed something which broke Wordpress / Gallery2 / WPG2.  I have tried, but I won’d be able to fix this until I get home.  There is only so much I can here, and I don’t want to mess things up while we are traveling.