Enjoying the Neighborhood

We took a stroll around the neighborhood this morning. Here are some of the sights we saw. First, some dried seahorses...

dried frogs...

dried snake skins...

hooves of an animal whose species I could not determine...

and live scorpions.

These are shots of our trip to the Qing Ping Market just north of Shamian Island. It is an open air market in an older neighborhood in Guangzhou. It has blocks and blocks of stalls where all kinds of "delicacies" for eating and for traditional Chinese medicine are sold. Here we are with the Newell's in front of the entrance to a more modern portion of the market.

And below are some additional pictures of some of the activity we observed.

When we finally got back to Shamian Island, we decided to stop at a familiar establishment for some refreshments. Notice Aidan in his stroller saying, "Finally...a place where I can get a decent cup of coffee and a scone or two!"

Aidan is napping right now (it's Friday at 2:30pm). He had a rough night last night. Lots of tossing and turning. He's had a bit of a cold, which I think sounds worse because of his cleft palate. However, at 2 am last night he woke up crying. I felt his head and knew he had a fever. Took his temp and it was 101, so out came the kid's tylenol. He finally got back to sleep but it continued to be a restless night. This morning he seemed to be back to his old self, albeit a little tired, but he was smiling and active, climbing all over me, running around. It wasn't cold outside so we figured it was okay for him to go on our little excursion. Besides, it gets a little tiring just sitting around in your hotel room all day.

Today was the last day we will see "Uncle/Shu Shu Jack." He came by and gave us some of the final paperwork that he has been in charge of procuring along with their translations. I thanked him and gave him one of the gifts we brought as tokens of appreciation. We are sorry to see him go and will miss him. Jack was so incredibly friendly, helpful, entertaining, knowledgeable, and compassionate. You can really tell he loves what he does, helping families bring home these beautiful children and giving them moms and dads who will love them and care for them.

Shiyan, our Bethany liaison, arrives later today and will be with us the rest of our stay here. A number of other Bethany families should also be arriving today from various other provinces, so our group suddenly will grow from two families to a whole bunch...I don't know exactly how many.