Two year old picture

Amelia is two!

One Year Old Picture

Here's Amelia's one year old picture.

Home

We're home. It was a long exhausting set of flights and Amelia didn't sleep much. She's asleep in her crib; so we're off to bed also.

Ok. A few more pictures.

Baby in the Hong Kong airport with the 747 that took her to San Francisco.
The new American at home with her big sister:

Consulate and visa

Consulate and visa (Wed 4 March)

We went to the US consulate to pick-up the baby’s visa. We participated with about 20 other families in an oath basically stating that everything on the immigration forms was true; of course, the oath got some a little choked up (so I’m told). We also got the “don’t open” package that we hand to US Immigrations in San Francisco. At that point, baby Amelia becomes a US citizen and her Chinese passport becomes useless.

We leave Guangzhou Friday morning for Hong Kong. Just after noon Fri 6 Mar Hong Kong time, we depart Hong Kong for San Francisco arriving early morn 6 Mar PST. We expect to touch down in Seattle just after noon on 6 Mar.

Thursday will be spent shopping and packing followed by packing and shopping.

Tourist part 2

Tourist (Tue 3 March)

We applied for Amelia’s visa at the consulate. All went well.

We toured the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum. The museum was originally an Academy for the Chen clan (different character 陈 than the Amelia’s original Chen surname 郴). The museum had some stunning jade, ivory, bone and silicified wood art objects.



Monday night Amelia had a terrible time sleeping. I had to walk her around the island for about an hour to let her calm down then fall asleep. Tues night was a much better sleeping night.

Sleeping baby:

Baby with our other fabulous guide Lin:

Doctor’s appointment

Doctor’s appointment (Mon 2 March)

Amelia had her doctor’s appointment for her US visa. It looks like she got a clean bill of health; though we won’t get the doctor’s report until tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, we apply for her visa at the consulate.


We’ve mostly walked around the city. We went to a farmers market yesterday and saw live turtle, scorpions, snake, eel, frogs etc (nope didn’t buy any of those). Today, we went to a jade market and bought a few small things.


We’ve mixed up the cuisine. The first night we had a classic Cantonese dinner, last night we had American steak and hamburger. Tonight, we plan on real Italian pizza.

Smiling baby enjoying the warmer weather:

Off to Guangzhou

Sat. Feb 28
Yesterday, we picked up the baby's passport and the adoption certificate.

This morning, we leave Changsha for Guangzhou. Changsha is a beautiful city. Unfortunately, the weather has been cold (~38) and wet. We tried to explore some yesterday but the wind and rain made it miserable (even the locals thought it was a miserable day). They have some really nice parks here but we didn't get to see them.

The good news is that its about 70 in Guangzhou.

Here's a picture of Mr. Liu our driver and Ms. Anna (Hong Mei) our fabulous guide.