Sunday, July 23, 2006
DAY AT WALLY WORLD

We are having such a good day! Thank you for praying for us, everyone! We started the day out with a wonderful breakfast buffet in our hotel after having enjoyed a great night’s rest at last!!!! The buffet had a variety of treats for us, some which frightened us, and others which delighted us. Our guide has been teasing me because everyday I have told him I want to eat Char Sui Bao and Fried Noodles. At least I am sticking with Chinese! :) We met at breakfast some of the families we are traveling with and they are all so nice. It was weird to meet them in person after having read their blogs and feeling like we already know so much about them!

After brunch we organized a bit in the room, getting ready for Grace’s arrival tomorrow…and then we had a meeting with our China facilitator, Lily, and our guide, David for all the families to discuss the week. It was really neat to think that all nine families who are traveling with us are adopting special needs kids….pretty cool. We found out at the meeting that we will be getting the kids tomorrow afternoon around 3:30pm….it was our fault that it was so late in the day because Lily told us that Gracie is from the orphanage farthest away, and so we all are waiting on Gracie’s arrival before we can do the gotcha day….Just think! She is going to be so tired after her six hour trip on the train! And David said again today, “Know that she will cry, Lisa! You will be better if you expect her to cry!” So we are steeling ourselves for a rough, though thrilling, Gotcha Day. David also gave us the sheet which had all the info about Grace on there. We learned her nickname is “A-rong” and that her name means Hibiscus. Another flower for our family, huh, Lily? Hannah will be jealous. :) We also learned that the thing that makes her happy is candy. Wonderful! I can see already she takes after her mama.

After the meeting we headed out to Walmart…yes, Walmart!...to pick up some necessities for Miss Grace. It was packed with people and soooo big! A three story building!!!! It was such a fun shopping trip….the Chinese packaging on everything fascinates me….it’s all so colorful and has cutesy cartoon characters on everything. There were a few funny items, like in the snack aisle, prepackaged duck feet and chicken feet, and also beef jerky that had pictures of raw beef cubes on the package….not too appetizing…and John loved the snakes and eels hanging from a rack in the fish section. He also saw a stingray there too. I had to show you some of the fun items we purchased. See the DVDs, kids? Two and three bucks a piece!!!! Mama went a little crazy in the DVD aisle. We’ll see when we get back if they actually work!

Speaking of not working, on the hair update, I was determined today to fully blow dry my hair to see if I could straighten out some of the craziness and wound up blowing the circuits in our room, which we have discovered is kind of a big deal since we have not been able to get anyone yet to fix it!