12.01.08 Red Couch Day

Today was a relatively quiet day. The adventure is starting to wind down as we await final consulate approval and Liana’s passport.

This morning I (Marc) took the hotel shuttle, with our guide and adoption agency representative, to the U.S. Consulate to have our immunization form notarized – it was the only documents in a sea of documents that we neglected to complete at home. It was good to be back on official U.S. soil, even if for only a couple of hours.

To keep things interesting we decided to return to the hotel via the Guangzhou subway. It was a really uniquely ‘non-western’ experience – I felt like a local and was extremely impressed with the modernity and cleanliness of the subway system.

While I was off on my adventure, Laura and Liana took a stroller tour of the island, and then enjoyed a nice late morning nap.


After lunch we took a brief tour of the Liurong Buddhist temple, and saw the Six Banyon Pagoda and some very large 10,000 pound solid bronze idols. We received a symbolic non-religious baby blessing from the master monk, and headed back to the hotel for the days main event.

Our big event of the day was the ‘Red Couch’; an opportunity to dress up the children in their finest traditional Chinese outfits, and attempt to take some group pictures. It was wonderfully chaotic as we attempted to sit the babies, in mass on a couch, without anyone tumbling off. There were lots of smiles, some tears, a lot of flopping and flailing limbs, and Liana, who was hungry and tired, just sat there stoic – not smiling or crying, wondering what all the fuss was about.

After surviving the couch, we decided to push our luck and attempt some group family photos in front of the hotel’s waterfall and Christmas tree. As you can see, it worked out pretty well.

It was then off to a farewell dinner for our Faith representative Myriam, and her mom Maddy, who joined us on our journey and are heading back to Tacoma tomorrow. We dined at a group favorite Thai restaurant, the Cow and Bridge. We were feeling adventurous and spiced things up with a delicious ostrich in green curry dish. This was our first foray into ostrich and we highly recommend it – much like very tender pork.

To close the evening, we strolled through town with Liana, stopping for ice cream and rice cookies for dessert and a little more shopping.

We were relieved to enjoy a more quiet day, a day without a long bus ride, and are looking forward to the next couple of peaceful days of downtime before we pack up and head back home.