3/21/11 - Day 12: Six Banyan Temple and TB Skin Test Read

We started off the day by visiting the Six Banyan Temple. Dating from around 1,400 years ago, the Buddhist Temple is beatiful and moving. Our visit this year was special since it was not a holiday and very few people were there in the morning when we went.

We did the blessing of our new child (rough translation). We figure we can use all the help we can get. This time we were the only ones and got a private and quieter service. Bennett sat very still for the whole blessing, Carter restrained himself with Lisa's help from throwing Sippy Cup, and April stayed in approximately the same spot with a lot of help from Mark. We did enjoy the comic relief of the guide waiting to request our blessing from the monk until the monk finished texting or reading email on his cell phone.

After the blessing, there was a melodic chanting service of some sort going on in one of the buildings that I found very interesting. It reminded me of some of the devout Russian Orthodox services we saw in Russia in 2007. The secondhand explanation I heard was that there is a daily morning reading of the Book of Confucious.

After the temple we went to the Guangdong Arts & Crafts store. Not a cheap place, but there are some very pretty arts and crafts that appear to be high quality in this government store. We browsed but did not purchase anything. We were also able to leave without any of our kids breaking anything except maybe damaging a few ear drums.

Yesterday at the Safari Park Bennett started walking hand in hand with our guide Grace and then sat with her apart from us at the Tiger Show. He is quite the charmer with the women. One of the store owners on the island on Saturday raved for 5 minutes about how cute his eyes were.

Danielle and Kelly are the other family in our travel group in Guangzhou from our agency (actually 1 lady adopting with her sister-in-law along to help). Today Bennett and April decided they evidently missed the children they left at home and talked their ears off in the bus. Kelly's 6 year old never stops talking (just like our princess when she is not afraid or upset), so they provided a nice public service.

Next stop was the TB skin test results at the Medical Clinic on the Island. Carter passed with flying colors. Yeah!

We grabbed a quick lunch at the White Swan deli and took some updated pictures on the Red Couch (classic adoption photo spot) in the White Swan Hotel. The kids remembered the deli and the White Swan and had a blast. Carter enjoyed the change in food from pre lunch snacks to lunch to post lunch snacks, and also had a good time.

We were surpised at how empty the tourist shops were on the island. The shops are mostly aimed at adoptive families. I guess the move to other hotels beyond the White Swan and the victory along with the continuing drop in foreign adoptions from China are impacting their business. One shop stated our sale at about 1 pm was their first of the day. The atmosphere in the stores is the same - very friendly and fun. We bought a few things for Chinese culture and heritage and a few things due to the great buys on certain items. Okay, a lot of things! We knew which items we wanted to get at which stores from our previous trip.

The store owners were amazed that Carter is only two and after watching him snacking his way through our shpping expedition told us that we would have to work a lot to pay for all he will be eating.

Tomorrow we have our visa appointment and then go shopping with Ann from Red Threads (who provides a great private shoppingservice we were very happy with on our last trip). Grandma and Grandpa will be spending a large part of the day with April and Bennett from the 7 am dropoff while we are away - hopefully everyone will have a good time. If the weather is good, there is a large park nearby our hotel they hope to explore.

Carter will love the alone time with Mommy and Daddy but will NOT be happy with our planned drive by of the breakfast buffet on the way to our 7:30 departure for the consulate. Wish us luck (with the brief repast and with the consulate).