Some more photos- CA and the island

Our consulate appointment (CA) was on Jan. 2.  For those of you who are waiting to travel, the US consulate is a new building and in a new location.  It's a beautiful modern building complex.  Even if you've adopted from China before, chances are that you haven't been to this location.  We went with our guide to the medical clinic and waited in the lobby while she picked up all the necessary documents we would submit to the consulate.  Then we walked half a block to the consulate. When we got there there was a huge line of hundreds of Chinese waiting to apply for a visa.  The line snaked all around the side of the entrance.  Our guide asked people to step aside so that she could snap this picture.  No cell phones or cameras allowed inside, along with the usual liquid ban, big bags etc.  Thank goodness we didn't have to wait in the loooong line.  There is a separate entrance for US citizens affairs and another specifically for adoptions.  Thank goodness! It would not have been a fun wait trying to corral A. on a busy city street where we already stand out! 

 We were first in the adoption line and we were happy to see the CCAI group we met in our hotel in Zhengzhou!  Most of them had the same CA we did and it was nice to see how all the kids were adjusting. (Mostly pretty well :) )  After we were scanned and wanded through security we walked across the outdoor courtyard to the other building and took an elevator up to the second floor.  We got a ticket at window 7 and then waitied.  There was a little play area for the kids with a little tykes house and some IKEA kids chairs and tables and toys.  A. found a crayon in the playhouse which seemed like a supremely bad idea if you could see how much mischief our boy will get up to, so I promptly took it away!  All the families took the oath at the same time (just swearing that all the info. we had submitted up to that point in the process was true and correct to the best of our knowledge.) Then we were called up, each family in order, documents exchanged hands and then we went to the next window to have our virtual "signature" taken by fingerprint.  That was it!  Our guide picked up the visa, passport and Hague info the next day.  

We got to have breakfast with A., just the two of us.  This was nice since our other boys are always with us, also demanding attention.   It wasn't long before he was asking about his geges and turning his eyelids inside out.  I hope that's a trick he soon forgets.   Gege (Guh-guh) is big brother in Chinese, not sure if we mentioned that before.

I have no idea why some things I type are being underlined.  Blogger is being weird and I can't figure out how to make it stop!  Sorry!  This last pic I took while we were on the island walking back to the hotel from the park.  Wedding and formal photos are popular, complete with multiple outfit changes as we mentioned before, but this took things to a whole new level.  It was totally awesome!  The girl was lovely; I never saw the guy's head.  She had a brown bear head the she was wearing in some of the pics too.  A. thought it was like a life size cartoon and didn't want to leave.  In fact, he had a tantrum when we did leave.  He could have watched all day.  There were even a bunch of Chinese folks gathering to take pics of this, besides the hired photographer, of course.