Today, we went to the U.S. Consulate for paperwork needed for Ellie's visa. We will receive the visa tomorrow and that is the last step in this long 1.5 year process to bring Ellie home. That seems like a really long time, but it is our quickest adoption yet. Our visit to the consulate was uneventful and a simple process.
We talked to our friends who are staying at the Garden Hotel. They finally decided that they were going to switch rooms. They were given a new room where the hallway smelled worse then the first one. They then asked if they could be given a room on a floor that had tile and not carpet. The front desk explained that the agency rate is for the old part of the hotel and that for $70/day they could upgrade to the new section. They only had 2 nights left, so they decided to do it. The agency rate is about $125/night, so the extra $70 for a decent room makes the room rate $195/night. Even with our rate increase on Monday, our averaged rate over the 6 nights ended up being $142/night (taxes/fees included). Our hotel has been fantastic. Our room is a suite with access to the Executive Lounge where we have free breakfast (in the Lounge or the main restaurant), free beverages throughout the day (bottled water, pop, coffee), and finally free dinner at night including wine etc. The hotel staff have been excellent and attentive and most speak English very well. We highly recommend staying at the China Hotel by Marriott rather than the recommended Garden Hotel. We would have taken a cab each morning to the Garden Hotel if necessary in order to be able to stay at our hotel of choice. We also learned that the Garden Hotel does not allow Papa Johns to deliver to the hotel. Don't know if that is because Pizza Hut is nearby and they have an agreement? At the Marriott, there is a host of families that are using Bethany, CCAI, Holt and others, so there are plenty of other adoptive families here as well.
We are at the end, which is always the hardest – you just want to be home already. We have watched more TV than we usually do and we can't help but think of all things we could be doing with all this "down" time. It just seems inefficient to be doing nothing J.
Today we walked over to a city park across the street. It is a HUGE park. Guangzhou is the city of rams (or something like that) – there is a story about how the fisherman didn't know how to grow rice and some rams flew in with rice in their mouth and showed them how to it, and everyone lived happily ever after. Ok, that is the American ending to the story – but they got rice in the region. Anyway there is a statue of the rams in the park, so we thought that would be our destination. The park is maybe 100yards from the hotel – however we felt as though we had gone to the twilight zone again with all the people staring at us. We joked when we would take pictures that we don't want to look like a tourist. Rob even changed out of his American flag t-shirt that he had worn to the U.S Consulate so that he would blend in, ha ha J A lady even took a picture of Dana and Ellie – made her feel like she was an animal at the zoo. The maps at the zoo were not the easiest to follow, but we eventually found the stairs leading up to the ram monument. Dana stayed with Ellie and Rob forged up the several flights of stairs to get to the top of this hill where the statue was. The heat index was once again over 100, so after we captured the picture, we decided that we were done and headed back to the hotel.
We ate Papa Johns for lunch today – Ellie is not a big pizza fan, but she will eat the crust. She doesn't realize yet that being a Hofmeister implies that you LOVE PIZZA. One of our sons had this problem when he first came home, but now he has "seen the light" and enjoys pizza now and Ellie will in time also. We are REALLY craving a big salad. They have all this great looking veggies on the buffet, but if you can't peel it, we don't eat it.
