Hanging around the hotel and a trip to Shamian Island too We had a great day today! It was a day with nothing to do so we had a long breakfast Amelia enjoyed fried eggs, watermelon, congee (rice cereal todays variety was pork and century egg dont ask), oatmeal (they make it with milk here and it is wonderful), bacon, and bananas. She basically eats anything you put in front of her maybe shell rub off on our boys! After breakfast we went to explore kiddie land (the hotels kids playroom) but it was closed. Then we checked out the pool, but it is an outdoor pool and was too cold. So we went to the hotels garden and it was nice. Amelia really surprised us by not only walking around but venturing quite far from us. She is getting more confident and more comfortable with us. Then we played in the room for awhile. She loves the stacking cups and a little ladybug rattle we found at a shop down the street. We went to some little shops down past the McDonalds, we bought a dress and some little shoes and thought the prices pretty good until we went to Shamian Island later that is! We came home and played in the room some more and when Wendy was changing her, during a little tickling, she broke out in a big smile and even started laughing. Wendy and I didnt know whether to laugh or cry it brought such joy to our hearts to see our little girl happy after a couple days of sort of numb shock. She took a good long nap no problems putting her down, she goes right to sleep without a peep almost every time. Then we took a taxi over to Shamian Island (a cool 19th area of the city with lots of 19th century Victorian buildings from when the British occupied it after the Opium War.) It is a great area to walk around (the island is only about a mile around) with lots of great shops and much better prices. They really cater to families adopting babies too because the White Swan hotel (where most adopting families stay) and the US Consulate are there. We found some great sqeaky shoes (they have little speakies in the them so they squeak when the kids walk) and some cute clothes. Shoes were $3-4 and the dresses were less than $5 each. At Sherrys Place (a store fairly famous among adopting familes) they even loaned us an umbrella stroller to use for free until we leave for the States! We decided to try to eat over at Shamian Island and that was a bit of an adventure. We went to a place called the Golden Bowl that served Chinese and Vietnamese food. They had most of the right animals on the menu, but none of the right parts! But there was one guy there who spoke a little English and we managed to get congee for Amelia and chicken fried rice for us. The fried rice was excellent and so was the tea, so we did pretty well with our 1st attempt at eating out of the hotel and McDonalds. Afterwards we headed home, played some more and went to bed. Tomorrow the whole group will see some sites around Guangzhou including the zoo where we hope to see pandas, snow leopards, and red pandas! Grace and peace, Kevin