Sept. 14 Megan slept good last night, but unfortunately was up by 6:30am. Thankfully I slept good most of the night too. We skyped with the girls for a little bit after breakfast before heading off to the zoo.
The Guangzhou Zoo is the largest zoo in southern China. It was a warm day, but thankfully there was lots of shade at the zoo. We saw bears, tigers, giraffes, zebras, hippos, rhinoceros, monkeys, elephants,leopards, jaguars, ostriches, various types of antelope and sheep, and of course a panda bear. The panda was not feeling well, so the zookeepers were putting ice blocks in his cage to cool him down. At the giraffe exhibit, you could feed the giraffes leaves for a small fee. One of the older girls in our group did this. There were 3 adult and 2 baby giraffes. It was fun to watch them eat. Megan just kind of took everything in. She did pay attention to the animals she could see easily.
After a relatively quick lunch and afternoon nap, we headed to the US consulate. The whole US consulate used to be on Shamian Island (hence the popularity of the White Swan hotel), but in 2006, the visa division moved to another location. There is still a small consulate on the island, but it mainly deals with business affairs. It took about 30 min. to get to the consulate. I expected it to be a grand building with guards and lots of American symbols. It was nothing like that. The visa division is located on the 5th floor of an office building. All the people that work there are Chinese and you really have to pay attention to even notice that you are on US ground. There was security though, like an airport. We couldn’t bring a camera, so there is no pictorial record of the event.
There were 49 families being sworn in today. We all gathered in a large room and waited for our names to be called. When our name was called, we went to the window and the worker verified that we all look like the picture in our passports. Then we had 1 more form to sign. This is the last thing we needed to do to get Megan’s visa to come to the US. It only took about ½ hr. to get through all the families. Then the US consulate general came out and spoke to us. She personally went through all of the files. She answered some commonly asked questions and reminded us that we our children go through immigration in the US, they will become US citizens. Then all the families together did the swearing in. It was a repeat-after-me oath swearing that all the info. we gave was true to the best of our knowledge. And that was it.
By the time we got back to the hotel, we were hungry. We were going to try a restaurant in the hotel that another family recommended, but it was too expensive, so we opted for Papa Johns. They do know how to make a good pizza in China. Megan wanted to fall asleep too early, so we took her to the playroom. After about 45 min she tuckered out, so we went back upstairs for a bottle and bedtime.
Shamian Island must be a popular place for weddings and pictures. Last weekend there were several wedding receptions at the hotel and we have seen several bridal couples getting their pictures taken outside on the island. We have also seen other people posing for what looks to be professional pictures also.
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