Day 11-- Consulate appt and free time

Here we are outside the Italian restaurant where we ate dinner one night. It was very good. So, just in case you were wondering-- it was an Italian restaurant (La Dolce Vita) in a Chinese city with Chinese waitresses who were serving American customers!

Sarah is very agile and flexible. She can climb just about everything. Hmmm. Should be interesting at home. The boys weren't big climbers.

Can you tell she is full of life and personality? She also folds her arms like this when we tell her "no", except then her expression isn't quite as happy! ;) When the Chinese ask us what province she is from and we say Jiangxi, they say, "Oh, she's a spicy girl!" And she is! Sweet and a little spicy! :)

I see a lot of this side of Sarah as I trail her to keep up! Do you see the little boy on the bench? She kept going up to him to say hello! She's not shy-- which will also be a change for us from the boys!Running toward the camera.

Playing at the park with the locals. She climbs right up the slide like a pro!

The island we are staying on is very popular for wedding photography because of the beautiful old trees and buildings. We have seen wedding couples every day since we've been here.

On Wednesday morning we had our consulate appointment, but we didn't actually go to the consulate. Our agency went with our paperwork and we stayed in our hotel room for 30 minutes in case the consulate had any questions for us. We weren't called, so the rest of the day was free to do what we wanted!

We spent some time shopping and just enjoying the weather. I have to tell you about shopping here. It is not my favorite thing to do partly because it takes a lot of energy to bargain with the shopkeepers! But I am starting to enjoy it more. The shopkeepers follow you around and try to sell you just about everything! :)

We have decided there is a definite "learning curve" with figuring out how to bargain effectively. We are doing much better now and usually end up getting the price down to around half the original estimate. Today I was pretty proud of us because we got Sarah 2 more pairs of squeaky shoes for about $6.00 USD total.

That's about all the Wednesday news. Today (Thursday) we are actually going to the US Consulate to have a "swearing in" ceremony. Then we will get Sarah's visa packet to take with us back to the U.S.

P.S. Amy-- thanks for the tip about Jennifer's Place. She is very nice and her prices have been the most reasonable of all the stores.