China Day 12: Signing Off from the Far East!

Our final full day in China is coming to a close!  We spent the morning/early afternoon shopping back at Shamian Island with our travel group.  We love that place.  It's so peaceful and a nice reprieve from the loud traffic and busyness of the city.  It was extremely humid today, but we got the obligatory picture of Lucille standing in line with the statue kids following the musician.  We had a nice snacky lunch at a Starbucks on the island.  The a/c was well worth the price of admission!  This Starbucks and all other stores on the island are housed inside abandoned buildings from the 1800s when the island was a center of global trade. 

The best part of today was getting Lucille's Chinese passport with the US visa inside on time, no problems!  This was the very final document that gets us out of the country together.  We also have the immigration documents in hand that will give Lucille her US citizenship when we go through Detroit USCIS.  The paperwork chain, ten months in the making, is now coming to a close.  Praise God!

Steve and Ella made one final trip to Trust-Mart to get items for the trip home.  Two things we won't miss when we get back to our home Walmart are the smell of fresh sea animals and the smell of durian fruit!  We don't remember durian being so prevalent in Guangzhou the last trip, but it's in every supermarket now.  If you've never been around durian in person, it's just awful.  The odor permeates through the entire produce section of the stores.  Ella shows you what she thinks of it in one of today's photos.

We had one final dinner with our new travel friends from North Carolina, and we just had to go back to Cow and Bridge one more time.  We tried some new dishes and the food was amazing as usual.  We capped the night off with ice cream treats from our good ol' 7-11.  We really need to wean ourselves back off dessert every night when we get home.  :-)  We said our goodbyes to the other family and came back to the room to finish up our packing.  The girls and mom & dad are ready for one last sleep in China!  We need to meet in the hotel lobby at 6:00am to catch our flight, so we're just preparing ourselves to be tired in the morning.

This will be our final blog post until we're back on American soil.  If you're so inclined, we appreciate specific prayers for the following:

• Our flight from Guangzhou to Beijing is operated by a Delta partner airline, they changed the aircraft type, and our seat assignments got messed up.  The partner's website is not working and the phone support is not available.  Please pray that we get out of this city on time!
• Our flight from Beijing to Detroit is about 14 hours long.  Pray that Lucille (and the rest of us) have a good flight and can get some sleep.
• Our layover in Detroit is just over two hours.  We need to get through USCIS to finalize Lucille's immigration and this is not an excessive amount of time.  Pray for quick movement through the immigration lines and that we catch our flight to Cedar Rapids.
• We're going to have major jetlag and our family of six is going to go through a time of big adjustment to the new normal.  We appreciate your continued prayers over the weeks to come.

Your prayers and support have been so wonderful.  We couldn't have gone through this without the amazing support group and people we have surrounding us!  Lucille is an incredible girl and we can't wait to introduce her to everyone in person!  You will be blessed to know this little, funny ball of energy.

Enjoy the photos, and look for our next blog update from home!!!