That's all folks!

Practicing my strut!

Well, at least for China. Today was our last day here! Like I said, I am a little sad to be leaving Claire's country. You never know if you will get back this way one day or not, so it is kind of sad to leave it behind. We have also made some great friends in our travel group and we will miss them. But, we are excited to get this girl on U.S. soil! We want to see our children and sleep in our bed and get Claire on a SCHEDULE!

We really didn't have anything we had to do today until our appointment to pick up Claire's visa in the afternoon, so we did some last minute shopping. First, we headed off the island into a local market just for kicks! We weren't sure what to have for lunch.....

SNAKE or

SCORPION!

YUMMY! Of course our choices didn't stop there. Oh, no! There was eel, turtle, and gigantic (like bigger than your head) mushrooms! But in the end, we decided to race over to Lucy's for hamburgers and fries! Then we headed out to the little shops around the hotel.

Since this is a small Island, we have been in most of the stores and haggled our way into some pretty good deals on a few things. We have even gotten to know some of the local shop owners and workers and have cut up quite a bit with them. So, we revisited our favorites today for a few last minute deals and laughs! I don't know who has more fun haggling, Paul or the shop keepers!

Paul with Angel in one of our favorite shops

A happy girl!

In the afternoon, we took a bus ride over to the American Consulate so we could pick up the visa's for the children to get into the U.S. We were taken into a large room filled with adoptive families and asked to take an oath that everything in our adoption documents was truthful to the best of our knowledge and then we were handed the visa's! That's it, so we got back on the bus and went back to the Island. We decided to celebrate by eating at the Italian restaurant on the Island with our travel buddies. We got a table for 18! The restaurant was the cleanest and prettiest I'd been in in China and it had good air conditioning! However, the service was awful! Some people in our group never even got their food! We did and the food was very good. But, still, I wouldn't recommend it. Turns out, our Chinese girl LOVES Italian food. She ate gobs of my spinach ravioli with ricotta cheese and tomato sauce.

Well, the bags are packed, again! Luggage pickup is at 5:45AM so I better get to bed! Please pray for us because the next two days are not going to be the most pleasant. We will spend the next 30 hours in transit! Sounds like a fun time! The next time you hear from me, Claire will officially be a citizen of the United States of America!