Slow Day - Nice Evening - Day 6

Our 6th day in Beijing has been a bit slower paced. We rushed out this morning to be at the Civil Affairs office when they opened at 9:30 to pick up our "red book", the official adoption papers. The second stop was a government notary office. That was almost 2 hours because there were 3 sets of papers to prepare - the adoption registration papers, proof of her orphan status, and papers naming us her legal guardians. Everything needed to be completed in triplicate, translated into English, and notarized. We only had to sign one stack of papers and wait. Well, we had to pay for it too, but the guide handled that for us. Joy had Michael prepare sandwiches for us as our adoption guide had warned us to bring snacks because normally the legal stuff takes about 5 hours. We actually finished steps 1 & 2 fairly quickly and ate our lunch at the notary office as the papers were being finished. Then it was on to our 3rd and final stop, the police station to apply for Alice's Chinese passport. Again the process went smoothly and quickly and we were on our way home almost 1.5 hours sooner than we expected.

We are spending the afternoon just relaxing around the house. We are going to the acrobat show this evening followed by dinner at a restaurant to try the famous Peking Duck. If I'm able to get some pictures, I'll add them tonight.

DH is convinced that Alice will be ready and wanting to start school sooner rather than later, even if she can't understand the language. Everyone keeps saying she is very smart and she seems to be very interested in academics. One of the funniest things our host/guide translated for us was when Alice told her friends that she wouldn't be coming back to China until after she finished university, that was soon enough.

--------- Back from our evening out. We did make it to the acrobat show and then had peking duck for dinner. An interesting thing happened while we were waiting for the show to start. We had a tub of popcorn and the girls started eating it. DH and I were sitting on either side of the girls and weren't really interested. Alice was sitting next to DH and decided he needed some popcorn too! She grabbed a handful and handed it to him. He was very surprised. She then proceeded to make sure he didn't run out until the tub was empty. And when he wasn't eating it fast enough, she would just add to what was still in his hands, implying he needed to eat faster. It was very cute.

The restaurant we went to was one of the nicest so far. The food was very good too!