Last Day of Waiting

Day 14 of our trip and the last day of waiting. An hour from now we will get Alice's Chinese passport with her visa to enter the US. It is the final step of the process here in China. We will also receive her immigration-citizenship papers, which we turn in when we land in the US. Her citizenship starts at that point, although we will have to wait another 45 days for her Certificate of Citizenship. As part of our agreement with the Chinese government, we are required to provide 6 reports about how Alice is doing over the next 5 years. I am hoping the requirements sound worse on paper than they will be in reality.

We finally got outside for some pictures of the hotel gardens today. They are very beautiful and meticulously maintained. We saw someone wading in one of the ponds clearing fallen leaves, etc. from the water. Another person was going around clearing fallen leaves from the lawn. Everything is spotless. It is another gloomy, drizzly, damp, cool day. We are looking forward to sunshine again!

DH has come down with a cold. Originally, I had planned for us to try taking the subway to a park not far from here, but with DH feeling under the weather and the weather being less than spectacular for an outdoor excursion we are spending yet another day in our hotel room. One consequence from all this indoor time is WAY TOO MUCH screen time. Alice has been watching TV, playing games on her PSP, iPad and iPod, looking at her self-made videos, and watching many online episodes of her favorite kids' cartoon. We will surely pay a steep price at home when she finds out that this is not how we live. Home rules are much different than vacation rules and there are sure to be some strong feelings when reality crashes in on her.