Red Couch and Oath Ceremony

I have a bunch of pictures from today! First off, here is a family shot from when we were out shopping around the island. There are these bronze statues all over the island, and I think this one is supposed to be an American family who adopted a Chinese baby, so we took our picture with them:

Then we headed back to the White Swan hotel to get the girls dressed in their silk dresses for the Red Couch photos. This is a tradition with adoptive families; since most stay at the White Swan, everyone always takes pictures of the babies sitting on the red velvet couches in the lobby. The other little girl in our group decided she did not want to participate, so we just took pictures of Caitlin and Samantha.

First we took some with the Mommies and babies (we were not quite on the red couches yet because they were all occupied; then Susan asked someone to move so we could have one!):

(I especially love the one with Caitlin and Sammy looking at each other, and the other one that has them both sucking their fingers!)

Then we tried the babies by themselves on the couch. Caitlin, of course, cooperated completely (not), which in turn upset Samantha. I think the pictures are pretty funny, though!


We decided to try to get a shot of Caitlin standing up so we could really see her dress. She still doesn't want me to put her down, so we had to trick her! I threw my Coke bottle down on the floor and tempted her to go get it. She stood there and thought about it for the longest time, all the while Paul was snapping pictures. She just couldn't decide if she wanted to wander that far from me (it was a whole 2 steps)! She finally went for it, then came right back to me- very proud of herself! And we got some good shots of her in her pretty dress!

(This is what a Coke bottle looks like here. I had thought that the Coke symbol was universal, but apparently not in Chinese!):


I just threw this one in because Caitlin was smiling; I was bouncing down the steps and she really thought that was fun!:

The White Swan has a beautiful waterfall in the lobby, and HUGE koi fish swimming around. It's really very beautiful, so we took a family shot in front of the waterfall:

Afterwards we headed back to our hotel for very quick naps, then we went to the American Consulate for Caitlin and Samantha's Oath Ceremony. They are both now sworn in, and they will get their Visas on Wednesday! We were not allowed to take pictures inside, so Susan took us to a sign in the downstairs lobby so we could take pictures there. The first one is of both the families and Susan (it is the only picture of Susan that I have so far!):

Then Paul, Caitlin and I caught a cab back to the island to meet up with a friend of mine that I only knew through e-mail. They are another Navy family and we have been e-mailing back and forth for weeks now. They are here at the same time, adopting an adorable little girl who happens to be exactly one day younger than Caitlin! We finally got to meet in person, and we enjoyed a lovely dinner with them and another family at Lucy's. OK, the meal wasn't that great (it was pretty bad, actually), but the company was wonderful!

Then the 3 of us did some more shopping before heading back to the hotel. Caitlin actually stopped crying in the bath tonight and I got her to play/splash in the water! She wouldn't smile (in fact, she stuck out her lip and pouted the whole time!), but she was clearly having a good time. I decided not to wash her hair, though. Didn't want to spoil a good thing!

Tomorrow Susan is taking the Mommies in our group to the pearl market! That should be fun!