Tues, 3/29: Red Couch Picture & Dragon Boat River Cruise

This evening we did the adoption tradition of dressing the little ones up in Chinese attire and having them sit on a red couch for pictures.  Ella was actually ok putting on the outfit we bought for her and looked adorable, we called her "Ella Wei, warrior princess."  We did this with our agency group of 9 families, as you can imagine getting 9 new adoptees ranging from 14 months to 8 years to sit in one place while all the parents and other siblings are gathered around was more than a little chaotic.

 

Then almost right after that we headed off for a 70 minute long cruise along the Pearl River.  our agency had us pre-order Papa John's pizza which was delivered to the ferry dock and was quite yummy!  The cruise was amazing!  The  boat was a dragon boat and on on the upper deck there were lights and lighted lanterns, very pretty!  Guangzhou has something like 10 bridges over the river (many of them quite impressive).  We passed under several of them which were all lighted up at night.  A lot of the larger buildings were also lighted up.  It was fun to socialize with the other families and watch all the kids play.  Ella had a great time playing and looking at all the lights, we thought she would be out like a light when we got back to our room at about 8:45pm, but no, she must have been wound up from the event, she didn't cry but didn't actually shut her eyes until close to 10:00pm, suck since we have to be up at 6am to get to our US Consulate appointment.