Needless to say we are excited beyond words at the moment... especially with all of the waiting over the past three years. Yep it has been two months short of three years since we started the adoption process. For twenty-five months, a stack of dossiers has been sitting on a desk in China while we wait for ours to float to the top when our daughters name gets called.
Its amazing to think somewhere in China our daughter is unknowingly waiting for us to come get her, probably from a place we have never heard of and can't correctly pronounce.From what we know we will be leaving from Guangzhou (bottom of the map) which is just inland from Hong Kong and Macao.
In Guangzhou and the south of China, Cantonese is the primary language, but the majority of Chinese speak Mandarin ("the common language". We have been learning a little Mandarin.
Not far from Guangzhou are some of the most striking landscapes in China. The country side is filled with karsts, giant limestone formations that shoot up from the lush green country side and are only passable from the rivers that have steadily carved routes through them for thousands of years.If we don't find Isla learning to rock climb around here we may find her further up north.
Beijing is the capital and the second largest city in China (behind Shanghai). It has been the center of China's political, cultural and economic well being for 800 years.
Long before that, in the 5th century BC ,the Chinese had begun construction of the Great Wall to keep out the invaders from the north.The Great Wall is the largest man made structure, longer than the continental US is wide! It is, however, only a myth that the Great Wall is visible from the moon. This myth was edited from Chinese textbooks in 2003, after China's first astronaut failed to spot the wall from space.
Who knows where we will go and who we will meet to find our daughter in China. All we know is we can't wait to finally meet her and have the chance to be family to her!
