Last full day in China...

Yesterday was our last full day in China and it was the busiest one yet. We started the day as always with a great western breakfast at our hotel, then loaded up our bus and went to Tianenmen Square. I've seen so many pictures of it, but didn't really get a sense of it's vastness until we were standing in the middle of it. Then we went through the Forbidden City, which was the Emporer's home for all but the summer months each year. It's massive!! It took us over 2 hours to walk from one end to the other and that was without stopping to look at any of the exhibits. We walked through the center of 7 of the palaces and through the Imperial Gardens. I'm glad we have lots of photos, but so many of the things we've seen really must be experienced to be truly appreciated.

After lunch, we hustled back out again and spent 2 hours at the Silk Market - one of my favorite places. We didn't get a lot of time to shop because we had a charcoal sketch of Olivia done by one of the Chinese artists. It was amazing how this guy could sketch babies and people that were squirming and moving all over the place. We are just thrilled with the work he did.

Supper was to be out with the group for our last night here, but because the day was so busy, 2 of the families had to opt out as their babies just weren't tolerating the long day. The dinner was great and Yufin had a beautiful cake made that said "Good Bye China". It almost made me teary except for the very tired, and squirmy girl that was definitely letting us know she had had enough for the day. It's 7:00 am here now and Olivia had something of a rough night. I think the level of activity was too much for her on our last day. We are going to start packing like crazy anytime now and get ready to go home. We have loved every second of being in China and can't even begin to express to this county and it's people how very greatful we are for the precious gift we have received. We will do our very best to make sure we honor this gift for the rest of our days. We hope that someday, if she wants to, that we can bring her back here and show her all the incredible things we saw when she came into our lives. Until then, we'll just do our best to be her forever family.