Even though we were in the land of fireworks, sad to say, we didn't get to see any on July 4th. Still, it was a very fun day. No governmental appointments, just hanging out together.
First we managed to take a special side trip to the Wong Fei Hung Museum in the nearby town of Foshan. For those of you not heavily into Kung Fu movies, Wong Fei Hung is sort of like China's Robin Hood. He was a doctor who helped the poor for free, but he also fought to protect China from foreigners who were introducing opium to the people. Here is our family at the museum.
It was a beautiful, very peaceful place. We went there at a ti
me when there weren't so many visitors. It was just us and Wayne, our tour guide. Wayne was very knowledgeable and also very fond of Althea (big points in his favor). Here's a picture of Andrew and Althea and Wayne with the statue of Wong Fei Hung.After some napping and playing in our room, it was time to go to the big barbecue. All the Holt families had a big 4th of July outdoor barbecue by the river. There were about 35 families in all, adopting kids from three provinces. Our group had only eight families.
Actually, right before the barbecue it was picture time. Althea and the rest of the babies in our group were posed on a big red couch for a shot of all of them.
Things started out kind of tense as you can see to the left. All the babies are pretty goodnatured and many of them are frequently smiley sorts. Althea is the youngest of the group. Most are between 12 and 14 months old. But they are all quite grabby! So the whole group shot thing deteriorated pretty quickly, as you can see:
Still, they are a sweet bunch of babies and we've enjoyed getting to watch their personalities open up and get to know the other parents in our group.Once that ordeal was done, it was picnic time. We were right out by the river and the food was great, including french fries and real ketchup (oh how I missed ketchup!). Here are some pictures of the fun:
