Goodbye China

This is what we've been waiting for. Maya's visa to travel to the good 'ol USA! Today we got it along with her passport. Many of you have asked if she will have dual citizenship and the answer is yes. We didn't know that until today. The swearing in was rather anticlimactic but it's done and now we can come home.


Maya was all smiles today. It was almost as if she was waiting for this day also. Testing us to make sure we were gonna take all that she could dish out and today she got the answer she was looking for. She sat and looked out the window of the bus on the way to the American consulate as if she were taking in the sights of her birth country and making peace with saying goodbye. We sure hope that peace was made in her smart little mind and soul. We are taking her from her homeland to a place of love and opportunity. We hope she will be a happy and healthy, well adjusted person that will always know love. We want to afford her the things that she may not have otherwise known. We are so happy she is ours! She is so beautiful and lights up the place when she is happy.


Finally happy in her Daddy's arms. Mike and Maya played on the bed today while I took a shower. She has let him pick her up and carry her today. He also changed her diaper without too much fuss from either of them. We are seeing progress. Now if we can just get through the jet lag that we'll all be feeling for the next couple of weeks.


The girl loves some garlic toast. She gnawed on this piece for quite sometime today. It was nice and crusty and it felt good on her teething gums.
We are so happy to say that we will be leaving tomorrow. We don't have any idea how our flight will go but we know that we will be among friends. We say goodbye to China with mixed feelings. We are so excited to get back to our own familiar surrounding. To our family and our friends. To our soft bed. To ice in our freezer door. To water we can drink straight from the faucet. To familiar sounds and smells. But we will miss the atmosphere here and especially the weather (even though it has been cold the past couple of days). I will miss the sound of people speaking Chinese. I will miss the look on Maya's face when someone speaks to her in Chinese. I will miss our friends the Lazars and the others in our travel group who have been such a wonderful source of support. We will miss Kathy and Jocelyn.
We are ready to move on to the next act of the "Maya Show". We thank all of you who sent us love and support from the other side of the globe. It really did mean the world to us. Thank you, thank you, thank you!! We were so excited each morning to get up and read your words from afar. We will continue to update this blog as it is such a great way to keep everyone updated.
So, we say for the last time...Goodbye from Guangzhou!!
Love,
Jill, Mike and Maya