Thursday,a free day.

Today is a free day for us. The Harbours were planning a trip to Morgan,their daughters orphanage today. It is about 4 hours one way by bus. Unfortunately the weather was too rainy and bad towards their destination to safely make the journey. Instead they arranged to have Judy take them on another excursion. We had been promising the girls a shopping day here on the island so we stayed behind to relax and do that. The quantity of adoptions occurring in the last two years has dried up so much that the local merchants here are really struggling. They have built most of their retail business around adoptive parent and their new children. Between this and the economy, since 2006 China has been experiencing high inflation also, the little shops are struggling to make ends meet. We talked with one shop owner, Jordan whom we had met in 2005,and he told us he had been forced to move his shop to another location on the island because of the rent increases for retail space. The shop owners are great sales people and all are smart enough to praise how cute and sweet your adopted children are. "Oh your babies are so cute, where are they from and while we are talking won't you come into my shop and look around?" They all sell almost exactly the same "touristy" merchandise. It just matters how much you are able to negotiate the price. Any of the souvenir prices are negotiable, in fact you are expected to negotiate either price or additional goods for the first price quoted.

Well, tomorrow is our last day here. We have all our documentation but have to wait until Friday evening to catch a direct flight back to LAX. We will arrive there Friday evening around 7:30 pm. This before we even left in China! It is a 12 hour flight and with the time difference we gain back the day we "lost" coming over. I will try to post one more time before we pack up here tomorrow. Miss you all and are ready to be home!