Red Couch Photo Day

Ty turning on his charm in his Red Couch photo.

Ty has a new friend, Mocha the Monkey. Mocha is a world traveler.

Flooding from the rain of the typhoon.

The Pearl Market- 6? story shopping mall with tons of jewelry.

Travel Group #1419

The infamous Red Couch Photo.

The happy RoRo family.

Amy: Our time is coming to an end in China and we are SO READY to be home with Ty. This trip has been full of wonderful memories, history, sights to see and food to eat. But we are ready for a sense of normalcy. Hotel living and eating out is getting extremely old. We are ready to be in our home and introduce Ty to his new bedroom, toys, family and friends. The little guy is a charmer and has attached to us very well. He is a musician banging his utensils on the table repeating his dads beats, an engineer taking things apart and putting them back together, a sweetheart blowing kisses and waving goodbye as we leave a place and a chef, making interesting concoctions with his food. We have also started to eliminate dairy products from his diet to see if it makes any difference in his blowout diapers. Asians are prone to be lactose intolerant and we are seeing if this might be true for Ty. Day 1, we can see a slight improvement. We will see what Day 2+ bring.

Tomorrow we take our oath and go to the zoo. Everything was perfect with our Visa/Immigration paperwork and there were not any questions, praise God. We have been killing time visiting the shops on the island and went to the Pearl Market today with our group. All shops sell the same thing and most follow you around like pests. They do not understand the concept, "I am just looking, thank you" which really means "LEAVE ME ALONE!" We did find a lovely shop that all the profits go to benefit the orphans of China. They were classy and had handmade products that were gorgeous and unique.

We had a really cool experience today leaving the Pearl Market. Our guide was getting a taxi for us and they were all full as each drove by. Finally, an empty taxi approached us and another man wanted it. Our guide guarded the doors and said, "No" and motioned us to get in the cab. We were kind of afraid and could feel some stress. We didn't want anybody to be mad at us. The taxi driver kept looking at Ty and asking questions to our guide. When we arrived back at the hotel, the cab driver would not take our fare. He pointed to his lip and gave a thumbs up to Ty. Our guide told us he too had a repaired cleft lip which I thought I got a glance of when we got in the cab.