Today was a free day--no appointments. We started out the day by shopping for tea. The Jasmine Tea here is my favorite. We went to the shop and tasted several kinds. They laughed at us when we asked if they sold tea bags;) We ended up buying the other kind of tea (not sure what it's even called---not the bag kind!) so I will have to experiment with that at home.

We spent a lot of time playing in our hotel room today. This is the game that Daddy & Mason like to play from the window ledge in our room.

Mason continues to adjust and bond with us, more and more each day. He still cries some when we put him down to sleep, but less. He can now feed himself with a spoon. He likes his bath time. He will go down the slide at the playground all by himself now. He has started using some signs with us, such as "all done" and "please". And lastly, he has no qualms with going to Daddy. He's totally over that! Such big strides in a little over a week.

Visiting the orphanage yesterday has helped us to connect the dots and understand Mason's perspective when he's having a hard time with a certain situation. We now realize that the tantrums he has when he sees doors that go outside are because he is longing to go out. He hardly ever got to go outside when at the orphanage. The fear he has of males is because his caregivers were all women. His fear of strangers is because volunteers/visitors hardly ever came into the orphanage, so he likely never saw anyone except for his caregivers. So not only did the visits yesterday give us a perspective of where he lived and was born, but it is helping us to understand how to better care for him.

We continue to learn more and more about our son in general. We think he may be left handed; he sure has some big feet for a 2 year old; he really likes to keep his socks on (probably wore socks all the time in the orphanage); he loves cars; he likes the in/out game (big brother still does this with various things at home). And he loves going outside.

Tonight we took a riverboat ride on the Pearl River with several other families from our adoption agency. It was a great time--fresh, cool air and amazing sights. This was the first time I (nancy) was cold this entire trip (I'm usually ALWAYS cold!). Mason actually enjoyed the boat ride--you can't really tell that though from this photo!

This is some sort of TV tower in Guangzhou. I think it's pretty famous.

 Tomorrow we have the oath taking ceremony in the morning, then we can start packing--we leave this city on Thursday afternoon. Though we've enjoyed the time here, we're ready to come home!