The cutest new American and a cruise down the Pearl River

Monday April 28th was the day that our entire trip had been based around, Milo's United States Consulate appointment. Children adopted internationally from China are not allowed to keep dual citizenship, so this appointment was to ensure we had done all of the proper paperwork for Milo to become an American citizen. When we travel home, Milo will use his Chinese passport for the first and only time and he will be an American citizen from the moment our plane touches down in Seattle.  

We had to get up bright and early for this appointment, not something we were used to during our time in China! Milo wanted to dress up for the occasion and he looked so cute in the bow-tie that our friend made for him!

So sleepy!

Our guide and driver picked us up at 7:30 am from our hotel. We stopped to pick up Milo's medical exam paperwork and then walked over to the consulate. The US Consulate had recently moved to this location and it is in a beautiful part of downtown Guangzhou with lots of trees. Cameras are not allowed inside the Consulate, so we were only allowed to take a picture outside. Once we made it through the metal detectors and up a glass elevator, we met up with a few other adoptive families who had the same appointment time. We did our best to keep the children from having meltdowns while we waited for our numbers to be called. Imagine bringing your toddler to the DMV and you will understand how much fun it was! Brian and I took an oath on Milo's behalf and in about 20 minutes we were done. It was kind of anti-climatic considering how long we had waited to get this appointment! 

 

That evening we once again met up with our new friends to take the Pearl River cruise.  The cruise lasted only a few hours, but was one of the highlights of our trip. Guangzhou is lit up beautifully at night, it's an really cool way to see the city. 

The huge tower in the above pictures is the Canton tower. It was the tallest building in the world from 2009-2011 and has now moved to 5th tallest (the current tallest is in Dubai). 

This day turned out to be one of the most meaningful days of our trip (behind family day of course). We both ended that day feeling so incredibly blessed that we had been given the opportunity to adopt our amazing son and spend two weeks in his birth country. Every day it seemed that Milo trusted us a little more and it was so much fun to see his personality shine through. 

At this point in the trip, our official adoption related duties were over and we were able to spend the rest of the week sightseeing and enjoying our last days in China. We will post on that next time!