Micah has his visa!

He's street-legal for entry into the US! Micah must have known it was a big day because he gave us a six a.m. wake-up call. For all those who know Steve and his utter dislike of getting up early in the morning, he was at breakfast at 7:30 a.m. today, which occurs on the same timetable as Haley's comet at best and virgin births at worst.

We went to the American consulate visa unit in the TianHe section of GuangZhou, about 30+ minutes from the hotel in traffic. It's in a non-descript office building, a five-floor escalator ride from street level. It is the only immigration visa unit in all of Asia according to the consular officer who did the swearing in, so this is the gateway through which everyone passes. It is about as dull and butt-ugly looking as any US government office space in Washington, DC - though there was a bunch of toys and things for children to play with in the waiting area.

The consular officer who did the oath actually had a personality, quite the opposite of the American ex-pat toad/drone who did the oath for Thea's visa - somewhere in the emails I've saved from our 2004 trip I have a bit of a rant about him that I'll throw in after I'm home and can edit the blog a little. Her name is Kathleen Yu, and although the last name seems Chinese, she's Caucasian. Since we were in the first row, I went to thank her after everything was finished, and she spoke to Micah in Mandarin - which was probably a refreshing change for him from Steve and I yelling "Bu yao" to him ten thousand times a day.

During her little speech prior to the oath, she said that she personally reviewed and signed off on all the children's applications - and there were enough families from the White Swan alone to fill one large motor coach and a minibus, she had her work cut out for her. The 'interview' at the visa window was only a review of our faces and photographs, no words were exchanged so the word used to describe what transpired was a complete misnomer.

After we all got back to the White Swan, we did the usual red coach photos - Thea and Jillian were about equally grouchy about having pictures taken. Then we all met at Lucy's for dinner. Today was Jim Cash's birthday - so Mary wanted a candle in a slice of apple pie a la mode so we could sing "Happy Birthday" to him. No way this could have been a surprise, the waitresses kept coming and asking if we wanted the apple pie with candle. No subtlety there whatsoever.

One interesting thing we saw on the way to and from the Consulate was guys swimming in the Pearl River. On the way there it was just a few, and they were pretty close to the riverbank. Once were were back in our room, looking down from the 10th floor we could see three or four men out in the middle of the main channel, right in the middle of the ferries that are constantly running back and forth and the shipping lanes. I question their sanity on several fronts: getting whacked by the hull a boat might smart a bit and the pollution level in the river has to be ridiculously high. Wednesday must be the day for this activity because it hasn't happened before. I tried to get a picture, but the zoom on my camera wasn't getting a good lock on them.

Tomorrow Ashleah's family is leaving to return to Des Moines. They are going to the airport at seven a.m. so we said good-byes and got their email address tonight. Micah and I took off a little early from the restaurant because I had to go pick up his chop. I got it at the same store where I bought Thea's chop in 2004. It has his name, MICAH and the two Chinese characters for his former name, Zhong Ji carved into it.

I'm toast, there's nothing more to write about. Our luggage has to be out in the hall at 11:20 am Thursday, the minibus will pick us up at noon. One night at the airport hotel in HK and we're on our way back.

Since this will probably be our last trip to China for a long, long while, I am going to miss it in many ways. I want to get back to our room to watch the light show on the Pearl River before the blue lights on the bridge get turned off at ten pm - though I hope that they turn the music down from wherever, we were treated to everything from Chinese songs to Roll Out the Barrel while trying to get Thea and Micah to sleep, which must come from a CD of the background music in Hell.

Good night all, good night GuangZhou, hello jet lag.