It's official, HengCe is now a Harbour

After our 24 hour "test drive" with Jaxun, we returned to the Hunan Adoption Agency to have our picture taken, complete more paperwork, pay more money and go through a rigorous interview that lasted all of 1 minute. But in the end the adoption was made final so in the eyes of China this little guy is stuck with us.

Our first night together was a bit rough, but not too bad with all things considered. Morgan was only 11 months old when we adopted her so she was unable to speak, she simply cried herself to sleep each night. At the time Stacee's sister Kathy and I referred to this wailing as the "orphan's song". Jaxun on the other hand is 2 1/2 and can speak so last night he too cried and was either saying he was sad or wanted to listen to Michael Jackson's "Bad". Couldn't say for sure which because our Chinese translation skills are not very good.

After leaving the adoption agency we were given a tour of an embroidery museum. When I think of embroidery I think of getting my softball team name stitched onto my baseball hat, but this was much different. This is artwork hand stitched using colored silk thread. Most of the pieces take a minimum of 1 year to complete. The work is so detailed that there were several pieces which were duplicates of famous oil painted portraits.

Once you've had your fill of class and culture, the next logical destination can only be Wal-Mart. This was no Chinese knock-off, this was the real deal with door greeters, blue shopping carts and all. There were a few cultural differences, such as the live frogs for sale in the grocery section, but overall it was pretty much Wal-Mart.

After working up an appetite with some serious shopping, it was one floor down to have lunch at KFC. Hopefully those were chicken legs we were eating and not the giant frog legs they were selling at the Wal-Mart above us.

Similar to Morgan 5 1/2 years ago, with each passing hour Jaxun seems to be warming up to us little by little while slowly shedding the layers of shock, sadness and distrust. By the end of the day he was laughing, playing and having a pretty good time. He seems to be bonding with Stacee very nicely. This evening, in Chinese he started referring to Morgan as "sister" and me as "dad". But those warm fuzzy feelings quickly faded when dear old dad gave him a bath. Oh well, two steps forward one step back.

Tomorrow and Friday we'll go do some sightseeing while we wait for our paperwork to be completed. On Saturday we head back to Guangzhou for yes . . . more paperwork.