We had discouraging news about the whole visa situation that I mentioned yesterday. I'm just going to be lazy and copy and paste a message I sent a little while ago to my well-connected friends at work.

This is the situation... This whole week immigrant visas (In our case these are the babies' visas necessary to bring them home) have been slow in coming from the United States. Every day this week when families have gone to get their visas they haven't been ready. The Monday group went back on Tuesday and were told the visas still weren't ready. There were two attorneys in the group who threatened legal action, so the US Consulate General here in Guangzhou had his employees work overtime and had the visas ready by the evening. The next group went in today, didn't have an attorney, and instead made a big scene. Our agency person here said the Consulate General is very proud and difficult to work with and reacted by saying he won't have his employees work anymore overtime. Our consulate appointment is tomorrow afternoon (2:30am Friday there). Once we have the visas we are free to come home. If our visas aren't ready and the Consulate General still won't allow overtime then this is what will happen:

• They are closed for the weekend and won't resume work on the visas until Monday.
• We will miss our flights.
• Our agency person, Shiyan, doesn't know for certain but heard that Northwest Airlines doesn't have available seating until 4/19.
• The Guangzhou Trade Fair begins 4/15 and most likely rooms in our hotel are booked and even if they aren't, the prices go up to $300-$400 a night. I heard before we came that during the trade fair there are no available hotel rooms in the city.

We need help from senators and governors to call the U.S. Department of State and ask them to call the U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou and ask him to have his employees work overtime to process our visas. It is my understanding that the State Department is over the consulate's office.

We can be reached at the White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou, at 011-8620-8188-6968 or e-mail us at this e-mail address: kcs4him@yahoo.com. Action has to be taken today in order to help us. I know this is last minute and asking a lot, but we are now in a desperate situation.

So... there you have it. If you have any connections to anyone in power we will gladly accept your help. It appears that the worst case scenario is that we would likely have to get more out of this city and may have to stay in China another week. It's frustrating because Kyle needs to get back to work and Sydney needs to get back to school, plus the extra expense involved in an extended stay. But the babies are ours and that is most important. I am extremely thankful that Sydney is with us. The families who left kids behind are having a rough time. One parent can leave now and go home so some of them are doing that in order to have one parent back with those kids. That's tough, too. It's a difficult situation. We had a meeting tonight to pray together. They are a great group of people to be stuck in a foreign country with. Ha!

We did have some fun today. We went to White Mountain Park...

We all thought we were going to the park to walk around and admire the pretty mountain. Instead, we hiked up the mountain. It was a nice paved road, straight up, and I would guess about 20 miles but was probably more like 3.

It was a very pretty hike. There were lots of people there, mostly older Chinese. Again, we attracted LOTS of attention. Every time we stopped, people, like 10 or more, would gather around the babies and ooh and ah over them.

They would talk to one another (in Chinese, of course) and point and laugh. We don't know why they were laughing. One time, Sydney got caught in the middle of one of these gatherings and she said they were stroking her cheeks and hair. She didn't know what to think of that. While that was going on I was taking pictures. I looked around for Kyle and Lydia (in the stroller) and saw him off to the side. It looked to me like he was trying to hide but before I could get to him he was surrounded, too. It was pretty funny. When we got to the top of the mountain the three big girls became the center of attention. Young Chinese girls kept posing behind them for their picture...

It was so cute, that all of us would jump up to take a picture, too! The Chinese girls would jump up and down and giggle after they had their picture taken with them. I think our girls kind of felt like movie stars and enjoyed all the attention, after they got used to it.

In the afternoon we did the infamous "Red Couch" picture. Each adoptive group dresses their girls in traditional Chinese clothing and put them all on the red couch at the White Swan to take their picture. Most of them scream! It's really kind of cruel, but hey, it's tradition!

Well, I've got to get to bed. Please continue to pray that we get to come home on time.

Love,
Carmen, Kyle, Sydney and Lydia