Today was a different day. It was supposed to be an easy day with mainly easy paperwork. The paperwork was easy – especially for Bert since he left everything to Sue. He signed a lot of things and hopes he did not order more stuff. 

There were two families doing paperwork and a third one just to hang out with us. The kids had a lot of fun and it was quite loud at times. One of the documents had Bert's nationality wrong. They listed him as US citizen but his passport is German. We hope that this will be corrected soon. But, it requires a new document from CCAA – there is enough space for additional trouble – lets cross that bridge when we get there. 

After the paperwork we went shopping. We ask the doorman of the (five star, Taiwanese owned) hotel if we can get a taxi. He exclaimed that it would be difficult at that time of the day. That was the end of it. This hotel does not make any efforts to get taxis for their guests or has a taxis stand. For such a modern and high standard hotel, that is kind of strange. We walked to a shopping mall about 20 minutes away in the cold of approx. -5 F degree temperature. It was coooooold! We were lucky to get a taxi on the way back. In the taxi Xinxin mentioned that we made there by "walking in this terrible cold for such a long way that her feet nearly fell off from the cold". We have to admit that her boots, as pretty as they were, might have been to tight too – but we bought her new ones right away. 

We also bought a lot of snacks in a grocery section of the mall. Xinxin really enjoyed this and tried to buy a lot of things. We ended up with two bags of mainly snacks in all kinds of varieties. She also knows what she wants when it comes to shoes and cloth. We are deeply worried that this is another member in our family that is "born to shop". Daddy was already talking about a second job this morning at breakfast when he saw the amount of food that this girl can eat. After the shopping experience he might know that hard time lies ahead.  

After shopping we spent the rest of the day in the hotel and the kids of all three couples played together, ran up and down the hallway, and did cartwheels, chased Toby and Josh, made necklaces, watched movie together…… and many more things. That led to the first problem with Anna. She was very tired and finally got real jealous of Xinxin. Xinxin acted real mature and cared about everybody. When we eat snacks, she first offerd one to all the other people around her and then she took a snack herself. (We wonder how long this will last??). Also she was really upbeat and as the new kid took the center stage. Pair this with Anna being tired and we had a real melt down which started right in time when we were having dinner with the Szalai’s. Luckily they understand the situation well because they have two girls too. When we returned to the room the battle lasted a few more minutes before Anna fell asleep.

At the dinner table, Sarah – one of the girls from the Szalai’s called Xinxin by her Chinese name. Xinxin told Sue to tell her “don’t call me Xinxin. Please call me Jenny!”. She really likes her English name now. She did not understand why Anna was not very happy. All we explained to her was that Anna was tired. We wonder how long this will last before she figures it out by herself. She can speak some English words already. We are sure soon she will speak and understand English.  

By the way, Mama is real exhausted. She actually took a nap during the day. Lots of things are going on and Jenny calls "mama" about every 5 minutes or more – depending on what is going on. With Anna it was much easier she – called daddy all the time. As lovely and rewarding as it is being needed and chosen the first person be called in need, now Mama finds out first hand how exhausting this can be. Every time she sits down or tries to do something you hear this little sweat voice calling out "Mama?". J Daddy enjoys observing and tells Mama frequently: "now you know how this feels".

We now get more free kisses and hugs from her. She is still a good eat and tries everything. This morning, she broke her rule of not leaving food on the table. We are not surprised that this rule is the first to be broken. Now she knows, she has plenty to eat. It is a good thing, but also a bad thing because we wished she could have kept her good habit of not wasting food for a little longerJ. However, she still is a very helpful person. When she sees others doing work, she immediately offers help. She helped the hotel personnel setting up the conference tables with flowers while we were doing paper work.

Next two days will be “free days”. Tomorrow, the Szalai's will visit their son's foster family. We wish everything goes well for them. The Murphy's had already their daughter's orphanage director visited them today. Their daughter Leah is very close to her orphange director. She was very upset on the Gotach day. She was very upset when her orphanage director left. We will visit a museum and hope to visit Jenny’s orphanage on Friday – not being promised yet, but hopeful. Everything is central government controlled including if an orphanage is open for foreigners or not. Jenny's orphanage is not approved for allowing foreign visitors. Right now because the Chinese New Year, many political leaders visit local welfare organizations. They don't want us to show up to get them in trouble. However, this is a chance that no political visitors this coming Friday and because Sue is Chinese, they may let us visit. Keep us in your prayers. We think it is good for us to visit Jenny's orphanage so she can show us a little glimpses of her life in the past.

With this cold weather here, we really don’t know what else we can do. We only can imagine that this is a beautiful city in the summery time.

We hope that all of you are in doing well and hope that the snow in Michigan comes to an end soon. We all want to be home in time for the evening of the Super ball.