happy birthday, dear Isaac

Yup, we celebrated Isaac’s birthday today.  Of course, we aren’t sure that it’s his birthday.  The orphanage found him on October 30, and estimated that he was about 2 years old at the time.  So doing a little math in their heads, they wrote down Oct 30, 1997 as his DOB.  I still think that he looks like he’s about 10 or 11.  Little matter, though, as we celebrated him today!

We started with a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday in our room the headed downstairs for breakfast.  The first stop of the day was Christ Church of Shamain Island.  It was in Mandarin, translated into English.  The place was packed, and if/when folks left their seats, someone else quickly moved from the back to take their place.  There were other adoptive families there, but we white faces were definitely in the minority!  We sang a couple of songs that were familiar (I Could Sing of Your Love Forever and Amazing Grace) and the preacher spoke from 1 Corinthians 6:12.  It was a good morning, though far different from what’s happening at midtown right now…

The Guangzhou Zoo was next on our agenda.  It was fun seeing all the animals with Team Sublett.  We had a little bit of a scare early in the trip–we looked around and realized that Sadie and Isaac were missing.  The zoo was crowded, and there was some momentary panic.  But I backtracked and found them right where we left them, looking at the Chimpanzee exhibit.  Sadie was a little teary, but Isaac wasn’t too worried.  They did well to stay put until we came to find them.  The rest of the zooing went off without a hitch, and we had a good afternoon.

We rolled back to the hotel for some homework and napping before joining the rest of the families for supper.  One of the ladies bought Isaac a cake (chocolate, caramel, and banana!) and the whole crew sang to him.  I don’t think he’d ever blown out candles before, so that was a first.  We gave him a few gifts, and headed back to our rooms.

One interesting development arose in the course of our supper discussion:  We’re coming home a day earlier than we expected!  It turns out that we figured our travel wrong.  In crossing the International Date Line, we’ll land in Chicago about an hour after we take off from Hong Kong.  That means that we’ll be back at the Harrisburg Airport on Thursday evening, not Friday.  I think we may have messed up the plans of those people who were hoping to meet us on our arrival.  Um, sorry…I hope we can figure out how to get home.  Our van is in nearby Dillsburg, but we don’t all fit in the van.  Aunt Amanda was planning to meet us there and drive back to SC with us…yikes.

Also, if you’ve been commenting on Facebook, I haven’t seen any of your comments.  Facebook isn’t available here in China.  If you want to leave a comment, you’ll have to do so through the actual blog.