Rose Mei, Signing Off

Well, this is it.....our last post from China! I can't believe it is finally over. Tomorrow morning, we wake at 5:00 a.m (just as all of you are going home from work), on the bus by 6:30 a.m., and at the airport while you all back home are eating your dinners. It is going to be a very long day for us. Actually, by the time we pull into our driveways on Friday evening once we get home, our April 15th will have been 29 hours long (from the time we woke up). That is a very long day! Today we spent the day buying last minute souvenirs, packing, and saying sad farewells to several of our new adoptive families within our travel group. We said goodbye to the Koehn family from Idaho and the Hirschi family from Utah. Last night we said goodbye to the Brown family from Utah. It's hard to say goodbye to those that you now share a very special bond with, especially after having spent the past couple of weeks with them. We are forever connected now and we'll definitely keep in touch. We also took some time to walk around the island and take some last minute photographs of life in China, as well as say farewell to all the shopkeepers here on the island who have taken all of our money. :-) We actually got quite familiar with several of them and they all just loved to see us coming their way everyday (to get more of our money). They were all nice people though and we'll remember them always (in pictures). We also ate our last dinner at Lucy's tonight. As much as I was glad that we had Lucy's to serve us western food during our long stay here, I am not going to miss it for a very long time! Well, it's time to get to bed. 5:00 a.m. is going be upon us very quickly, so I'd better get some sleep. Enjoy your day and please be thinking of us on that cramped up airplane as you lay your heads down on your soft pillows and bed tonight! Look out, here we come!

Lillian and some restaurant hostesses

Another hostess (different restaurant)

Lillian and Renae Koehn

Lillian and Li Ping (our guide)

Lillian, Kari, and Jessica Hirschi

PS.... We hope you enjoyed following along on this journey. We really appreciate all the posts that everyone made. It really helped hearing from all of you when we were so far away. Thank you! See you soon!