Finalized

It's official -- Rachel Guanglan Bruffett is our daughter. Now we wait in Xi'an for her passport and the translated adoption documents. That will give us several days to see the sites of Xi'an. The plan is to visit the city wall and Wild Goose Pagoda tomorrow, then the Terra Cotta Army on Wednesday. We also hope to go to a dumpling banquet one evening. We will visit the city gate that was Rachel's finding place.

We're here with a family from Louisiana, and they and their new daughter are a delight. We'll always remember how scared we all were of the aggressive style of our skilled driver. Brent says driving is as much an art here as a skill. The streets seem much more intimidating here than in Beijing or in the other Chinese cities we visited in 2008. Pedestrians have no right of way ever, which makes the prospect of crossing the street to go to the nearby department store hard to face, even with our guide's promise of big holiday sales. We have enough clothes for Rachel, but we didn't bring many toys. So far she is well-occupied, so the live-action game of Frogger can wait another day.