We took the red couch pictures last Tuesday. As you can tell, Annika was very excited and couldn't wait for her picture. She fell asleep about 5 minutes before I was going to change her into her dress and then I had to wake her up to put it on. Those dress aren't exactly something you can just slip them into while they sleep. Any thing that requires a side zipper to get it over there head is challenging but even more so when you are trying to get it on a sweaty, screaming, sleepy 8 month old.
Who ever started this tradition must have not been in a very large travel group. We had 14 babies 8 month and younger and than 4 older children (who didn't seem to be too excited about the prospects of sitting with all of the squirming, screaming younger girls. Can't say that I blame them). The picture was scheduled to happen right at nap time, which should have been a tip-off that we were headed straight for disaster. Several girls showed up already crying. By the picture you can see that those who weren't crying were not paying a bit of attention to the hoard of paparazzi who was desperately trying to get the perfect picture (Wish I could have taken a picture of all the photographers, they were pretty funny too). The guide tried to give us some direction at first and then ended up just sitting back and laughing as it became chaos.
After what seemed like 30 minutes of attempting the picture, everyone finally gave up and moved to take one giant group photo of everyone in our group. (David and I are the two giants in the middle of the photo. Maybe we would have been less noticeable if we would have sat on the front row or at least not have stood next to two of the shorter families.) We drew quite a crowd when we would go out together places. I can only imagine how strange it would have to be to walk out of a building into a group of 20 American families each with a Chinese child(some with two). One woman even snuck in behind out guides as they were taking this picture and took some with her own camera. 
3 comments:
Welcome to the Red-Couch Club. Mayhem and crying. You can't buy memories like that!
Classic photos, aren't they? Our red couch photo was really funny. The girls were from 2 different provinces, so we split them that way. The Hunan group was quite "active", but the Jiangxi girls just sat there so nice...for about 30 seconds, then one started, then the next and it was like the domino effect down the line. Too funny!
I love the second screaming picture--that'll be a keeper! I can't even imagine the chaos...
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