Guangzhou!

We've been in Guangzhou for roughly a day and a half and it's a very interesting place. We arrived at the airport surrounded in 94 degree heat mixed with high humidty, pollution, and a lot of smokers. Asthma spray here I come. We felt like swimming in the air. We eventually adjusted to the weather a little. My job title advance to pack mule, surgeon assistance, chemist, pack organizer and magician.

In a diaper change, I'm the surgeon assistance and magician. Arlene would call out and I would repeat what she said. "Poopy?, poopy; Pad, pad; Diaper, diaper; Wipes, wipes. Oh no, we have a hazmat emergency, break out the emergency pack, breaking out the emergency pack; Hazmat contained! hurrah! deodorized poop bag, bag; Activate decon wipes, decon wipes. Yea, we're done. High five! Sometimes I feel like a magician because things have to miraculously come out of my mule pack. We won't tell you our airplane adventure where the passenger in front of Rui was leaning forward as far away from her screaming or how she made such a mess that the stewardess kept giving me napkins or how they need a shopvac to clean the lunch they gave us.

Saturday we flew to Guangzhou and arrived around 3 pm to their smoggy airport. Thankfully we didn't have to take the H1N1 scans. They use buses to drive us from the landing area to the luggage area. We took roughly 5-6 hours of waiting in lines, and the flight to get to the famous White Swan around 4 pm. We were exhausted and hungary. Our new guide said, attention here is a bottle of water, and we will be taking visa photos at 5 pm and we will be walking to the studio. Aaagghh. It was a long day.

The room we had was really nice and had beds as hard as military cots. I'm glad I brought Advil for my back. For a high tech person, I coudn't figure out how to turn on/off lights for 10 minutes! Internet cost is 100 rmb/day or 300rmb/week. I was one of the last big spenders! By the morning we had drank all our drinking water and there were no sundry shops in the hotel and I was too cheap to spend $10 us on water from the mini refrigerator.

The buffet here is fantastic. The food is now more 70% english and 30% chinese. We prefer the previous buffet. They provided tatertots, brownies, peaches, ham, and italian curry trianglar wrapped pizzas?? We had the perfect view of the bay watching mechanical ships and boats manually picking up the hyacyins out of the water. I was busy reloading my empty water bottles with water because I didn't have time to buy drinking water and I heard these chinese attendant ladies talking impolitely about me about the water (they were smirking that I was a tightwad, etc..) and they were smiling at me the whole time. I had the urge to scold them in chinese but I only knew enough words to get me in trouble, so I didn't. I should have quietly walk up to them and smiled at them and said, I undertood everything you said about me and then walk away. They would've freaked out. When we shop, I try to talk to the staff and I'm surprise they understand my Cantonese.

We visited a local Christian church (across the street from the hotel) and really enjoy the service
at 11am. It was jam packed and delightful. Rui didn't complain at all (she slept for part of the sermon). We did a small amount of shopping. I hope the dvds I purchased aren't contraband! Of course not! I have receipts.

We took the visa photographs for the children yesterday and photos of all the families and then all the kids, and then the whole kitten kaboodle. It was completely fun, crazy, stressful at the same time. We made enough noise to attact the attention for the whole floor. We were all yelling out "CHEEZE" for roughly 20 cameras!

Every group has it's adventures, ups and downs. Please pray especially for two families where their adopted 10 yr old child is having a rough time adjusting, and for another mother who developed some medical conditions. Both families are believers at different stages. It may sound like we're having a lot of fun (we kinda are) but also it's a challenged adjusting to a new whiny daughter (applies to me, but it's getting better).

Well, tomorrow (Tuesday) we have the medical exam (we already know Rui is ticklish - yea) and a large amount of paperwork. Our guide said it would be torture and we have to meet in their rooms to save spending 1000s of rmbs. We're okay with that! We live one day at time here, slowly getting spoiled. But their water here is gross. It's a lite green color, if you want to take a bath. el yuck.....eewwwww. Well it's time to sign off. I have to reload my formula cartridge containers!

P.S. I think I'm losing weight!