White Swan Guangzhou

After spending a day and half in Beijing, we flew to Guangzhou to visit another supplier. We were staying at the White Swan Hotel, which China rates as 5 stars. I'd give it 6 probably...I mean, how many hotels have you been in with a freakin' 3 story waterfall in the lobby. I realized while I was here that I don't think the sun gets to come out in China...I didn't see it at all in Beijing and it's no different here in Guangzhou. And I found at this point that I like northern Chinese food bett...

We need to celebrate finally making it to the last leg of our journey in China as the trip to Guangzhou was an experience we don't want to ever repeat. We made it to the airport just fine (despite always feeling like we are playing a game of frogger with the other cars on the streets) but unfortunately, we didn't find out until we were all on baord the plane that the plane was detained for 3 1/2 hours due to bad weather in Guangzhou. We weren't sure if it was a typhoon b/c the pilot would tal...

Sorry this is delayed - it's Sunday here and still having troubles connecting to the internet. Today we were invited to attend church with a local shop owner and new friend Judy but found out we are going to the Pearl and Jade markets and of course didnt want to pass up a shopping trip! Kenzie is taking good notes from my negotiating skills and her and ALex are getting some pretty deals on neat items to bring back from the city. The Markets were a bit overwhelming and not enough time to reall...

Today, Tuesday, was a free day for us. Only 1 more day on the island and we're heading back home to the states. Emma begins the morning at 6 with a early bottle then she likes to do her morning stretches were she flings her body head first onto the bed between her feet and plays with her feet and coos/talks away. We really wish we knew what she was saying as she has quite the conversation going on with herself.

The girls spent the morning with Emma in the playroom - just having 'fun' a...

We traveled to Guangzhou from Hong Kong by bus. We had to get off the bus at Schenzen to go through immigration and customs. We then continued through the country side until we arrived in Guangzhou. We took a tour of the Guangzhou Sports Training and Technical College. This is the training school for future Olympic competitors from the Guangzhou Province. Students train up to 12 hours a day. We watched very young students (as young as 7 and 8 years old) training. Several of us had the opportu...

Today we spent the day with 15 students from Piezhen Middle School. They took us on a tour of their campus and then we traveled around the city to several sites. Each of us had one or two students as our personal guides as we visited the Statue of the Five Rams, Guangxiao Temple which is a budhist temple, the Guangzhou Museum and then shopped on the Nine Pedestrian Street mall. Our day included lunch at McDonald's and dinner at the Lianxianglou Restraunt for a traditional Cantoneese dinner.

Today we visited Guangzhou No. 2 Kindergarten. This school is a boarding school, Monday through Friday, for 3, 4, 5 & 6 year-olds. Parents drop them off on Monday morning and pick them up on Friday afternoon. The children were adorable!!! We watched the morning flag raising ceremony, and then visited a classroom. We did exercises with the children, sang songs, and played games. We then passed out some of the gifts we brought with us. After the kindergarten, we visted the Dr. Sun Yet-sen's

Stayed on Shamian Island (Wonderful), shopping, great food, traveled to Guangzhou Zoo (beautiful), and went to US Consulate to finalize adoption with US government.

To the White Swan hotel in China

02-20-2006 at 2:00 pm is the appointed time for meeting Katie. Our day started at 5 am, despite our best efforts at sleeping in until 8. A groggy start to our big day, after being up for 17 hours of travel over the last two days. Our room at the White Swan is on the 14th floor looking out over the Pearl River and across to some partly festive, partly dingy buildings (last night when lit in neon, it looked much more festive). It's a gray day. But, one gets the sense that this town has a lot of...