Saturday, August 15, 2009

When your sliding into first with your pants about to burst

Yep, that's right, all of us grown ups have had it. Thank goodness the kids haven't. Mine started Thursday night. Jason went to a concert by the Central China Orchestra with Dr. Lu and mom and I stayed in and put the kids to bed. I woke up Friday feeling icky. Mom and Jason took the kids to breakfast and played in mom's room while I took some cipro, pepto, and got some sleep. Thankfully that seemed to take care of it and I felt much better by lunchtime (not that I ate). We then had to pack up and check out of our hotel.
Dr. Lu came by one last time to say goodbye (this man is amazing). His family also got our family some very thoughtful gifts. They got Max a statue of the horse from WuWei and they got both kids some traditional Chinese outfits. Ellie has already had hers on dancing around like a beautiful princess. The grown ups got some lovely silk scarves.
After we checked out we went to the Yellow River Park. Back in the day, goods were transported down the river using Sheepskin rafts. There is an area there today where they still make these. They basically skin a sheep whole, seal the skin with oil, dry it, and inflate it like a balloon. They then take lots of these inflated sheep skins and use them to float rafts down the river. What's amazing to me is that the skin still looks like a sheep. It's kind of creepy. You can take rides on these rafts down the river, but we declined. We also saw the statue of the Yellow River Mother which was very nice and then walked down the river to one of the old water wheels. Jason was fascinated of course. It was How It's Made in person. It was really neat. It was probably the coolest thing we had seen in Lanzhou. After this we had a light dinner and drove to the airport. Ellie was tired and ready to be on the plane, so she was a bit out of sorts. Thankfully, she held it together. She conked out shortly after we got on the plane. Max did really well also, especially considering it was his first plane flight and he doesn't like to be cooped up. He sat and played for about an hour, then ate some dinner (yes they serve full meals on in China flights), and then he fell asleep too. We thought we had that flight licked. Then, when we went to get the kids off of the plane we realized Ellie had pottied in the airplane seat. Awesome. Thankfully, the flight attendants were very understanding. I got her cleaned up while mom and Jason got the luggage and handled Max. Then we made the long drive into Guangzhou.
What we first noticed about Guangzhou was the driving. It was tame. Nothing like what we were used to in Beijing or Lanzhou. And, it was quiet. There was no honking. Our guide Elvin said that in Guangzhou they ticket people for honking too much! What a change. It took us about 45 minutes to get to our hotel. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Shifu which is not the traditional hotel for adoptive parents. It is quite nice, but in a more traditional busy part of Guangzhou right on a busy pedestrian shopping street. We were very pleased to check into our large, updated hotel rooms and crash for the night at about 12:30am.

2 comments:

  1. I am so enjoying your blog and travels. Can hardly wait to meet Max. Your squatty details were hilarious and brought back some "interesing" memories for me! carolyn

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