Guangzhou

We safely arrived in Guangzhou last evening at 9pm, the temperature then was 90 degrees.  The flight was only an hour, Katie did fine on ascent and descent but screamed while we were at altitude.  I'm sure she has an ear infection.  We had given her a bottle while taking off so she wouldn't take one such a short time later.  We'll try waiting a little longer on the next flight.  Traveling with a sick baby in a foreign country is really tough.

Guangzhou is a port city and is absolutely huge.  I'm sure it's the size of New York.  Every city we've been in has been huge, so much larger than Indianapolis.  We are staying in the White Swan Hotel which is on the Pearl River.  It was very pretty last night with all of the lights, we're anxious to see it in the daytime.
 
When we arrived at the airport last night, we were greeted by a familiar sight from home...Mcdonald's!  We were hungry as we'd missed dinner and it tasted pretty darn good!

Today we go to the clinic where Katie has her medical exam that will hopefully allow her to travel to the U.S.  Then we will have more paperwork to do this afternoon.

We saw on the news last evening that Beijing is now encouraging people to have  more than one child in an effort to balance out the aging population.  One of the families had a young (early 20's) Chinese woman come up to them at the Nanning airport last evening and asked why we were taking the babies away.  Shannon explained that these girls had all been abandoned and that they had no families and so we adopted them and are giving them families.  The girl seemed to understand and thanked us for taking these babies.  Shannon told her that we thank China for allowing us to be here and giving us this opportunity. 

One thing that we weren't prepared for was that we are quite a spectacle.  In Beijing, before we had the babies, we blended in with all of the other tourists.  In Nanning, we stood out, as there aren't many Caucasians and even fewer with Chinese babies.  It will be interesting to see how we are perceived here in Guangzhou.  All adoptive families have to come through Guangzhou so I would imagine that the people are used to it. 

Yesterday while waiting to go the airport, I met three European ladies, they were asking about Katie and I told them she was from Guiping.  They got really excited as they were on their "Heritage Trip", bringing back three Chinese girls to Guiping, their birthplace too.  The girls aged from 11 to 14.  They were really sweet!

Breakfast is calling!   And so is Katie!