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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Update from Guangzhou

We made it into Guangzhou last night around 9:30 PM, and had a 40 minute +/- Van ride to our hotel "The White Swan". The hotel is over the top opulent, with humongous jade carvings, bonsai tree's, embroidery artwork, stained glass artwork, waterfalls, et cetera and that was all upon waking in the lobby. We unpacked everything as if we were going to stay for a week and then it appeared the A/C quit working. Upon the engineer's inspection around 11 PM, he concluded it was non-operational. We repacked all of our gear and moved to the 15th floor and settled Sarah down around midnight.

This morning we rose and had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel buffet. In addition to all of the traditional Chinese breakfast items which included noodles, rice, dumplings, steamed buns, seaweed, fish balls, and such we had classic choices such as Granola, Yogurt, Eggs cooked to order, french toast, bacon, assorted fresh juices, real coffee. It was quite a change, some would say an "upgrade", we would agree with the assessment however we thoroughly enjoyed the authenticity of Nanning. Don't get me wrong, we appreciate the cold blowing a/c, edible ICE, computer access and all of our other "creature comforts". We also discovered that Sarah is a big fan of the boiled egg, she pointed at one on the buffet and Katie handed it to her at our table and half joking she said "Let's see if she peel's it herself", before we were through laughing Sarah had cracked it on the table and began peeling it herself, we continued to laugh it up. She is a truly amazing little girl and she keeps surprising us at every turn, we are so very fortunate! She is really responding and doing better in every imaginable aspect than we could have hoped for, we are very encouraged and enthusiastic to see what the reports are once we have testing done at home.

We met our guide (Kelly) in the lobby this morning with some of the other families from Great Wall and headed off to the Dr.'s office for Sarah's TB test, and "inspection". All in all it went fine, however she definitely made it clear that she was not happy to be in the office, exam room or especially having anyone in a white coat near her ears. I felt so bad for her, Meg and Katie almost cried as well. It was a very sad experience, but it was over quickly and we were on our way. We walked down the block and saw more than one bride taking advantage of the beautiful landscaping for wedding photo backdrops. We saw brides in classic Chinese outfits to wedding dresses as we know them in the USA today.

As you will see in the picture below, on the Island we are staying on which is really a "sandbar" separated by a river there is a "Starbuck's". We dropped in for a Hibiscus and Mango flavored Tea with a cup of fruit.

Nanning baker and coffee shop, Katie and Sarah.

Sarah at the bakery.

Dave and Sarah "Leaving Nanning" while shamelessly plugging The Range

Sarah working her egg.

We are on our way to the Dr.'s office.

Sarah posing on a pile of books. This sculpture is in the middle of a glorious courtyard that is under construction for the upcoming "Asian Games".

The Iced Tea was really that good.



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