Sunday, November 5, 2006

Today we flew from Beijing to Guangzhou. Our checked luggage had been collected last evening, so our group trudged down to an early breakfast with of our carry-on luggage. Then, we waited in the lobby of the Poly Plaza for our guide, Rui. When she didn’t show for quite some time, Karen called her room…and woke her up! Poor thing, she had fallen asleep and was so embarrassed because of it. We got to the airport in plenty of time for the flight, but then the fun started. Okay, I’m not telling the truth, it wasn’t really fun.

It turns out that Chinese officials are okay with all liquids except bottled water and soft drinks. Each time they detected either of the above, they opened them to sniff them. Sealed or not, each was opened and sniffed. I was rendered speechless when they found two cans of Coke in my bag, popped each one open, gave it a quick sniff and handed it back with a curt “okay.” More unbelievable was that they opened all eight of our Polaroid film boxes (which we had left carefully sealed in their little foil boxes). Apparently, opening just one of the identical boxes to check it out wasn’t safe enough. The good news is that several pair of scissors made it through the screening in our carry-on bags.

We arrived in Guangzhou (which has much cleaner air, thankfully) but our GWCA guide wasn’t there to meet us. She had called to check on our flight and was under the impression that it had left an hour late (it hadn’t).

Once at the famous White Swan hotel, our group of eight families had the toughest time getting rooms that were correct according to our reservations. Our family, for example, had reserved a mini-suite and two standard rooms, each with two beds, non-smoking. Well, our mini-suite was on the 27th floor, but the two standard rooms were on the 10th! It took an hour and a half, but we finally got all three rooms on the same floor (we’re on the 5th floor now, the rest of our group are between floors 10 & 18).

This hotel is full of adoptive families and their beautiful babies. It is so frustrating that we have to wait another full day until we are united with ours. Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for the babies…without them.

What we’ve seen of Shamian Island (where the White Swan is located) is beautiful, and it’s going to be fun to explore. There is a beautiful park just across the street, so we’re glad we brought the football and Frisbees to play with. The boys are in the pool right now, but I’m told it’s very cold, so they’ll likely be out of it soon.

We didn’t take many pictures today, so some of these are from yesterday at the Wall. Some are pictures of signs we’ve seen that we find humorous.