Day 10: Airplane to Guangzhou

Today, we traveled to Guangzhou (pronounced "goo-ahng jo") is a large city in southern China, close to Hong Kong.  It is a port and trade city and has relatively clean air and orderly traffic, compared to the smoggy air and crazy traffic from the other cities.  

Here we are in the process of packing our bags.  For some reason, they are not getting any lighter, even though we've eaten a bunch of the food!

We went downstairs for a quick breakfast.  Gabriel here is buttering his donut.  Yes, the kids are getting away with things they don't usually get to do back home.

Xiao Yu loves watermelon.  The first day we had him, we let him have as much watermelon as he wanted, but then we paid for it later with his diapers.  We now limit him to a couple of slices a day.

At the airport, our guides helped us check in our luggage.  This entire line is our group with a trail of suitcases.

Xiao Yu did well on his first plane ride.  He got fussy and antsy at the end, but this is probably because he doesn't like to be confined to a small space for a long time and also it was during his nap time.  

Gabriel liked riding on the airplane.  After riding a certain mode of transportation, the day after he always recaps the event with Elvin by saying: "Remember, I ride big airplane?"

The ride was less than two hours but they still fed us lunch.  Rice and chicken in some brown sauce.  Along with a packet of pickled mustard greens.  Eliana, by the way, did fine on the plane and did not get airsick.  It was just a short hop of a flight.

And there was Karina, charming the passengers that sat behind her.

We finally made it to Guangzhou and our local guides that work for the adoption agency met us at the airport.

We are here because Guangzhou has the only American consulate in China which gives out travel visas.  Xiao Yu has a Chinese passport, and so needs a visa to enter the U.S., at which point he then becomes an American citizen based on the special status we applied for him as an adoptee.

At the hotel, it took a long time to check in.  So we let the kids eat snacks.  Here is Karina laying down on the bags snacking on cheese puffs.

We again were able to get rooms that are next to each other and are connected via an internal door.  So helpful!  We're grateful to our agency for arranging that.

While we were unpacking, Karina busied herself by drawing two pictures for her two dolls.  They are of a swing set, we think.

We went downstairs for dinner.  They didn't have a table available, so we looked at the fresh seafood available.

The kids also treated this chair like a climbing gym.  Once Elvin told them that it was a royal chair for the emperor and empress, they (sort of) decided to sit like normal people.

And then it was bed time.  The kids got a story...

And Xiao Yu had fun chewing on his toothbrush.

And after the kids were in bed, Elvin snuck out to buy some bottled water at the local 7-Eleven.  And unlike the 7-Eleven in Beijing, this one had an honest to goodness Slurpee machine.  The kids will be very excited when we tell them about this...