Day 12 & 13 - Guangzhou - Shopping, the zoo and river cruise

Yesterday we met up with the famous Ann from Red Thread for some shopping! It was really great to meet her in person after emailing with her over the past couple months. Ann is pretty well known in the China adoption community. She has a website business where you can order care packages for your child and she ensures they are delivered to the orphanage.
We had approx 3 hours and the agenda was: pearl market, jade market and children's traditional clothes. 1st stop - the pearl market. Ann quickly walked us into a shop and started asking to see different quality and types of pearls for us to look at. You choose the strand and then it is strung into a necklace, bracelet, etc. The prices were amazing. Mark kept saying - buy more! I have different types of pearls for me, pearls for April now, pearls for April when she is 16, pearls for when she gets married, for Bennett to give to his wife when he gets married, etc. After we finished selecting what we wanted - Ann wisked us away to a jade seller. I wanted to get a couple of pendants - again - Ann was able to negotiate great prices and we bought a lot more than we planned on. After that - she asked me if wanted a high quality or medium quality jade bracelet. I said "high", so off we went to another vendor. I looked at many bracelets - but didnt' find
one I liked. I like the ones that have more green, apparently the higher quality don't have those "blemishes". Off to another vendor to look for some small jade lions and a family ball. Found the lions, but came up short on the family ball. Picked up a couple of "medium quality" jade bracelets and then Ann took us to another jade vendor. After a couple of minutes - she turned to us and said "this stuff is not good" so back to the first jade vendor and finally I was able to find a bracelet that I liked. 

By this point - we had run out of time so Ann flagged down a cab and we were on our way back to the hotel. We arranged to meet up with her again on Tues. to shop for traditional clothes. The kids were pooped from all the running around and shopping. Mark took April back to the medical clinic for her TB test reading. Negative!!! so no xray needed. While they were gone, I took Bennett to the pool for a swim. There were a lot of other adopting families there are well so it was nice for him to play with the other kids.      

Today we headed out early to the Guangzhou zoo. It was raining so we had the zoo pretty much to ourselves. With all the trees and umbrella's, it wasn't bad at all. We had heard some pretty negative things about the zoo and one of the families had suggested the safari instead. The zoo was included in the cost, the safari was extra - so zoo it was. We were all pleasantly surprised by the zoo. It was not as nice as the zoo in Beijing - but the animals all seemed healthy and the zoo was very clean and well laid out. The monkeys were the highlight again. There was only one panda - and he didn't move around much.           

We had an aborted attempt at a nap (kids were not cooperating) and then an aborted attempt to go out for lunch (rain and whiny, tired kids) so we turned around and went back to the room for a picnic lunch of dinner leftovers and raman noodles on the floor. It was good fun for everyone and snapped the kids out of their cranky moods. We finished up in time to meet up with Ann again for another shopping outing. Ann is amazing. She knows just which shops to go to that have good quality and she is able to get great prices! We bought way more than was on our list and are really happy with everything we bought! (this is begining to become a theme!)

Tonight we did a dinner cruise on the Pearl River. It was raining - but we all enjoyed it. April cried a bit when we went up on the top deck (outside) and she got rained on. Mark put a rain jacket on her and she started smiling and laughing. We are guessing that she was probably never allowed to play in the rain. Our guide let Bennett borrow his little umbrella and Bennett was on top of the world.

We are all pretty tired and ready to come home. Our consulate appointment is tommorow morning. Our guide will take our paperwork to the consulate while we stay back here at the hotel. It is supposed to rain again tommorow so we will be holed up in the hotel. Not looking forward to that as the kids get pretty stir crazy in the room and the hotel has been frowning upon loud children in the more public areas. 

We have 3 more days here in Guangzhou. Friday evening we fly to Hong Kong. We stay overnight in Hong Kong and will then (finally) fly home on Sat.