Day 15 - Guangzhou - shopping, swimming and a good visa surprise

Today we did not have any organized activities planned. The kids slept in until there was an 8 on the clock! We showered, dressed and headed down to a late breakfast. We met another family from Charlotte who will be traveling home on the same flight. We are getting used to the big buffett breakfast and hope that all the walking we are doing is offsetting the eating! We hope April will not be disapointed when we get home and finds that her breakfast choices are quite limited and do not include , on a daily basis; cereal, fruit, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, chicken nuggets, spring rolls, dim sum, noodles, potatoes, omelets, pizza, oatmeal, yogurt, dumplings, baked beans, sausage, bacon, ham, french toast, steamed veggies, cold cuts, pastries, bread, 4 kinds of juice, 2 kinds of milk and I'm sure there are dishes that I am leaving out..btw.. the coffee in the hotel is awful and I am making a daily journey to Starbucks for my caffeine fix. Mark has
been able to satisfy his caffiene need by buying cokes at the 7-11. That is, once he figured out which bottle with chinese writing was plain coke. He did buy a tasty vanilla coke one day that was not to his liking so he has learned to avoid the yellow cap.

There were a couple of shops that we still wanted to visit so we headed out for a walk. Shaiman island (where we are staying) must be a hot spot for wedding photos. Bennett is fascinated by all of the brides and keeps hoping that we will get to witness the actual nuptual ceremony.

After visiting a couple of stores, negotiating prices and buying more stuff (shoes, wall hanging, chinese dolls, kid chinese music cd) and getting some free stuff (chinese flags, string bracelets and a magnet of the Jiangsu province) we headed back to the hotel for a picnic lunch of noodles and animal crackers. We had a message from our guide that he was able to get our visa a day early and would try to arrange an earlier flight for us! This means that we can get to Hong Kong at a more reasonable time on Friday and let us get the kids some dinner, and a bath before trying to get them to bed.

After the picnic we put on bathing suits (thank you Miriam for lending me a suit for April!) and hit the pool. April loved it and Bennett had fun swimming in the "big" pool.  

We were able to meet up with another family who adopted from the same orphanage for dinner tonight at the Italian restaurant. We had six - they thought we said 16 - and were seated in a private banquet room. Once they realized their mistake, we think they took one look at the kids and decided that we should stay in that room - with the door closed! Good thing as April and Olivia tooks turns exercising their lungs. Bennett was on his best behavior and was trying to console both girls when they were upset.  

April is still awake while I am typing this (9:35pm). The good news is that she is not sobbing or screaming. The bad news is that she is not showing any signs of being tired or going to sleep. She fell asleep at dinner - so we figured that she might not sleep well tonight. Hopefully she will fall asleep before we do!

Tommorow morning will be interesting. Packing time!! We bought way more than we planned on and I'm not sure how we are going to fit it all in. Mark is the super packer - so I have full confidence in his ability to get everything in, packed safely to keep from breaking and still stay under the weight limit. 

This will probably be our last post for while as I'm not sure if we will have a connection in Hong Kong and we expect the jet lag to take over for a while once we get home.