handsful

We arrived in Guangzhou last night, around 8:30. 16 families with new-to-us Chinese babies/toddlers on one airplane. The businessman behind us must have thought he landed in some alter-universe. heh heh…

After the long process of baggage claim, boarding the buses, and driving to the hotel, we landed in our room around 11ish and were finally in our (hard!) bed after midnight. The last leg of our journey.

Today’s first order of business was taking pictures for the kids Visas (yes, the photographer had to tell Dylan to put his peace signs down!) – then our big group headed to the clinic for examinations.

The waiting room. It’s loud, crowded, chaotic. The children have to go through 3 stations – ENT, medical evaluation, and height/weight. Those children over age 2 also must have their TB test.

As usual, Dylan was wide-open playful and playing to the crowd :)

I look very annoyed. I wasn’t. Dylan cooperated very well, letting them do what they needed to.

Dylan had to strip down to his birthday suit for his exam…this is Randy’s upside shot of him enjoying the freedom.

However, the fun soon ended when this mean lady in white stuck a needle under his skin and squeezed. Not a happy boy! He goes back to the clinic on Monday to have the TB test evaluated. Assuming it’s negative (which it should be…he had an initial TB test done about a month ago which was clear), we’re good to go. If it did show up positive, he’d have a chest x-ray.

After clinic, we picked up lunch at the deli and ate in the room. This is one of our views – 15th floor.

He approves.

Here in Guangzhou on the island, there are tons of shops that cater to adoptive families. There are LOTS of traveling families here right now, we almost outnumber the locals it seems! An online friend of mine, Amy (who runs the Henan charity on my sidebar by the way) recommended we stop by Susan’s Place to shop and have tea. As soon as we entered, Dong invited us to sit and have traditional tea with him. It was fascinating to watch him make it and explain the “rules” (only 1 kind of tea per pot – otherwise the flavors mix) and his english is good enough that we were able to have a wonderful conversation with him…we discussed religion, politics, children, US and China economies, etc. It was fantastic. And, the black tea was my favorite. He used a brick of tea that was 5 years old…the older the tea, the better the flavor. It had a very earthy taste – he said Chinese NEVER sugar their tea. I had to laugh at that since I certainly DO sugar my tea at home.

We shopped a bit, then rested in our room until it was time to meet the group for dinner at a local Thai restaurant. It was a lovely night that ended with a little more shopping with friends and now we’re in for the night.

We’ll be up early tomorrow for touring – so I’m going to bed! Goodnight from Guangzhou.