The first day in Guangzhao

I must be getting spoiled. We got up this morning and hauled everyone down to a new breakfast buffet in the China Hotel of Guangzhao. Lesley has read somewhere that this buffet was voted best in the world at some point. That's hight praise. The first thing I noticed is that there was
no pitcher of coffee sat on our table. Hmmmm... So when it was finally my turn to go up and get food, I was not pleased. I could find nary a pile of sausage or bacon! How can this be?

I decided that I would just load up on fruit and some high fiber cereal (you figure it out...) and be done with it. So I ate that down and was pretending, poorly I might add, that I was satisfied. Still no coffee so I got up to go look for that about the same time an American lady from
the table next to us was trying to get coffee too. The two of us finally got it figured out as the listing on the machine says, Espresso, Cappucino, Latte, Lungo, and something else. It turns out that Lungo is the coffee option. Maybe that was obvious?

So then there is a button with a picture of one cup on it, and a button with two cups on it. I hit the one with the two cups on it figuring it was twice as strong. Nope, I had an attendent come over and chew me out for wasting coffee. I'm not sure he understood English or not but my
response was "this kind of stuff wouldn't happen if you had bacon and sausage out!".

Later on, Momma went on a quest and came back with a plate containing a sausage, many pieces of bacon, a slice of fried ham (which caused little Caleb to go into caniptions!) and a fried egg. NOW WE ARE TALKING!!! The whole mood in the place just lifted. Oh, and we passed little Liena's grandma (I spelled her name wrong in my previous post. It is Liena, not Liana) while we were walking to our table. When she came down with her mom and dad for breakfast and meet up with G'ma & G'pa, Robby went over to say hi. She was very happy to see him, and vise versa. She was talking about Robby during the week they were seperated and he was talking about seeing her again as well.

It was interesting where they sat us because there were families that we knew from Beijing and many families that we had never met before, but every family had their little adopted peoples with them. Very cool to see as there was probably 50 families total.

Today we took ALL of the kids to the clinic for ear, nose, and throat check-ups, hieght & wieght measurements and to get his neather regions checked out. Oh, and a tb shot. He was not happy with any of this but the tb shot really honked him off. We go back on Monday to get it read.

After that we were free to walk around the "island" that we would have stayed at if the White Swan hotel hadn't closed for remodeling. I will say that I wish we were staying there. The pace of everything over there is much more American like. You see, Guangzhao is about 7 million people and the road ways are built on top of one another. When we were driving in last night from the airport, we were on a road that was even with the rooftops of 4 story apartment buildings. Neon lights are everywhere to the extent that nothing really stands out. It's worse than Vegas. They have these things that are screwed into the tree branches. They hang down and appear to be some type of bug killing device, but oh no, they are neon lights that serve no purpose.

Anyway, we did a little shopping as the other families finished up at the clinic and took a casual walk back to our bus. It was very enjoyable and just nice to be our family by ourselves for a bit without being worried about being lost somewhere in China and no way to communicate. Very
relaxing. I also met a fella who was sitting in a store with twins that he and his wife had just adopted. He's from the New York area and they have adopted so many times that he knows the fella who owns the store by name and they have tea together every morning while he's in Guangzhao. The twins that he had today were kids 10 and 11! He was great to talk to and spoke some pretty decent Mandarin too, so he was communicating with Caleb too. Good stuff.

I was feeling like crap today so after the bus ride back to the hotel, I flopped on to the bed and remained there until Lesley woke me, Robby and Caleb up about 1/2 hour before supper. She went and did paperwork while the boys napped. I am feeling better tonight but still not tip top. Robby seems to be feeling much better as does momma. Caleb is still ripping it up! He is energy personified.

And a fun little story about how quickly these kids adapt. As we're walking back into the hotel, I'm carrying Caleb and Robby is walking by my side. Caleb likes to pester people. A LOT! He reached down and grabbed Robby's hood of his sweatshirt and pulled it just about as hard as he could. Robby turned and yelled, "Caleb, Bu!!". That's pronounced boo, which means 'no' in Mandarin. Caleb laughed like a hyena. One of the momma's from Beijing that we had met was walking behind us with her baby, and said, "WOW!!! They are soooooo brothers already! That is awesome!". I simply replied that they are officially brothers and can fight like them too. We are in for some truly epic battles.

We went to supper tonight with a huge group of people and their new kids. We occupied 4 great big tables in another authentic Chinese restaurant where our new guide, Katherine, had to call ahead in the afternoon to order. It was good food and we got to sit with little Liena and her
family. They're good people with a lot in common with us. Her mom was telling us that she was napping this afternoon too and she didn't want to get up. Her mom said something along the lines of, "Robby's going to be there", she was getting ready in no time.

On the walk home, home... that's a sign that I've been away for a little too long. Let's start over, on the walk back to the hotel, we stopped at a 7 Eleven (they're on about every third block here) to get some milk for the boys in the morning, and I found four more beers that I have not
tried yet. It seems we brought a cold front with us from Changchun, but after tomorrow, it's supposed to be back up in the upper 70's/lower 80's, so sampling new beers will be extra delightful at that point.

Mom is currently sleeping, Robby is close and Caleb is just barely not bouncing off the walls, so I should shut down and go to bed. We have all day tomorrow to ourselves so we're going with another couple back to the Shaman Island tomorrow in an attempt to go to church. I figure Caleb's first church experience would be best in a place where we likely won't be back for a LONG time so the odds of people remembering us will be slim. 8-)