China - Part 16, First day in Guangzhou

Man, it's been a good solid month and a half since I've did one of our photo blogs and I sort of forgot where I had left off!  I had to go back thru blog posts re-live some good memories... Oh, the horrors!!!

So, with this post, we're covering our first day in Guangzhou, which was our last stop on our journey before we headed back to the U.S.A.

We arrived at the Guangzhou airport fairly late at night. I seem to recall our plane touching down around 9pm and then having roughly an hour to go to get thru security, find our new guide and the bus ride to the hotel. All of that went relatively smooth until we got to the hotel.  It's now a little after 10pm, Robby fell asleep in the last 3 minutes of the bus ride and now he has to pee. BAD.  There was a line of roughly 8 - 10 families in front of us (look behind the 3 muskateers in the second photo below. We were waiting in line behind that table). It was taking FOREVER to get our room.  Robby is hopping up and down, nearly to the point of panic and there ain't bathroom in site!  I take the boys out of the line and go stand over away from the people so Robby can flail about wildly while holding himself and making faces.  Finally, one of the dads that we had met in Beijing had come down to talk to the front desk folks about something and pointed us to a bathroom.  So with a very relieved Robby by my side, we stand and STILL wait for Momma to do the hotel paperwork so we can head up to the room and crash.  I think we finally made it to our room at about 10:45.

Robby was in his jammies and asleep within 5 minutes of entering our room. Caleb and dad weren't far behind. Momma got our internet connection set up and skyped with Aunt Molly's class in Des Moines, Iowa.  Unfortunately, Robby had been looking forward to the skype session for half the day but the only thing the class got to see was a sleeping Rob.

So the next morning, we got up, had breakfast at a new buffet, had some trouble with the coffee machine as I wrote about here, and joined up with the group down in the lobby for a trip to Shamian Island and the medical clinic there.  That is where we shall begin with the pix...

Every morning that we were to go some place, we would all meet in the lobby at a certain time.  The amount of kids, and parents that acted like kids, would always result in some games breaking out.  That's what Robby, Caleb and Liena were doing here; discussing the rules of how the game was going to go and most likely since Robby was the biggest, how he was going to win whatever game they played. :-)

They stopped for a moment while I tried to document their fabulousness.  Robby and Caleb stood still but Liena had a little dance in her still that needed to come out.

This is in the clinic. The Health Care Center of Guangdong, International Travel.  There was one tv in the place and it was showing Tom & Jerry cartoons so Robby planted himself on the floor in front of it while we took care of business.

Robby is directly below the bottom of this picture. The doors you can see on the right side of the photo lead to the main area of the clinic where it was chaotic.  No, serious. This back room area looks chaotic but the front room was absolutely nuts!  It was loud, we're trying to hear instructions and figure out where to be and what to do... chaos.

That's an examination room and table taken from the exact spot of the above two photos and the photo below this one. They just put the kiddos up on the table, drop trou and examine them.  Sometimes the close a curtain...

The seas parted... lo and behold, there was a clear shot of momma and Caleb waiting in line for Calebs exam.  He went nuclear shortly after this photo was taken and I went to join them and try to help settle him down. No dice though.  This was the beginning of our education about Caleb and what he thinks about doctors, nurses, hospitals and so on.

At this point, a lot of the people are either in examination rooms (they had three different rooms for us to visit) or waiting in the various lines.  I couldn't wait to get out of here so I can only imagine what Caleb thought!

So after your kiddo was dragged thru all three rooms of the clinic, you were free to leave and walk around the island. You just had to be back to the bus by a certain time.  We were happy to get the heck out of there and walk on what was a beautiful, cool Saturday morning.  This is about a block and half away from the clinic as it was just another "store front" like you can see on the right side of the photo. The left side of the photo is the moat that surrounds Shamian Island and is just off the Pearl River, which the beer was named after.

This is looking the opposite direction of the last photo.  That's just one of many of the raised roads around this city.  Also, the moat was fairly low and very stinky which takes away a little of the serenity that these photos otherwise possess.

This is kind of the same photo as the one above but I was trying to focus a little more on the tree this time.  Much like the Emperors Garden, the trees were nothing short of fascinating here!

Three of God's finer creations!

Little game with this photo.  Spot the crazy dude!  As Lesley stated here, there appears to be no OSHA in China.

That dude is on the third story flower ledge watering with a hose that is hooked up to a spiggot on the ground!  We didn't stick around to watch and see if he just hops from ledge to ledge or what he does from there.

The little critters in front of another interesting tree.

This is probably one of the photos we took with Aunt Doris (my sister) in mind based on the architecture of the buildings.

Just a simple shot looking down the main garden area of Shamian Island.  That's a huge chess board that apparently gets used.

A chance to ham it up a bit with some statues.  I like how the last kid statue is "looking" at the boys.

Another architecture shot...

and another...  The building that you can see in the upper left of the photo is the White Swan Hotel where we would have normally stayed had they not been remodeling.  I went in there because one of the boys had to "go" and they have a huge waterfall, fish tank thingy in there that was just flat out cool.  Part of me is happy that we stayed where we did, but a part of me really wishes we would have stayed there due to the nice quiet calm of Shamian Island.  You could just go out and walk without the constant fear of being ran over. Note I said "constant".  You still had to be on your toes here, but not nearly as much.

Back at the hotel in the afternoon.  A typical shot of the boys. Robby is playing football. Caleb is eating and teasing his big brother.

There will be additional photos of the island as we go back to get his TB test read, go to church and whatever else we did there.