Our Adoption Experience

DAY NINE: Nanjing -> Guangzhou

Today we departed from the Province of Shane's birth and headed for the final leg of this amazing journey as we flew from Nanjing to South China to the city of Guangzhou (formerly Canton, as in "Cantonese"). We left the colder wintery climes and arrived in a sub-tropical area that feels more like Miami, so no more jackets or sweaters!

Shane did great on probably his first-ever plane trip. He's a trooper and we haven't found much that fazes him. I guess we're not sure he even understood that we got on a plane and were flying, but thankfully the plane was not full and we moved toward the back of the plane where there were a lot of empty seats, and so Shane got to try out 9 or 10 of them as he crawled around during the almost 2-hour flight.

Guangzhou is a much different city than any other Chinese city we've experienced so far...way fewer bikes and many more motorcycles, cars and buses. Guangzhou is the third largest city in all of China and as such, an amazing mix of a bazillion people living in some very old conditions mixed right in with new construction and lots of rebuilding (on second thought, that sounds just like all the other cities we've visited).

Many have told us that the White Swan Hotel here in Guangzhou is great and that we will really appreciate it. After thinking that the hotels so far were just great, we weren't sure what they meant, but now that we're here and have experienced a couple of hours of it, we now know. It is truly a 5-star hotel, and not the normal place you'd take a toddler, what with the "golden" plumbing, and the turn-down service with robes, slippers and fruit baskets, etc., etc. The hotel is huge and is wonderfully decorated with HUGE Christmas trees amidst the koi ponds and waterfalls. It overlooks the Pearl River which is quite fascinating to watch the old Chinese boats floating by.

[Long story alert - skip this paragraph to get to the photos more quickly!] After we got checked in to the White Swan, the day of traveling was about over, but we needed to do something for dinner. Once again, we make the ridiculously idiotic decision to take a two-year old out to a nice restaurant away from the hotel where we may or may not be able to communicate with the restaurant staff. At least this restaurant had English words along with the Chinese characters and so we had a pretty good guess at what we were ordering. It was a little later than usual, and so Mr. Shane Fu Horton decided to get into a completely cranky mood. He would hardly sit still...started throwing chopsticks and ceramic spoons (yes, it broke)...throwing food and generally deciding he was going to make the whole experience miserable for us. We got a certain portion of the food eaten (Shane hardly ate any though), but it was an exhausting struggle, at which point we decided we needed to leave before we were asked to leave. As we asked for the check, the waitress THEN brought out the "Seasonal Fruit Platter" which we had ordered but thought we weren't going to get (when the communication is this difficult, sometimes you just write certain things off to misunderstanding -- like the time I asked for cold water and was served a steaming glass of hot water). Being that the fruit platter contained Shane's absolute favorite fruit -- watermelon -- he promptly plopped down in the seat and became this quiet little cherub as he slurped away on slice after slice of watermelon. Moral of the story...the ONLY way any sane human would take a rambunctious two-year-old on a vacation where they live out of hotel rooms and eat three meals a day at restaurants would be if they were traveling halfway around the world to adopt said child. Thankfully this is our circumstance. Hopefully Shane won't get too used to eating out all the time, because it's going to be a LONG time after we get home before we try that again!

We will stay at the White Swan the rest of the way...three more nights after tonight.

(If you missed the link on the first page, be sure to check out the just-added photos of our traveling group and all the babies we are getting to know)

Today's Photo Journal:

	<- Mr. Shane Fu Horton, borrowing Dad's glasses and ready to take his "attitude" from Nanjing to Guangzhou
Shane didn't think the airplane food was all that bad...although he and us passed on the little package of something labeled "Delicious Pickles"... ->
	<- White Swan Hotel lit up at night. Who says they don't do Christmas in China?
Here's the ever-talented Shane Fu Horton doing a little 'karaoke' in the shower with the fancy White Swan tub plumbing fixtures. CLICK THE PICTURE OF SHANE to hear him sing his own rendition of something we call the "Dee-ow Song" ->