Our Newest Citizen!

We are home all safe and sound! Lainey is trying her first batch of
pureed bananas in her new living room. We've been up for 26 hours
straight so bed time is arriving quickly!

Our Ride

Here is a shot of our ride home. Finally get to fly on a 747! We
leave Hong Kong in about an hour, and sit on that bird for 14 hours!
It's in the 70's here, I guess we're heading to the 20's. Oh well.

World's Largest Sitting Buddha

Today we ventured to Hong Kong, a short 35 minute flight from Guangzhou.  We flew with another family that is taking the same route as us home. We woke up a little early, 5am to get going and be at the airport in time.  We had some trouble with luggage here.  We checked in just fine were a few pounds overweight with one bag, but no penalty.  Then some dude at another counter helping the other family with us decides my carry on, a standard carry on bag that had already been tagged as approved by our agent said no it needed to be checked and made a big deal about it.  He even tried to take our back packs saying they were too big. But we slid away silently, only to have to run away from him again when he showed up at our gate!  But we got there.  Sort of a pain since technically it was an international flight and we had to go through immigration and customs and all that crapola.  Took longer to do that than the flight did!  The flight was so short they gave us water and a snack cake before we even left the ground in Guangzhou! 

 

So we get to our hotel which is attached to the airport.  Very fancy, and modern.  Its the Regal Airport.  Our room is large and we have a king size bed I'm looking at longingly as I write this!  I ran down to the grill for some take out lunch and right away noticed they had a hockey game on the big screen!  Cool! Never thought I'd see that here!  Then in less than 30 seconds they went to commercial and it featured NHL stars and the first one shown, Rick Nash of Columbus! The next commercial was for the big ten network and was advertising an upcoming game between Ohio State and Penn State.  I figured I am in the right place!  So we had lunch got Lainey a nap and then met the other family who is at a different hotel for an excursion!  We met at the train station at a very fancy mall called City Gate.  Very busy and very modern american type of mall.  All high end stores like Burberry, Coach, and Kate Spade.  We took a cable car ride to Lantau Peak, the second highest mountain in Hong Kong.  At the top sits the Tian Tan Buddah, which was the world's largest outdoor sitting Buddha until 2007.  We saw the cable cars from the airport when we landed and just kind of stumbled our way there and found out about the Buddha later!  The cable car ride was great, giving great views of the bay and mountains.  There were clouds slowly rolling over the top of a nearby peak, very beautiful.  A great way to bookend the trip.  We had great blue skies in Beijing at the beginning.  When we came over the last mountain the Buddha came into view, and we were stunned!  On a clear day you can see it for miles.  Its 110 feet tall and sits at the top of 268 steps.  It was very impressive.  We all just kind of looked at each other and said wow, this is something we didn't expect at all, and were glad we didn't just pack it in and sit in the hotels.  There were a number of large cattle with rather big horns just wandering around with the pedestrians!  If I remember right they are sacred to the Buddhist faith?  The village of Ngong Ping sits at the top of the cable car.  Its a complete tourist trap, with starbucks and 7-eleven and all kinds of little gift shops.  Quite picturesque I must say.  We then took the cable car back down and had dinner at the McDonald's at the mall.  Went to the grocery store there and then ventured back here to the hotel for a bath for Lainey.  Christina and I came to the same opinion in the mall, the people are the same here.  They walk right in front of you without a care in the world, cut you off, stop, oyu name it and don't think a second thought.  Never an excuse me, pardon me, nothing.  Just comes across as so rude.  I know they are used to it and that's just the crowded culture here, I just really bite my tongue and try to go with the flow.   It all ends tomorrow when we board the big jet for the 14 hour flight home!

Our Last Day in China

We are very anxious to get home to our bed, drinking water from the tap, eating salads, and being able to understand everything going on around us!  We will miss having a ready made breakfast buffet every morning, short sleeve weather, and the families we've met.  Today was pretty casual, been packing on and off, finding last minute gifts, and playing with Laine.  The smog was horrible this morning, the worst we've seen all trip.  Our guide said to stay inside, so we mostly did. In the morning we fly to Hong Kong and spend the night there.  Its just a short 35 minute flight to Hong Kong.  Then on sunday we fly directly to Chicago and then to Columbus where we are scheduled to arrive about 4:30pm.  Its hard to believe we've been in Guangzhou since last friday.  It was funny tonight walking through the lobby of the hotel and seeing new families in with the panic look of where can I take my laundry and exchange money!  The same look we had last friday.

 

It was sad saying good bye to the other families over the last day. The kids who are a little bit older, 2 and 3, are kind of afraid to see people hugging and going away.  They have seen this before and are uncertain what is happening.  I had one family's son grab my hand and not let go tonight after dinner.  He hadn't really paid any attention to me all week!  He just wanted a big hug the other parents were getting!

 

We forgot we had a shirt for Lainey that says someone in Ohio loves me.  So we put that on her today and let her play with the USA beanie baby dolls too.  Some cute pictures. She's been pretty cranky all day, we think her gums are hurting with new teeth coming in. Glad we brought the orajel.  I guess that about wraps it up from here.  I'll try to send something tomorrow from Hong Kong. 

Trip to the Zoo

Today all the families had a nice excursion to the Guangzhou City Zoo.  The guides said it was a good zoo, but small.  Its was only 20 minutes away and well worth the trip!  It seemed pretty large to us, and the access to the animals was fantastic!  Everyone is pretty tired and ready to head home.  We get our children's visas in a few hours.  So the end is in sight.  That made the zoo a great stop, a fine exclamation point to it all.  We only spent about 2 1/2 hours there and stuck with the outside animals.  But being able to  look right down on top of some black bears, and seeing a tiger eat very close, and elephants that were merely 20 feet away was amazing!  Plus all kinds of monkeys and giraffes were very close too.  The exhibits might be smaller than the Columbus Zoo exhibits we're used to seeing, and older, but we were so close I can't stop thinking about it.  In the elephant area for example they have a waste high railing and a concrete pit about 10 feet across and then about 5 feet of sharp rocks sticking up out of the ground to keep the elephants back, but that's it! No electric fence or wires, we could look directly into the elephant's eyes!  We watched nervously as one asian elephant found a spot he could walk on the sharp rocks and get a decent balance and lean across the moat with his trunk to reach the fresh green bushes he wanted to eat!  I was so afraid  he would fall in the moat and get hurt! His balance looked precarious! But he grabbed some fresh boxwood branches and walked away.  I got a classic shot of a tiger eating a slab of meat and licking his chops!  The only disappointment was the panda. We all wanted to see the panda, but they were repairing some welds on his cage and he wasn't out!  We were hoping to take a picture in front of him and send that into the travel section for the Columbus Dispatch, our local newspaper, so we settled for the lion instead.  Maybe we'll be in an issue soon! 

 

So now Laine is napping.  Christina found some knock off Coach bags and just returned from shopping, and I'm downloading the pictures.  A nap really sounds good. I think I'll join my daughter. 

 

Lastly happy birthday to my Mom and John Sabol!