A Day in Guangzhou (Day 12)

Today was different than our usual Sunday routine.  No church for us to attend (in Beijing there is a foreigner-only church, passports required), but we haven't heard of such a thing here.  Even if we were able to attend church somewhere we think it would be a rough situation to be in with our new children.  Sitting still and being quiet is not yet one of their learned behaviors.

We enjoyed the time together as a group anyhow, visiting Shaiman Island, a more touristy location of shops tied to the area's heritage with British colonial days.  The architecture and trees were beautiful.  One thing China far surpasses the US in is landscaping.  In the few parks and green areas, they are well designed and kept.

It was a hot, hot day.  Guangzhou seems to be a lot like Florida without the nice ocean breeze.  We all got sweaty and worn down pretty quick.  Shopping is hard in a group (stragglers and wanderers change the pace), but we did get to make one good shopping stop for touristy trinkets. It was fun shopping, but we think the group loved the short visit with air conditioning more than anything.

After the Shaiman Island walk, we visited a large pedestrian mall area. In one small section of shops was the most amazing collection of wholesale pearls.  Bags and bags, and strings and strings of pearls.  We were directed by our guides to a trustworthy shop and had fun shopping and bartering for pearls for keepsakes and gifts.  It is amazing how God uses such a tiny creature to create a remarkably beautiful treasure.  Can you tell if Ali likes pearl shopping?  Poor daddy...

Although we've enjoyed the proximity (next door to our hotel), familiarity, and price ($3 for a full value meal) of McDonalds, our group decided to attempt a dumpling dinner together.  We had a ten minute walk ahead of us, but thankfully our guides decided to join us.  They were invaluable for our ordering process...not sure what we would've gotten otherwise!

We ended up with an appetizer of potatoes that were awesome...thin, long, crispy, buttery French fries (but not fried) is the best way to describe them...they looked liked noodles to us.  We also had an appetizer of small barbecue niblets that went into a tiny tortilla-like roll.  The best part was the dumplings...pork, beef, and egg/chives.  Yummy.  We finished with a special dessert of sweet potato wedges stacked and covered with a carmelized sugar. You had to dip it in water to harden the sugar before you ate it.  Delicious.

We were encouraged in our chop stick skills as we asked our guides the proper way to use chop sticks.  They confessed that their way is incorrect and that each person seemed to use them in their own style.  Brittney is doing really well with chop sticks,  Jonathan occasionally uses them in spear-like fashion, and Alia uses her God-given chop sticks...everything is a finger food to her!  Our restaraunt experience was finished with the staff singing a nice (we think, haha) song to us,  it was a great meal!

We feel like we are back in baby days again with Alia.  Nap time and bed time can be a good solid 30-45 minutes of screaming.  Thankfully her screams have limited volume and are hoarse like.  It is kind of funny when she yells Chinese stuff at us too...we make our own interpretation of what she is saying.  We didn't think to burp her at bedtime (our girls are well past the burping stage, and Alia should be too at 2.5 years), but tonight she just needed a couple good burps.  She made her daddy proud. :)  Although we started our time with Alia with an extreme diarrhea challenge, now we are on the other end of the spectrum: constipation.  Maybe our prayer warriors prayers were too effective, haha.  So now our request is for normal bowel movements...soon.  We appreciate your prayers and miss you all.  We wish we could make it home sooner, but today was the first full day of our TB-test wait.  Five more days until we are flying (like the below origami cranes) home, Lord willing!