It was sad to leave Nanning knowing that it was close to the area our daughters were born, abandoned and raised until we came into their lives. A few of us were emotional to leave such a beautiful, tropical area, hotel and our children's homeland, we hope that they will have a chance to go back to China to see the beautiful country that they are from.We left our hotel at 10:45 am, had a 45 minute bus trip to the airport, checked in 9 families, had a 45 minute flight to Gaungzhou. The babies did great on the flight, 10 minutes before landing, Linley was the first one to start crying, 2 or 3 others chirped in after a couple of minutes. All in all, they did great! We arrived at Guangzhou around 1:45 , had an hour bus ride to our hotel. The White Swan Hotel is where all families adopting through China end up at the end of their trip. Guangzhou is the final destination where the children get their medical exams, parents fill out visa paperwork, last but not least, we go to the consulate to take our oath's and get our childs visa. The White Swan is very plain on the outside, the inside is gorgeous. There are waterfalls, many restaurants, shopping, etc. Gaungzhou is where everyone pretty much does their shopping and last minute shopping all the way up to 10:30 pm the night before they have to leave. There are lots of shops around the outside of the hotel, with pretty much the same items in each shop. Some may give you a better deal than others and some are cleaner and larger. The Chinese are very service oriented, they remember your name, so you will come back to their shop. The first night, Tony and I ate at a Chinese Cantonese restaurant in the hotel. We eat at a variety of restaurants from casual to elegant. It was the first time we walked into one and second guessed if we should eat there. Thank goodness we arrived at 5:30, which is not a normal dinner time for us. We had kind of been leary( due to our previous dinners), about taking Linley to a nice restaurant when we came back to the US. We want to ease her into them. She likes to shriek and babble and sometime gets fussy, which is to be expected due to that she or any of the other babies were not on any schedule since we received them. There is no way to get a baby on a schedule while traveling right after you receive them. Unless you want to stay in your hotel room the whole time. We ordered a bottle of wine (at most of the restaurants you cannot order a glass of wine, just a bottle, so we suffered through it), placed our orders and fed her half of her meal and she was out, fast asleep. Tony held her while he ate his dinner. We had a great time, it was quiet and relaxing. Everyone got settled in their hotels and started shopping. I stayed behind with Linley. Tony went out a couple of times to check out the area. We really felt like asking the attendant that had a station right by our room, if she would watch Linley while we went out shopping. We asked the attendant for everything else, babysitting shouldn't be a problem!
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by Anthony & Shannon
7/10/07
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