Loving Guangzhou!!

We had an uneventful morning in Hefei yesterday.  We were ready to leave the smoke, pollution, honking, the hectic pace, and the life threatening walks to Walmart or anywhere else for that matter.  If Milli wants to visit her province when she's older, we will have to find somewhere else to stay.  We got Milli's passport and left for the airport in the afternoon.  We had a funny/tense experience going through security.  They thought Milli's backpack (the cute little green non-threatening one) had a knife in it.  I don't know if I mentioned this before, but she is kind of a pack rat and a little bit of a thief.  She puts everything into her backpack, including three small coffee spoons from the hotel.  She preferred to eat with those so I let her.  Anyway, we didn't think she had a knife, we are not that bad of parents to let her play with sharp objects, but security dumped out everything on the table.  I wish I could have photographed it but John was very tense.  I was laughing at the absurdity of it, and made some kind of comment about not knowing our daughter was a terrorist.  John was not happy about that. Of course they never found a knife and we were able to pack all of her belongings back in and go on our way. We then made it to the gate in plenty of time and about 10 minutes prior to boarding, they changed our gate marquee to a different flight number and destination.  We panicked just a little because there were no announcements about our flight.  We finally found someone who spoke English and were told our gate was changed.  We then had to go to the first level, board a bus packed with people and it drove us to our plane.  It was a little stressful for Milli's first flight.  She was happy to get to her seat, but started to get motion sickness a little after take off.  When she stops accepting food, you know she's ill.  This girl normally does not turn down any food I have given her except for cantaloupe.  Luckily she kept her food down, and when we arrived at the airport and got our luggage, we had no guide to meet us.  It was after 7 pm and the kids were tired, and I was not too happy.  Trying to find someone to ask where else the guide might be was difficult and led us in the wrong direction.  We then had to figure out how to make a phone call to our guide.  John was able to ask someone about that and had to buy a special card to put in the pay phone.  It was good practice for when John and I do the Amazing Race.  Evidently, when the office in Hefei changed us to an earlier flight, they didn't tell our Guangzhou guide.  When we got in touch with her, she was surprised we were there and told us it would take 40 minutes to get there.  She said it would be too difficult to get a taxi to our hotel so we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, ate more french fries(maintaining our one order of fries a day average), until our guide picked us up.  We made it to the China Hotel around 9:30.  Gus had passed out in the van ride here, stumbled into the hotel like he was drunk, while Milli was her usual quiet cheerful self.  The hotel is so much nicer, one of the nicest I've ever stayed at, and I no longer have to smell smoke 24 hours a day. We had a great breakfast at their enormous breakfast buffet this morning.  I then took Milli for her visa physical.  I had Gus stay back with John because Gus is still fighting a cold, which I now have, and didn't want to let him be exposed to any more diseases.  Milli did not like the doctor and cried when she laid down for the physical. She also cried for the TB test.  She is like her mom and does not like doctors or needles.  I'm sure it has something to do with when she had open heart surgery as a baby.  I have no excuse for my fear. An adoptive mother we met at the hotel today, has one year old son she just adopted two weeks ago that had to have emergency open heart surgery before they were able to leave for home. She said they tie down the babies so they won't tear out the tubes and do not let the parents in to hold them (not that Milli had any parent with her for her surgery).  I'm sure this has something to do with her fear. Poor baby. But after that we had a great afternoon at the pool.  She was tentative at first but then I couldn't get her out.  I loved holding her and watching her laugh and splash in the water.  We then went to Lucy's Restaurant at ShaMien Island for dinner, which was good, and bought Milli new pink shoes. She would not give up her orphanage worn out flip flops until we found her some traditional pink shoes/slippers.  We also bought her a doll supposedly from her province, but we are not totally convinced.  We were followed very closely in all the stores we went in.  I'm not sure if they thought we were going to steal something or what.  They are also very pushy to sell you something.  We have a free day tomorrow. We are missing home but are finally enjoying ourselves here in Guangzhou.