Day 13: Guangzhou, Part 2

So Jen just staggered up to where I was putting some things away and managed to communicate through some primitive grunts and gestures that her Robitussin had kicked and she would need me to finish her blog post.

Here are some pics from the morning's little photo gathering:

I'm aware of how corny this is to all dress up our Chinese kids in traditional Chinese dress, but dang if it wasn't the cutest thing ever.

Our little CCAI travel group.

Yuexiu Park!  It was enormous, full of green things, and immaculately maintained.

Seriously.  Your pretty will regret it for years to come.

We thought about taking a paddle boat ride, but then remembered we have two sometimes very squirmy kids with us.

The pictures were fun, the park was very beautiful and green and featured several little lakes, one of which had bajillions of koi, and another of which featured what I could only guess was a koi hatchery.  Bajillions of tiny koi in tanks everywhere.  You'll just have to trust me on how cool it looked... my camera battery died because I forgot to plug it in last night.

My take on the food here:  a couple that we've become friends with here actually spend two years in the Peace Corps teaching English to rural teachers.  The first night they were served a family banquet, there were brains and intestines and unidentifiable parts in many varieties.  I guess it's safe to say that I'm experiencing quote-unquote real Chinese food, but I'm experiencing the side of it that Westerners are more familiar with anyway.

That said, holy crap it's delicious, and no I couldn't get sick of it in the quantity we're eating it.  I cherish our big, giant, western-style breakfasts.  I'd probably be thinking differently if I were eating noodles for all three meals instead of my waffles and bacon at breakfast, but I really have loved about everything I've eaten here.

The really cool thing about ordering food in a big city is that it's apparently a Chinese thing to have pictures of all your dishes up on the walls to attract more customers, so even if you didn't speak any Mandarin you could just go in and point, then hold up a finger or two to represent quantity, then the order taker tallies your bill, types the total into a calculator and shows you the number so you know what you owe.  Often there is someone in the restaurant who can speak some English and will help through the ordering process.  My new favorite place in Guangzhou helped me out at lunch big time, so at dinner we came back and ordered twice the amount of food.  It's just really, really good.

So after lunch and the park we went down to the playroom to find that most of our travel group had spontaneously gathered at the outside playland to burn off all the excess energy before bedtime.

How many different ways could YOU play airplane baby using only this equipment?

Good day today.  Good food, good company, another bit of Skyping with some family.  I'm really starting to itch to come home, and I wish that the official paperwork parts of this trip weren't so far apart.  I love China and I'm going to miss it terribly when we're gone, but I just want to sleep in my own bed, eat food of my own making, and curl up with my ladies and my dogs and have a massive snuggle party.

Of course we'll be inside a couch-cushion fort.  What are we, barbarians??