Day 9, Friday, August 12, 2016

Scarlett slept through the night! Halleluijah!! We all feel so well rested and ready for the day. Today is the day we leave Scarlett’s province and head to where the U.S. Consulate is, Guangzhou. We’ve only got a few days left now before we head home. This is exciting, but we’ve had such a great time in China- it’s also sad. This trip has gone by so fast! It has been quite the job to get all suitcases organized. The checked in luggage can’t weigh more than 44 pounds for the in-country flights. This can be tricky. We have 2 carry on backpacks (well, actually 3 with Scarlett’s little one) and a carry on suitcase, and then we have 3 suitcases to check. It’s a lot of luggage! We had our last breakfast in Guiyang. I’m excited to get to Guangzhou where there’s a Starbucks in our hotel!! This will be like heaven.

After some persuasion on my part, I got Kasumi to agree to take us souvinier shopping again to a much better place where we got a few things. 2 dresses for Scarlett, a wax art thing of the Jiaxiu tower to hang in our living room (this is seriously cool), and some gifts for people back home- local things made in Guiyang. I was so happy to get some things to bring back from Scarlett’s province.

We came back and enjoyed lunch in our hotel before finishing packing up to go to the airport. There were a few annoying things about today- our guide said that she couldn’t check us in online, so we got 2 middle seats not next to each other. Who wants a middle seat when traveling with a toddler!? I was irritated by that. And, our driver couldn’t take us to the airport because of the driving laws in China- he can’t drive the van on Fridays… So, Kasumi set up for Constantine (the guy in training with the travel agency) to pick us up and a taxi to come get our luggage. Kasumi rode with the luggage. It was just a little uncomfortable- Constantine has been late to everything this week because of traffic. Would he pick us up on time? Would all of our luggage fit in a taxi? I needed Nathan to remind me that God’s got it, but I hate those things not being in my control and so unorganized!

We made it to the airport as did our luggage. We made it through security and to our gate to sit and wait because our flight got delayed. Scarlett fell asleep on the way to the airport and slept for the few hours that we were there. She woke up right as we took her out of the stroller to go onto the plane. The flight was only 1.5 hours, but when we got on the flight, we had to wait for over an hour before the plane could depart! Poor Scarlett did pretty good, but we had to entertain her the whole time. There are lot of puffs on the floor of that plane! They did give us some snacks that served as our dinner, so that helped. The strangest thing they served was a rice burger. It looked like a patty with cheese on top, but was entirely rice with some tofu and veggies in the middle. It was actually delicious and Scarlett loved it!

I forgot to say- once we got on the flight, I was able to ask the person sititng next to Nathan to switch with me. She was very sweet and said yes. I got the feeling she didn’t really want to sit next to a baby anyways. On Nathan’s other side was a guy who spoke good English and has a 2.5 year old daughter himself, so he was super patient and nice. We had lots of people staring at us in the airport and on the plane. Some nice people came and talked to Scarlett. A lady on the bus from the plane to the baggage claim had a little girl the same age and she pointed to me and Scarlett and said, “your daughter?” We handed her our note given to us by the agency that explains things and she said, “I knew she Chinese!” It’s been fun interacting with the people who are asking us questions nicely and not just staring rudely. 

We landed in Guangzhou around 8pm and got to the hotel by 9pm. Scarlett fell asleep in the van on the way to the hotel. The hotel is called the China Hotel- it’s a Marriott, and is super nice. It’s huge. It has a pool and a few neat kid’s play areas. We’ll be just fine here for 4 days. Helen is our guide. She’s a super sweet older lady (we’ve had younger gals). We laid Scarlett down and started unpacking. We didn’t really have dinner, so Nathan went to the McDonald’s across the street. He first was looking for the 7-eleven, but couldn’t find it. The food was gross, as McD's usually is!