Paradise Island

We arrived safely in Guangzhou yesterday afternoon and have been enjoying the relative peace of Shamian Island. This is a beautiful place full of big tropical trees and plants and wide avenues. There is a huge British Colonial influence here - a surprising oasis in a very large, bustling city. The train ride from Hong Kong to Guangzhou was also very nice. The train was clean and comfortable and the scenery interesting. There are no suburbs here - only very large cities followed by vast farmland. The way the mountains jut from the earth is quite spectacular. We also saw farmers working the water fields - is that what they are called?

Now, the exercise of getting onto and off of the train - well, that's another story entirely! Everything happened at lightning speed and we found our luggage being whisked away by people with us running to follow! The gentleman who helped us in HK asked what train we wanted and when we said Guangzhou East he grabbed our bags and threw them onto a cart and started saying very quickly "10:35 - 10:35" and he took off! It was about 10:10 so that was our first clue that we better get moving. In the next 3 minutes we were exchanging money with this guy - buying tickets and shoving forward in a mass of people trying to catch the train. Keep in mind the signs were no longer English friendly and I was walking around like a circus freak saying "Guangzhou East? Guangzhou East?" to pretty much everyone who just stared blankly at me. We did make it onto the correct train and got to rest for the next 2 hours until the next adventure began.

More on that later.

I'll attach some GZ photos in another post in a few hours. We haven't uploaded them yet from the camera.

Terrell and mom are doing great. We especially loved the cheeseburger, fries and a beer for dinner last night. All the way to China to eat cheeseburgers. Hmmmph. At least Terrell had some kind of curry dish!

Tomorrow is Jia Day! It's kind of surreal - it's finally here - after all of the waiting. We even had a crib delivered to the room today. Wow. Talk to you soon.