Monday, August 28, 2006: Depart Chongqing, Arrive Guangzhou

Our morning began extraordinarily early when Marcie awoke rather abruptly at 3:33am (I looked at the clock, which is how I know the time). By 4:30am, we were exhausted. One nose aspiration, one diaper change, one bottle, and one dose of Benadryl later, Marcie finally fell asleep-- and slept until 8:30am. We opted for the Bendryl because she was so congested, and a study was published in the U.S. a few months ago explaining that antihistimines are better for drying out coughs, etc. than cold medicine.

After our final breakfast at the hotel's buffet (which for me consisted of noodles and a bowl of corn flakes), we headed back to our hotel room to complete some last minute packing. . . Jason took off for more squid on a stick (which he was supposed to photograph and forgot), and Mom and I hung out in the room while Marcie napped. Then we boogied off to McDonald's for our farewell Chicken McNugget experience, and returned to the hotel.

We scooted out the door by 1:45 and went downstairs to pay the bill. Boy, one thing that I will probably never get used to is how (literally) pushy the people here are. I was in line, next to pay, and as Gene stepped away, a Chinese gentleman pushed right in front of me and checked out. Then, when the next spot opened up, and I took it, after I'd given the desk clerk my room keys with the room number, a Chinese woman stepped up next to me and pushed her keys across to the hotel employee to check out-- despite the line of people 4 deep behind me. In the end, we were able to check out just fine and pile onto the bus for our ride to the airport. You can see Marcie on the bus ride in the picture to the left.


One great thing about CCAI is how they take care of us with the in-country travel. When we arrived in Chongqing, we were already checked into our rooms, and Marie had our room keys. When we were ready to depart, Marie had us put all our luggage outside our room, and the belhops collected it. Then Marie arranged for our passports and bags to get to the airport and picked up all our tickets and boarding passes for us. The luggage guys have a great relationship with the airport, and they explained we were here for adoption, so no one had to pay any fees for heavy luggage or extra pieces (I think we would have been okay, but it's nice not to worry). At the airport, Marie distributed our passports, Marcie's passport, and got us all the way through security. She even checked us in by family so that we all had seats together! It was incredibly smooth. Our flight was delayed by about 20 minutes, but we didn't really mind. You can see a photo of us waiting at the airport to the right.

There were some storms in the skies, but our pilot did a great job landing the plane. And Marcie was a real trooper on the plane. The girl will eat anything. This is so strange after raising Casey for a few years. Casey eats basically nothing. Marcie gobbled up the Benadryl on the plane like it was candy (we used it to help make sure her ears were clear). Then, during take-off, she ate three prunes. She had a bottle once we were at cruising altitude, and she sucked down some water in a bottle during the descent. There was a little fussing, but not bad at all. You can see how Marcie did on her first airplane ride to the left.



One nice thing about the in-country travel here in China is that the airlines take pretty good care of you. The flight from Chongqing to Guangzhou was only an hour and a half, but they fed us a snack (you can see it to the left), and they came by twice with beverages. Despite our disappointment at the lack of apple juice for Marcie, we were pleased to have pineapple juice (yum!) and good coffee with cream and sugar.

We arrived to a rainy, steamy Guangzhou. And our guide Raymond was there waiting for us, along with his assistant Kathy. They were able to corral us-- this is no small feat when you consider the amount of luggage we all brought. You can get a sense of the sheer amount of stuff we all had in this photo, which only captures maybe a third of the group.

So a forty-five minute bus ride in Guangzhou landed us at the White Swan hotel. This is certainly a more western hotel than the Golden Resources, where we stayed in Chongqing. And we are the last of the families to arrive through CCAI. Raymond told us there are around 80 babies, and our 14 are the last-- the others have been here a couple days. I guess that's becuase our passports weren't ready until this morning. In reality, though, Guangzhou is more expensive than Chongqing, and we were already there and settled in, so there a couple more days or here a couple more days-- what difference does it make? For cost comparison purposes, though, the cheesburger we ordered through room service in Chongqing was around 58 RMB, or a little more than $7.00. The cheesburger Jason just ordered tonight was 138 RMB, or more than $15.00. And the rooms, though very clean, offer twin sized beds, instead of the king size we had in Chongqing. But the television does have more English-speaking stations, and our room has an amazing view of the river:



Marcie seems to be a relatively good traveler, though- here she is in our hotel room after our arrival:




Poop Watch 2006
For those of you sending prayers and crossing fingers with respect to Marcie's bowel movements, thank you. I wish I could say we are out of the woods, but I'm just not convinced we are. After breakfast this morning, Marcie did finally grunt and groan and push and screech and cry and moan and whine-- until she pushed out some poop. This completely exhausted here, and she immediately sacked out for a two-hour nap (that's Marcie napping to the left). After she woke up, we repeated the ordeal a second time (minus the nap). Poor, poor Marcie I'm so proud of her for going on her own, but I hate to see her in such pain. We are continuing to withhold the rice cereal from her formula. We did three prunes today, and we'll follow up with baby food prunes tomorrow, and also with apple juice (I verified with a doctor here in our group that apples bind but apple juice helps with constipation). We don't expect another movement until Thursday, though we are hopeful she'll regulate herself before that and without the pain. Please continue to keep your fingers crossed and keep Marcie in your prayers. . .

Tomorrow we will begin to learn our new surroundings, visit the doctor, and take photos for Marcie's U.S. visa. It looks like we have a couple opportunities for some half-day exursions while we are here-- and we are the last family to leave Guangzhou, on a red-eye for Los Angeles this Friday (only four more days until we get to see Casey again!).