First Trip & Airplane Ride

Day 8
1/07/06

Today we traveled to our last destination in China, Guang- zhou. It is located in the southern part of the country so the weather is much nicer. It is great to see the sun again. We got up and had a nice final breakfast in the morning. I had gone to the store the night before and bought Sydney some real baby food so we gave that a try this morning. She had some pears and some congee from the buffet. We went back to the room to get everything packed up and Sydney will now not let me leave the room without crying very loud. For the first time today she put her arms in the air for me to pick her up. She also for the first time rested her head on my shoulder later on the airplane. I think there has been a big change since we visited the orphanage, maybe it’s in my head, but it seems like that trip convinced her that I wasn’t going away and she can now love me. We packed our stuff up, most of it was dirty laundry and got down to the lobby to meet the group at 11:30 for the trip to the airport.

I was glad to leave Chongqing mostly because I was tired of the constant fog and no sunlight. At the same time, I’m pleased that we got to go to a different city for the orphanage location. Our original group from America World had twenty four families, but only eight of us went to Chongqing, many of the families spent the time after leaving Beijing here in Guangzhou because this is where their orphanages were. I feel like we got to see more of China than they did. Sydney fell asleep on the way to the airport, she was in the carrier and her eyes just rolled back in her head and she was out. The trip to the airport was uneventful and Sydney woke up just before we had to go through security. I made a bottle when we got in our seats on the plane to help Sydney with her ears. This was the first time she had ever flown and I had no idea how she would react. She spent the flight jumping up and down on my lap and smiling and giggling at everyone. She also grabbed the card they stick in the seats that describes the airplane and wouldn’t let go of it. The change in pressure never seemed to bother her at all.

The flight to Guangzhou lasted about one and a half hours and when we landed I was very excited to see the sun. Guangzhou is considered a tropical location in China so it was nice to see the palm trees. It wasn’t warm out, but it was definitely warmer than Chongqing and by the end of the week it will be in the high seventies. On the bus Sydney was fascinated by my sunglasses. She likes to pull my regular glasses off when I take my contacts out at night, but they don’t bother her since she can see my eyes still. She gave me a very puzzled look when I had the sunglasses on. We arrived at the hotel at about 5 PM and everyone settled into their rooms. I tried to get Sydney down for a nap and eventually she crashed on the bed, but she fussed and cried a lot. After she woke up we went across the street to McDonalds for dinner. I’m sick of McDonalds, it is just the only quick, cheap place you can eat. I really want chicken parmigiana from an Italian restaurant but I haven’t seen one yet. Sydney ate almost a whole jar of mixed fruit and some rice cereal. We went back to the room and it was another battle to get Sydney to bed. I hope she realizes soon that I will be here when she wakes up and she can have some peace. Tomorrow we are going on our first shopping trip so I can get some clothes for Sydney. I'm exhausated, Good night.

Steven