Saturday in China

It is now 4:00 Saturday afternoon and it's Amy's turn to blog! We got into the airport last night at 11:00. The airport was very modern and I'm sure Derek has already mentioned how impressed he was that the luggage carts were free to use! Driving out of the airport there were so many apartment buildings crammed together. It was dark outside and they all were lit with one single flourescent bulb. Most of them had their clothing hanging out to dry. The apartments looked small and dingy and they didn't seem to have anything on the walls. I was amazed at how many buildings there were in such close proximity. They just went on and on.

We got to our hotel and we love our room! We are staying in the Victory Hotel Annex. It is huge and has a king-sized bed, couch, big tv, 2 desks, refrigerator, and a computer! It also has a cool chandelier that we are now using to hang our clothes from to dry (though they are not drying here in the humidity and we will probably have to pack wet clothes tomorrow or use the blow dryer to try and dry them). It took us a while to figure out the lights. You have to put your key in the holder and that keeps the lights on. When you leave, you take your key and then the lights turn off. Pretty clever!!

We slept all night last night and got up around 8:30 this morning. We went down to the breakfast buffet and it was great!! Lots of yummy food! We got back to the hotel and got ready for the day. We got an adapter from the hotel, but I didn't notice that it was 220 instead of 110. I plugged in my curling iron and the thing started to smoke and the velour part of the curling iron turned black! I'm surprised we didn't start a fire! Yikes!! We met our guide Connie in the lobby at 10:00 and went to the Six Banyan Temple. It was really interesting. Lots of people were there burning incense and worshipping the different buddahs. Connie explained how they worship different buddahs for different things. There was a female-like buddah that people would worship for fertility. We were back at our hotel around noon.

We went for a walk and found a great place to eat. There was a TON of food and we have plenty of leftovers. It was the best Chinese food we have ever eaten (maybe because we are in China?)! We walked around and looked at all of the shops. We spent about an hour in one of the shops just looking at everything. Derek realized that we will probably need to buy another suitcase for the things we want to bring home! Derek got a hat that says "Ba Ba" on it, which means father. They had the cutest little squeaky shoes for baby girls. They have a little squeakers in the bottom that squeaks when they walk. The shoes are only about $4 a pair! They would make excellent baby gifts. We are now back at the hotel and Derek is relaxing, trying not to fall asleep. Connie is picking us up at 5:45 for the Pearl River Dinner cruise. I will report on that when we get back!!

We're having a great time here in China!!