Ciao China

Ciao China
Originally uploaded by mc10672

Our luggage has to be out in the hallway by 4:30 am, and we are headed to G-town airport with 80% of our group, headed to Hong Kong (70 miles away, we could've taken a train) but the cool thing is we can check our luggage all the way through to home at our first stop. We can take 2 (two) 50 lbs pieces of luggage back to us. (Gracie doesn't get an allowance) which is OK, because we are coming back with only 3.

Today we tried to spend the rest of our Yuan, even indulging in Starbucks (about the price of a entree at at good restuarant). We got so busy, we didn't have lunch (Gracie had left over rice noodles and rice and formula). Finally made it to the American Consulate (AC for short, ,I have to pack). It was 40 minutes away, and looked like it was a part of a office building/mall. The "interview" was handing in a piece of paper and getting our picture taken (took all of 10 seconds), then we had a cheerful naturalization officer had us swear that our paperwork was correct, and then we got Gracies Chinese passport to leave the country, and hopefully, her American passport is in the sealed envelope they gave us. They made us repeat that we go to immigration "non-US residents" counter upon arrival (in Las Vegas) and they'll open the packet then. (Hopefully, there isn't a spelling error or comma splice on page 47 otherwise I'd fear we have to start all over again. ) She'll be "citizen" upon arrival. But we did hear today she can have dual Chinese citizenship, but the Immigration officer highly recommended that she travels always on her US passport.

Fun facts about China in case I forget:

Pappa John's does deliver - we stayed in and had pizza tonight.

The soda cans still have flip-tops.

All of our electrical appliances work fine in China, you just need adapters to fit in the the variety of plugs.

There seems to be a fast food chain named after Bruce Lee, or have his likeness on it.

The locals here call you "Madame" in sort of a French-Colonial way.

We had one nurse practitoner and one nurse in our group.

Sometime last week, we all had the feeling that we had moved to China. We've been here that long.

Hopefully, the next entry will be from home, but you may hear from us while in Korea. Wi-fi in the airport.

Thanks.


Just a P.S. to Marie's entry...
While shopping at Susan's, a store we bought many souvenirs from and had our laundry done while here in Guangzhou, I overheard a conversation between Susan, the store owner and two very heavyset angry looking Australian women looking for Chinese clothing. The Australian women were talking about visiting China 5 times and Susan asked if they were adopting and one of the Australian women made the remark that "No I would never do that. I don't understand these people, coming over to adopt and taking these children from their homeland." Susan replied, "Have you never seen what happens to children in these orphanages and how they have to live?" So the Australian woman says,"Well they should just donate money then." I looked directly at the Australian woman and shook my head and told Marie what I had just overheard. So as Marie and I were finishing our shopping and the two Australian women were standing there I said very loudly, "Well my wife and I are going to take our beautiful adopted Chinese child home to the United States of America and raise her in our beautiful home. Donating money to orphanages isn't good enough for us we wanted a child from the orpahanage." Of course the angry Australian woman didn't like this and just looked at me and walked out. Hey angry Australian lady, good luck in finding clothing here, for that matter anywhere, in your size.