Day 8 - Travel to Guangzhou

We started our morning out with a brief swim in the hotel swimming pool.  Hannah was nervous at first and gave out a little yelp when she first got in the water.  Within a few minutes, though, she was loving it.  Swimming with Baba was a lot of fun for her!

At 1:30 in the afternoon we left for the airport.  It was pouring rain outside and some of the streets were rather flooded.  Let me tell you something ... Hannah does NOT like riding in cars.  We have found that out over the last several days.  1.5 hours later we were at the airport, checked in, and through security.

In the hotel lobby with our Holt guide Lisa

By the way ... it is always very interesting what the Chinese security personnel need to check.  Plastic bottle full of water ... No Problem!  Kite string and a bouncy ball ... need to see it.  They even had to partially deflate the bouncy ball from Wal-Mart.  Apparently, a ball that can't bounce is much safer than one that can.  We're just glad they didn't confiscate it completely.  Also, we all got the official pat down after we went through the metal detector.  I'm still not quite sure why the even bother having that.

At the airport, ready to check in

Hannah eating her snack balls

Our flight ended up getting delayed by 2 hours.  While we were waiting we got to meet another American family on their way to the same place we were going.  This family was adopting 2 boys from China on this trip.  With their new additions, that brought their number of children up to 8.  We found out that from the other 6, 2 were adopted from Ethiopia, 2 were biological, 1 was adopted from Guatemala, and 1 from China.  WOW!  We simply stood in awe and silently thanked God for humbling us in this way.

The plane ride to Guangzhou included Hannah eating almost an entire container of snack balls and some rice.  We had at least 2 or 3 crying fits on the 2 hour plane ride.  Each time, either a stewardess or the lady sitting next me on the plane would say something to Hannah is Chinese.  Almost immediately, Hannah stopped crying.  We were thankful that Hannah was able to settle down, but really wondered what they were saying.

Hannah looking at the China Southern plane we were about to get onto

Hannah eating more snacks on the plane

We arrived at our hotel around 9:30PM.  Hannah did a pretty good job traveling and we didn't have any MAJOR breakdowns.  Thank you for all of your prayers.  They were surely felt.  We also want to praise God for the great blessing it is to be able to use our Marriott Rewards points to pay for much of our hotel stay in Guangzhou.