Day 19 - Travel to Guangzhou

We left the hotel at 5am and headed for the airport. Once again, we had issues checking in, this time they said our suitcases already exceeded weight limit, but Adele and Toni made phone calls and the situation got resolved - without having to delay the flight. Dale and I were a 3 seat row, with an empty seat between us. I was asleep before the plane took off and woke briefly during the 2 hour flight.

The most prominent feature of Guangzhou is the poor air quality, to say the sky is grey only begins to cover it. It's also warm and VERY humid. We have a big, fancy bus and all of our luggage fits underneath in the cargo hold - yea! The hotel is nice - although only half of the rooms were ready, so some of us put our luggage up in our rooms before we walked to McDonalds. Believe it or not, most of the group wants to go to Mickey D's.

My room is on the 16th floor, the elevator only goes up to 15, so I promised Dustin L a Starbucks if he carried my luggage up one flight of stairs, he said he'd do without the Starbucks. Dale carried Teresa's luggage upstairs. After checking out our room, Dale started complaining "Is this what you've had the entire time? couches? flat panel TVs? Refrigerators? while we've been suffering?!?!?!?!" I assured him this was the first we've had a room this nice.

After lunch, Teresa and I decided we were going to go to the Pearl Market by ourselves since we couldn't find Kevin B. I asked at the front desk of the hotel and they didn't really understand, but they thought I did, so they gave me an address and said it should take about 10 minutes and cost 10 yuan. The driver took us to a regular mall and told us the price in mandarin. I understood quai (slang for yuan), but not the number, so I handed him my phone with calculator app. He typed in 111 - yikes! we pulled out a 100 bill and he kept saying no, so we handed him 11, he was satisfied.

OK, so this is not the Pearl Market, but we thought we'd give it a try. We went up to someone and asked them (in English) where it was, they answered back In Mandarin and English, somewhere in there was 2, 3, 5 and 7. We went up to the 2nd floor, repeated the exercise and heard 3, 4, 5 & 7. We went to the 3rd floor and found a jewelry store, walked through then came back to the hotel. It was like trying to get a cab in NYC, they were mostly full and stopped wherever we weren't standing, after about 10 minutes we finally got a cab.

The concert was at a seminary about an hour from the hotel. We had a dinner prepared by the staff. The evening started with worship led by their team, it sounded like they sang the same song 3 times, but maybe not. The church was only 1/4 full at 7, but by 7:15 it was full on the floor and about 1/2 full in the balcony. You could tell the kids were tired, while they still sound lovely, you could here the fatigue in their voices.

It started raining, but was still very warm. About 9:30 we started back to the hotel.

Some of the group went out to Mickey D's, the rest of us stayed back to rest. Tereas and I are the only women on the 16th floor. Those of us that stayed back had a little party in the hallway, Dustin G put used the fan the gal gave him in Chengdu and did a fan dance. We were pretty loud, so we're glad we're the only ones on the floor. Or so we thought, after we all retired to our rooms, both Teresa and I heard chinese walking and talking in the hallway.

The real entertainment for the evening was watching people "tour" the room of 2 of the guys. They've only spent a couple of hours in their room but it's already a disaster. Dustin G thought they must have literally thrown their clothes around the room. No one can believe what a mess it is and remember, these are college-age guys that are appalled, The common comment was, "But they've only been in here a couple of hours."