Today was a crazy, long, hard day. We had to make the trek from Zhengzhou in the Henan province to Guangzhou in the Guangdong province. After breakfast, I had Adam take Zhilu down to the local park so that I could get the packing done. Did I mention that this little boy is coming out of his shell and now getting into EVERYTHING! They had a really great time… they found the children’s area and Adam was able to take him on the merry-go-round and into a little gym area. Adam said the locals were very chatty, but Zhilu had no interest in being picked up by anyone. I really regret not being able to spend more time in Zhengzhou and having more experiences like this…
We ate lunch at the Holiday Inn Express near our hotel and Adam got some of the noodles everyone’s been raving about. He and Zhilu both loves them, but I think about four more people could have been fed with that single bowl. It was huge! After lunch, we went back to try to get Zhilu to nap… which we did, but then realized about 10 minutes later we needed to get him up. I had been hoping he’d sleep in the sling, but that was a no-go. We had to meet our travel group at 3pm to head to the airport, which meant being down to the lobby about 20 minutes before to take care of check-out and passing out our gifts to our wonderful guides. We found out that many of the babies were going on no-naps, so we all knew this flight would be an interesting experience.
Checking into the flight was an experience once again… it takes forever to check in 16 families all at once. So again, we were feeling rushed and got through security with just enough time to change diapers and have a quick snack. No time to stop for dinner. So now we had a tired AND hungry kid. Thankfully, we were flying China Southern again (same airline we flew from Beijing to ZZ) and it has really great leg-room in coach… so we were very comfortable. Zhilu was not a huge fan of the seat-belt, but we LOVED the CARES harness… Thank you Sarah for loaning it to us! It worked great, once I realized that you need to make sure to put it under the tray table on the back of the seat, not over. We realized that quickly once the meal service came and the poor gentleman behind us couldn’t get his tray table down.
They had an in-flight movie, and I was super excited to see the opening scene of Eclipse… nothing could make a crazy flight better than a Twilight movie! But it ended up being a 10 minute long, Eclipse-in-fast-forward-recap. It was so funny! If you hadn’t seen the movie, though, it would have ruined it for you… they showed the whole thing, beginning to end, just clipping out any of the non-essential scenes.
Zhilu enjoyed a bit of the meal, but really got cranky towards the end of the flight… we wanted out of his seat, and he was so tired but having a hard time getting comfortable so he wouldn’t fall asleep. He likes to sleep with his arm up near his head, so he was getting frustrated with the harness and not figuring out which parent he wanted to lean against. So he just decided to skip the whole nap thing… awesome. Sounded like many of the other kids did too… there was definitely lots of crying on that flight. I really feel for the other people on that airplane… they really had no idea what they were getting into, with all 16 families and our 16 cranky, tired kids. But we all survived and we all were so thankful to land in Guangzhou. We were all SO tired… it was a long day for the babies AND the moms and dads (and grandmas and aunties!).
We were met by our new guides, Grace and Maggie. We had a fourty minute drive to the hotel, during which time Grace told us all about the schedule for the week and our hotel information. We are staying at the Victory hotel, which is where I stayed last time. I actually think this might even be the exact same room… its kind of déjà-vu. The majority of the group is staying at the White Swan hotel, but we opted for the bigger room (we got a suite for the same price as a regular room at the White Swan), softer beds, and a faucet which has safe drinking water (no more paying for bottled water, yay!). I am disappointed to find that the beds are not quite as soft as I was hoping, but they are definitely better than Zhengzhou.
Adam and I were starving, but there really was no place to get dinner at this late hour so I sent him over to 7-11 to see what he could dig up. He bought some milk for Zhilu, but it was past dates… we thought perhaps it was a “prepared” date and not a “sell-by” date, but one quick whif from the carton and we knew it wasn’t. Disgusting! Our dinner, 7-11 style, ended up being Snickers and Pringles… fabulous.
We got Zhilu ready for bed, but he was really struggling… he still had not slept, so we knew he was exhausted, but we seemed to have missed the “magic window” for falling asleep, so he didn’t go down as easily as normal. Eventually, though, he was out and with a few minutes of waking here and there, he finally slept through the night.
Blogger in a pain for putting the photos in the right spot, so I’m just going to attach them here at the end tonight since I’m trying to catch up. Ignore all the squinting, this child HATES this hat and sunglasses right now and we are choosing to avoid that battle until we get home. Poor kid, he can tell that they both help him, but he’s just not going to allow it yet. I also was able to upload some quick videos Adam captured… we found a way to reduce the size of the videos our camera generates so its much more do-able to share them. Hopefully, I’ll remember to capture more!
Zhilu at the park - 1
Zhilu at the park - 2
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