Arriving in Guangzhou

Princess Peach did a great job on her first flight. She seemed to enjoy most of the experience, especially the cake. She did struggle with the descent, so we will need a new plan for landing since we will land 4 more times before arriving home. She’s not old enough for gum, and I doubt we can time all of her bottles appropriately, but we may try. She won’t take a pacifier yet, but we’re not completely giving up on that possibility. We had given her a decongestant. Anyway, we have several flight attendants travelling with us, so we are hoping to get input from them, but if anyone else has any tips, feel free to let us know.

We landed late Friday night in Guangzhou and had a 45 minute bus ride before arriving at the White Swan. The White Swan is very “legendary” among the Chinese adoption community. All American adopting families go through Guangzhou because the US Consulate is here, and the children must receive their Visas and apply for their citizenship so they will be citizens when they land on US soil. The Consulate is next door to this hotel, and the hotel is beautiful and on the banks of the Pearl River. It is a natural choice for many of the adoption agencies, and now it has become so ingrained in the “adoption experience” an entire industry has built up around this hotel. The agencies would have a hard time pulling out of this hotel if they wanted to, because so many of the families expect it. We are located on Shamian Island. The island is about 4-6 city blocks wide. All of the décor is Colonial. Most of the people speak English in addition to Cantonese (and many also speak Mandarin). There are many parks and trees and it is a lovely area. However, the entire “Shamian Island” and Guangzhou are under construction because of the upcoming “Asia Games” so it’s a little tricky to maneuver around the construction potholes, scaffolding, and equipment with a baby. We gave up on the stroller. The entire area caters to the International adoption community. There are multiple stores selling tourist items of interest, and baby items. They also provide laundry services, and free stroller loans. We feel like celebrities walking around because store owners are chatting with us everywhere we go around the island inviting us to their stores. It’s actually very sad, because the number of International adoptions have decreased significantly over the last few years, the store owners must really be struggling. We would really like to buy things from all of them. The people are so nice, but we are limited in how much we can spend, and how much we can carry home.

Things we love, and don’t so much love about the White Swan Hotel:
Love: The View of the Pearl River from the Hotel Window.
Don’t Love: The Fact that all of the rooms with a view have twin beds. It’s Bizarre. But after some furniture rearranging we found an arrangement that works fairly well for us.
Love: The Breakfast Buffet. So many items look delicious, we could have a completely different breakfast 8 days in a row (and we may..)
Don’t Love: The “Firmness” of the beds. Think Plywood. Seriously, if you forget and plop down, you could hurt yourself.
Love: That we received a complimentary (from Mattel) Barbie Doll holding a Chinese Baby.



Don’t Love: That Room Service soup costs as much as about 10 Ralph Lauren (?) polo style shirts outside the hotel. (We got a little spoiled by the Room Service Prices in Nanchang)
Love: The Water Fall and Fish Pond and Pagoda in the Lobby (pictures to follow at some point)
Don’t Love: The fact that we still can’t drink the water. Considering drinking water from the shower or even sprinklers when we get home, just because we can.
Love: The Laser Light show that surprised us last night at 8PM. It was a bit of a combination between Illimunations at Epcot (because Lasers came from multiple buildings around the river, to music), and the Electrical Boat Parade (because boats completely illuminated by lights continued to pass by), and Vegas (because all of the hotels glisten with neon lights on any given night), and the Matrix (just because it sounds cool.) Anyway, that was an unexpected treat.





The weather here is beautiful, and the hotel is very nice. There is a Starbucks on the Island, and we have limited ourselves to once a day. Because of the Breakfast Buffet, it seems that lunch is a good time to go to Starbucks. We feed Princess Peach a jar of baby food, (she prefers it laced with Cinnamon Roll) and feed ourselves a little Java to take the edge off of the sleep we are missing. Then we eat an early dinner.

The Baby Report: She is doing great. Although she had 3 days of fever, that has subsided and we have been several days without medicine. She really likes us, but we’re not sure if that translates to attachment yet. I was afraid that the babies would prefer the local familiar faces to ours and that we would be “battling” with the local people for our daughter’s hearts. That hasn’t been the case. It seems she’s a little freaked out when the local women get a little too close to her. She likes both of us, which is good, because we are warned that often the babies choose one parent and reject the other. The sleep is an area we continue to work on. We were warned that she was only a “moderate” sleeper, and needed to be rocked to sleep. It seems we’re rocking her to sleep about 5-8 times a night. She’s definitely not a good sleeper yet, but we’re hoping with more routine, and better health we’ll get it figured out soon. She loves her bottles, and a week ago was allegedly receiving 7 bottles a day. We’ve introduced solid foods which she seems to enjoy, and have her down to 4-5 bottles at this point.