World China Guangdong Guangzhou

Our Return Trip to China Return to China April 2009

Guangzhou & The White Swan Apr 18, 2009

We return to the amazing White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou in the pouring rain. Thank goodness Guangzhou has a new airport - it is beautiful and nothing like the hanger we landed in in 1997 and 1998! We are scheduled to go on a dinner/river cruise which will take us along the Pearl River. Our guide Elvin will stay with us through our visit to Wuzhou and back. His English is excellent and he is full of information about the city and China.

We locate the Red Sofas where we took the tradtional baby photos after each adoption. We would line up all the babies on the sofa and all these photos are in Lillian's offices in Brookline. We take a new picture of each girl on the sofa so we can give it to Lillian! We also take a picture in front of the waterfall. It's hard to believe that we are back at the hotel with the girls fully grown.

The river cruise is beautiful and relaxing. Afterward we shop a bit in the shops inside the hotel and bump into the Berkes and the Pearsons, two families who started out with us in Beijing but split off to go to Guilin when we went to Xian. It was great to see them and to hear all their stories of Guilin and theiur SWI visits which all seemed to go very well.

We then headed to our room and fell asleep right away as we have a long day tomorrow.

We are on the backside of our trip and are so happy at how well everything has gone. We are still thinking about our sad farewell to MeiMei, Uncle and Auntie at the airport in Chengdu. We are all feeling very emotional about it. It seems as though we are destined to be a family and that somehow the red thread continues to pull our U.S. family into new directions. The girls really feel they have a new sister in MeiMei, Auntie and Uncle, and they are especially excited about the new cousin PuPu!!! We really hope he comes to the US for college!!