Tuesday, April 5 - Last full day in Guangzhou

Well, thanks for the prayers!  Jim woke up feeling much better this morning!  I was glad to not have to do our last full day by myself.  And it would've been a bummer for him to miss it - it was a fun day!

This morning we went to a park in Guangzhou.  I can't remember the name of it, but it was a really neat place.  Again, this was not on our original Guangzhou itinerary, but was at the suggestion of one of the families in our group here.  Turned out to be another great suggestion from that family.  It was first of all, a beautiful place to walk.  But besides that it had a wide variety of other things to see and do.  One thing that was fascinating here were the number of people that collect in the park for exercise.  All forms of exercise - Tai Chi, dancing, ping pong, badminton, just to name a few.  Also lots of people spaced randomly through the park singing with a microphone and speaker.  After walking through the area of the park with all of those groups of people, we then came to the children's area.  This was a really neat area with all kinds of fun things for kids.  Similar to our carnival rides, but smaller and more basic - plus way cheaper!  But besides the rides they had things like mini pool tables for kids, craft activities, and also this really great fish-catching activity.  And as you will see in the pictures - it was with real fish!  We spent pretty much the whole morning at this park wandering through and letting the kids have all kinds of fun.

At the entrance to the park.  There were lots of landscaped flowers everywhere.

One group doing Tai Chi...

   

...another doing some simple aerobic dancing....

 

...frisbee and badminton...

....hacky sack....not bad for older ladies!

  

tennis...

...ping pong....

...long scenic places to walk...the older people in China are very fit!

This was funny - the signs say, "Best Lawn" and "Best Managed Scenic Spot".  Funny - the only spot of dirt in the whole park and it has those two signs on it!  We could only assume that it was being worked on!

The families we have been grouped with here.  We didn't even know until we arrived in Guangzhou that we would be in a group here.  We have been alone everywhere else, so this was a very welcome surprise at the end of a long trip.  What a great group of people to spend time with!

Keeping it real!  We didn't want to post all of her sweet smiles and not post reality!  This face (and the fit that accompanied it) was all because we took her out of the stroller to take pictures as a group.  Gasp!  Oh no - not that!  Then she had to learn that in order to get back in the stroller she had to be a nice girl.  Didn't take too long of walking beside the stroller to figure that out!

Check out this in the kids area - mini pool tables!

We paid less than $1 for 15 minutes for TingTing to catch fish from the pool and put them in a bucket.  All purely for fun, although they were also selling little containers for the fish if you wanted to keep some.

She ended up loving this activity!

  

She liked catching them, but she didn't like if they flipped off onto the ground.  She would back away and whine if they fell on the ground near her feet!

Are they still in the bucket MaMa?

She loved the carousel!  She almost protested about getting off at the end of the ride, but once she heard a stern, "No.  All done." she gave right in and got off.

We both laughed all the way through this one!

Until we would bump into another plane and then my shins would bang up against the wing of our plane.  Hence the face and the gripping of the right shin!

This was a fun thing - all of the kids got balloons.  TingTing of course loved it.  It's now floating in our room.  Not sure what will become of it tomorrow when we leave for the airport - especially since it has her favorite cartoon character on it!

 A picture of us with our guide Aron.  She really knows her stuff here helping the American families with their Consulate appointment!

Thought this was a funny contrast.  Before picture is up above - that one is at the beginning of the park.  This one is the after picture - shortly before we left the park.  What a difference in attitude!

 This is a short video of the fishing experience.  This is such a great idea - we think it would be fun for a birthday party.  Just don't ask me what we would do with all the feeder fish after the party is over!

 The park wasn't the only thing we did today, but it was the main thing.  In the afternoon we actually split up and I went with a shopping guide to the Pearl Market to look for some good deals.  Jim stayed with Lydia and was actually successful in getting her to lay down for a nap.  Way to go Jim!  Then for dinner we went back to the restaurant from a couple of days ago called the Banana Leaf.  Only this time we went with the whole group.  It was really fun with everyone there.  We almost filled two big circle tables and we were right up close to the entertainment.  We were glad to go back there for pretty much our last dinner in China.  Tomorrow we will still be in China at dinner time, but we will be in the airport so we will just have to get something there.  


I can't believe we are leaving tomorrow!  Yes, we have one overnight in Shanghai, but it really is just to sleep a little, and then we head straight out for home!


Three things we are thankful for today...


1.  For another great place we went in Guangzhou.  Thank you Donna and CJ for your suggestion!

2.  That in two days we won't have to eat in restaurants at every meal with our 3 year old!


3.  That our guide got us a very extended checkout time from our hotel tomorrow so that we don't have to check out at the normal time of noon, but we can stay until we have to leave for the airport at 4:30.


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