Trip to China
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Friday, August 1, 2008 We woke up today and there was blue sky over Guangzhou – kind of rare around here. We had gotten the fringe of the tropical storm that blew through Taiwan and that cleared out some of the smog. The blue sky however, was not shining in the Yarger room. Soren woke up and immediately ran to the bathroom heaving. Somehow he had gotten food poisoning which resulted in vomiting and diarrhea. The poor kid was trying to make it to the bathroom every few minutes and frequently didn’t. I would clean up only to find myself cleaning up again a few minutes later. Needless to say we replaced the entire bed set and all the towels today. That morning we had a planned tour of the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees in Guangzhou, a Buddhist temple. There’s a massive pagoda there and of course, six banyan trees. Soren seemed to feel well enough to at least follow me down to breakfast but he sat at another table, looking away from the food and clutching his stomach. Soon enough he was off to the bathroom again, so after that my Dad took him upstairs while we finished. By the time we were to depart for the tour Soren was still feeling a little funky so I decided I would stay back and hang out with him. When you’re feeling like that, you can’t be out and about. Naturally, as soon as the bus left so did the nausea for the most part. He ran to the bathroom a couple more times in the morning so I’m certain that it was a prudent decision to stay. We passed the time by playing Phase 10 (he beat me) and watching Mythbusters on TV. I got caught up on some email also. The group was having a group lunch after the tour at some famous island of the rich and famous but not having gone, I can’t tell you what it was. My 13 year old Preston just recently got his Photography merit badge so he was the photographer for the day. I should have sent him with my SLR but he just took the point-and-click instead. Not too shabby if you ask me. He seems to be gifted. The group got back to the White Swan around 2pm and after getting refreshed a little we decided to walk the Shamian Island loop. By then Soren was back to his ornery self. We went east to the island’s edge and then skirted around back on the north side next to the false river. Whatever sense of well-being the blue sky had given us was dashed by Soren’s illness and the amount of dead things in the river – fish, crabs, rats. The pollution is really pretty bad here and most people just deal with it. You have those on one extreme that will actually swim in the river and those on the other that wear surgical masks while riding their bikes around. On the northern edge of the north-south park blocks, we came across some interesting bronzes and Soren couldn’t help but to goof off. Along the way we met up with a nice young fellow that had taken the English name James (after Lebron James). He was practicing his English in hopes of someday making it to the US. We stood and talked with him for about 20 minutes or so. We exchanged emails and now we have a new pen pal. Getting back to the hotel, YaYa figured out what my BlackBerry was and immediately began typing an email to her friends back in the orphanage. By now it was dinner time. Nobody wanted to walk anywhere because we were all pretty beat. April’s knee was in pain and I frankly hadn’t recovered from the deep tissue massage of the day previous. We decided to try out a different restaurant in the hotel. The first choice was Japanese, of which April and I love. My Dad was trying to revolt – something about needing cooked food. The truth is, we wouldn’t eat the sushi here anyway. As it turned out it was way too expensive anyway so we ended up at a Cantonese place in the White Swan called Jade River. They seated us in our own private room next to the mandolin player. We were waited on by no less than 6 waiters. Talk about feeling like royalty! Nobody could bring themselves to be too adventurous so we all settled on the Panda Express variety of choices – fried rice, sweet and sour, etc. It was either that or the braised sea slug.

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