Train Ride to Guangzhou

Today was the day we moved to Guangzhou.  We spent the morning packing up, while Amy took care of going to the office where Audrey's passport was ready.  Yay! Another step complete....

Steve picked us up and drove us all to the train station so we could head to Guangzhou. It was sad saying goodbye to our driver Steve and guide Amy. We had so much fun getting to know them, joking around with them, and learning more about China from them. They were both very sweet...

The train station was absolutely crazy, especially since it was the weekend. Everything fast paced and wall to wall people pushing and shoving their way through. The ride to Guangzhou was 3 hrs on the bullet train. We got to see more of rural China, much like on Wednesday, lots of hills and fields of rice farms...

 Audrey enjoyed watching the little boy sitting next to us, he was very active and maybe just a little older than her.  He was really cute and kept sharing all his snacks with her.  Audrey got interested in a potato chip can we had, and probably spent a good hour transferring crumbs from one container to another and putting the lid on and off.  It doesn't take much to entertain her!

We were probably about 30 min away from our destination, and the little boy next to us ended up spilling a whole bowl of soup on the floor in front of us and on our bags.  So Aaron takes most of our stuff to the back of the train, and I'm trying to clean up this mess with a mom I can't communicate with at all.  And in the middle of all this commotion, Audrey is still playing with the can and an amazing thing happens!  I hear her babbling all kinds of sounds, and acting silly, and smiling!  It's like a switch was flipped!  Then I start tickling her and she was laughing!  I couldn't believe it!  I tried catching some pictures with my phone, but they are kind of blurry...

Unfortunately Aaron missed it all since he had moved to the back, and then it was time to get off the train and it was complete chaos.

Richard met us at our exit.  We were happy to get to meet him, because he is the travel coordinator for our agency and he also goes around to the orphanages and gets updates on the kids and he had seen Audrey there several times and gave us pictures, etc.  He's also the guy that arranged the care package to be delivered for us, and the birthday party for her.  He will be our guide for part of the week.  It was a long ride to the hotel.  Guangzhou is a city of about 15 million.  It was neat to drive through the city at night seeing all the buildings lit up.

The hotel is very nice, HUGE, and all of the staff we talked to so far speak English -- yay!!  Audrey fell asleep in the car and then went right back to sleep at the hotel.  We are excited to see her getting more and more comfortable with us!  Tomorrow is another early day, Audrey has to get a medical exam which is required for all the kids before leaving the country, which will include getting her blood drawn for a TB test.  Hopefully she'll still be smiling after that!