What a day!

Well, I said that Guangzhou was the "finish line".... this was the worst race of our lives! I am not sure how to sum up today... but I will try. First, I want to explain to you that there are definite cultural barriers in the factors from today as well. The Chinese people very much want to tell you what you want to hear, not always the complete truth, this is very hard to see through.

Our rep. called us this morning to ask if we could meet her 15 minutes earlier at 9:15 because the highway was shut down and we would have to go a different way to the airport. We met her and she told us she was having a hard time getting a driver to take us to the airport... finally at 10:00 we were walked outside to a van to take us to our 11:30 flight, or so we thought. We quickly noticed that there had been an ice storm, yes, that's right my Texas, OK, and VA family, and apparently here they don't know what to do with ice, either! So, we started off to the airport, what's a little ice to a MN family! It took us 3 hours to get to the airport! We had to have two guys push our van up an icy bridge because we couldn't get the traction. We were taking the side streets because they closed all of the highways, then they opened the highway and we turned around to get on. There were car accidents all over the streets just left from the night before. Yes, we were praying quite a bit on this ride! Oh, and no we didn't miss our flight because they CLOSED the airport! So we finally go to the airport at 1:30 walked in and saw the two busloads of adoptive families from the hotel we were at going as well. We all looked at each other, sighed, and said, there is no way we are going back out there! Our rep. helped us get our tickets, along with the other group's rep. They gave us our tickets, said you are leaving at 3:30 (which we knew we weren't, there were no planes landing!) and left. So, none of us knew Chinese but we all stuck together! They kept pushing our flight time back and finally we boarded the plane at 5:30. We all got in our seats, heard all of the announcements... then, the flight attendants came out and started serving our meals, and we were still at the gate!! We knew this couldn't be good! I am still not sure why they fed us then, but we finally took off about 7:00. The rest of the trip went as planned which was fine with us! So now, everyone is asleep here but me (Alayne) who just needs to feel some sort of accomplishment for the day! Minzi held up through all of this just great, better than Joel and I at times!

I have some great pictures I will post tomorrow from the ice storm, it's too dark in the room now. So good night from Guangzhou, we will now always have one of those really good travel stories to tell! Alayne