Guangzhou to Hong Kong

And so begins our long, long journey HOME!

We were up again with Elliott last night.  Elliott wakes up a lot, confused and crying hard.  I'm not sure if he has nightmares and wakes up, or just wakes up and is confused and disoriented when he's not at his foster home and has to remember where he is and who we are.   He usually settles down with a drink of water, but the problem is that he guzzles it.  Then wakes up with a leaking diaper.  It's an unusual way to soothe himself.  Then we tried something new last night.  Instead of allowing him to drink so much, we pulled it away after just a sip, put the lid back on, and let him just hold it.  He pulled it to his chest and we laid him down with it and just watched him.  He fell right back to sleep with both arms around it.  I think that for the past couple of years his bottle has been his lovey.  He didn't have a blankie or a stuffed animal to bond with at bedtime.  His foster mother put him to sleep with a bottle full of warm water and honey and he loved that bottle.  He would soothe himself with it, because it's all he ever had.  That explains a LOT.  First of all, how to best soothe him at night.  Secondly, why he has such rotted and decaying teeth.  He was allowed to re-coat his teeth with honey over and over again all night.  Half of his teeth are gone. Completely rotted away to the gum line.  It's so sad.

We had a nice relaxed morning, a non-hurried breakfast, and one last long stroll down the pedestrian streets.  Matt finally broke down and bought himself a souvenier to remember this trip by.  We had snacks at the hotel room for lunch as we packed up our bags, still full from a large breakfast.  For the first time since we have been in China, it was overcast and drizzling rain for a small part of the morning.  I was starting to think either it doesn't rain here, or I was the Golden Child.  :o)

Jack met us in the lobby at 2:00pm and we said goodbye to the Holiday Inn Shifu.  We drove back to the U.S. Consulate this morning to receive our official immigration package to deliver to US Customs in the Chicago airport.  The package was ready at 3:30 like clockwork.

Goodbye, Guangzhou!

Goodbye, China!

On the drive to the US Consulate office Elliott fell asleep sitting straight up, so Matt held on to his noggin so he'd stay asleep.  He skipped his 1:00pm nap that day and it caught up with him.

This is the US Consulate (below), believe it or not.  I didn't get a photo of it the other day, but here it is.  I thought it would look more official, with a pretty iron gate around it and some big official badges, but that's not the way it is.  In fact, there are travel agencies that have sprung up in the building, too, because everyone in China wanting to visit the USA has to file paperwork here for a USA travel visa.  Their line to get a USA visa was HUGE!  It was a several hour wait that morning.

It was right on time at 3:30pm.  Then it was a short 5-minute drive to the Guangzhou-Kowloon train station.  It's a busy train station, but only runs trains from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and back.  There we had to say goodbye to our new friend, Jack.  We will miss him!

While we waited, we chatted with two other US adoptive families taking the same train to Hong Kong.  We have been so happy to meet so many other families on this last leg of the journey, and to hear their stories and to share ours.  There's definitely a nice comraderie there.  We only had to wait 40 minutes.  Such a nice change from our traveling so far! 

The ceiling of the train station atrium was glass.  Very pretty!

The train was an older model, with lots of squeaks and creaks, and it didn't go as fast as the train from Beijing to Harbin.  Elliott was excited to get on the train, but only satisfied himself by watching the world go by out the window for 10 to 15 minutes.  After that, he was trying to climb anywhere and everywhere, and to unload my purse onto the floor.  After Baba finally had to give him the stern look and a couple verbal corrections, he settled down and actually fell asleep for the second half of the journey. 

When we left Guangzhou, it took a long time to get out of the highrise buildings.  I'm not talking 5 to 10 minutes.  I'm talking 45.  Building after building, street after street, row after row of tall apartment buildings, crammed together.  When the Chinese build, they build for mass production.  They don't build just one.  They design one building, then build 30 or 40 of the exact same high-rise.  You see it over and over again. Cookie-cuttter apartment buildings 20 to 30 floors high.  Street after street.  Row after row.  City after city.  It's hard to wrap your mind around how many people there are in China unless you are here and you see it.  A number on a piece of paper is meaningless.  There are more people living here than you can imagine with your brain.  Each one with a story, with a purpose, with a desire to be special, to be valued. 

There is no wasted space in China.  Even the 'wasted' space at the side of the railroad is used by some to plant small harvests.  I wish I could have gotten a photo, it is very unique, but the train was going to fast and little man was trying to snag my camera.  There wasn't much large-scale farming going on in between GZ and HK from what I could see, but we did pass by a couple of banana crops and what I think was some sort of lettuce.  And we did see a few more cultivated fish ponds.  Lots of industry and lots of shopping and lots of apartment buildings.   It was hard to tell when one city ended and the next began.  There were a ton of factories in this area, too.  You'd see a big factory building with apartment buildings directly behind it.  The workers in many of these spend all day (not just eight hour) in the factory, and live right behind it.  They are not always compensated with much in the way of competative wages, but are given "almost free" housing.  It's a way that the factories can keep employees dependant, from what I can gather.  The apartment buildings in those sectors weren't fantastic, if you can gather what I'm hinting at.  Factory after factory after factory

with a random nuclear power plant thrown in for power supply.

Power isn't cheap in China, either.  Gasoline was a bit ofer $6 per gallon while we were here.

Passing through rural areas in between cities.

As we got further east, the land got more and more hilly.

We passed through another major Chinese city called Shenzen, about 2/3 of the way from GZ to HK.  It was very nice, with some beautiful skyscrapers in the downtown area that had some really cool light shows playing up the side of the buildings.  I tried to get photos, but only a couple turned out.  The lights were still on and quite bright in the cabin of the train.

Once we passed Shenzen, the landscape went from hills to mountains.  It was hard to see how far back they went with the dim light.  From what I could see it was absolutely beautiful.

We arrived in Hong Kong right at 7:00, and waited to disembark until everyone else was out.  We had, by far, the most luggage of anyone traveling:  three suitcases, two huge backpacks, a purse, a laptop briefcase, and a kids' bag with toys.  Oh, and a todder who was tired and refused to walk.  So we finally got it all off and managed to push/pull/drag/carry it all up an escalator, through customs (Hong Kong is legally part of China, but it is an autonomous region, so they have their own money, local police, local laws, banks, local government, and immigration services.  Even Elliott needed his Chinese passport!), back down an escalator, and finally to the atrium.  While Matt exchanged money, I ran to a fast food joint and ordered a veggie wrap with tofu that was really really good.  We only waited 20 minutes for a bus, and for just $35 we all rode together from the train station to the airport.  It was about a 40 minute ride, but it was so neat because it crossed right through downtown Hong Kong. 

Hong Kong (Kowloon district) train station.

There are lots of double-decker busses here.

Elliott loves busses!  Whenever he spots one, he says "Da chir" (means big car).  When we told him we were actually getting ON the bus, he was all smiles!

I tried hard to take photos through the window.  Not many turned out.  So I'll violate some copyright rules and clip a few from the internet that are similar to what I saw.  :o)
                   


The skyscrapers are beautiful!  Hong Kong is not built between mountains, it is build on mountains.  It reminds me a little of San Francisco, but without the pretty little Victorian-style homes.  There are those same high-rise apartment buildings here in the city, too.

                 

              

We passed through the downtown district (HUGE!) and then past the shipping ports with their big cranes lined up on the water's edge to load and unload cargo ships.  That area reminded me a little of Long Beach in California.  It was really hard to get a photo of that part because it was on the other side of the bus and Elliott was not sitting very still in his seat and needed my attention.

One of the other adoptive families was with us on the bus.  They are a really sweet family from North Carolina that just adopted a two-year old little girl from Nanchang.  Lizzie and Elliott were both way past tired after this long day.  As it turns out, we had the same "Gotcha Day", the same US Consulate appointment date, and now we'll be traveling together to the United States.  We're on the same flight!  So I know I won't be the only new Mommy on the plane trying desperately to survive the experience and get home!

We arrived at the Sky City Marriott around 8:15. It's right next to the airport, so all we have to do tomorrow morning is take a five-minute shuttle and we're there.  Our shuttle is at 9:20am.  Our flight is at 11:50.  The room is really nice.  This hotel is pretty swanky.  It's all decorated in modern-art with edgy colors and all square edges with lots of marble.  There's a pool, but we missed it tonight because we're so tired.  I might check it out tomorrow morning if there's time.  Elliott usually wakes us up around 7 or 7:30 and we have two hours to kill.  Why not do it in a hot tub?  :o)

The super-swanky lounge area behind the check-in desk.

Pulling his shoes off, Mr. Elliott is ready for bed!



The Hong Kong Marriott is just 5 minutes from the airport.  You can see the airplanes taking off from the hotel, on the other side of a beautiful golf course.



Our room

Indoor pool

So now it's time for bed.  I will probably not be posting much until I get home.  The airports all have wifi now days, but it comes with a fee, so I'll just catch up at home.  It may take me a day or so to get the rest of the photos uploaded, too.  The internet connection at the hotel is really sketchy.  This is actually the third attempt I have had to make to get this post in at all.

Thank you for your thoughts, well wishes and prayers.  And thank you for following us on our journey to China.  Now we're headed home, and the 'real' work begins.  :o)

See you in the USA!