Ready to Fly

I'm not sure if I will have time to post again when we arrive in Guangzhou tonight - so I'm doing a second post for Wednesday...  They boys had a great time at the pool again.  There were some other children there swimming. I guess local people can buy a swim pass there. Mark and Joshua were playing with the children when I got there and having so much fun. There was a boy there who was being very helpful with Joshua. Turns out he is 11 years old and has been taking private English classes for three years, so we had a nice conversation.  Very sweet boy. Curious about us and Joshua. He told me that Joshua told him his parents had died. We don't know if he really believes that or if he just said that because it was simple - I kind of think that is the case. There was a little girl there that wanted to know if I could speak any Chinese, so I demostrated a few of my phrases and counted in Chinese. They were all impressed with my counting.... He told me I speak better Chinese than most Americans, however, I don't think that is saying too much.   We had such a huge blessing last night.  Sunny, our delightful guide from last trip met us for dinner. She had been our lifeline here last time around and spent seven full days with us when we adopted Anna. She is incredibly sweet, is great with children and teaches English to tourism students at the University. Joshua started looking a bit distant again last night as we left for dinner, but he warmed up quickly to Sunny. We were able to communicate with him about many things during dinner. A NOTE for Grandpa Dean -- yesterday afternoon he had seen fishermen at the park and said he wanted to go fishing and to go in a boat. He expressed this wish again at dinner and we told him he has a Grandpa that likes to fish too.   Sunny was able to explain to him about our travel to Guangzhou and that we will stay there several days before we go to America. I was concerned he might think Guangzhou was America. Now I think he understands -- he didn't before. Sunny took us to a Kazaak restaurant that was close enough to walk so we could avoid another taxi ride. Joshua and Mark both enjoyed it immensely.  One of the pictures shows Mark diving into a specialty dish of the Kazaak people - horse meat.  I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Sunny treated us to dinner and ordered about 10 dishes.  A funny thing happened. After she first ordered, the waitress told her we needed to order even more food -- what???  Turns out we were seated at a 6 person table and after 9 pm you are required to order at least 300 yuan worth of food for that size of table (about $40 us dollars) and it turns out our 10 dishes plus drinks only totaled a little more than 200 yuan (about $30) -- so we ended up squishing into a 4 person table and all was well!!  We had tried to pay for dinner, but Sunny had snuck off to pay earlier.  When it was time to leave, there was a ton of food left and Sunny wanted to pack it up to share with her roommates the next day.  Joshua grabbed the bag of food as we left.  Sunny complemented him for his help, but I told her I suspected he thought we were going to take that good food with us - since he is really into food.  She talked to him about it and turned to me with her hand on her chest, "do you know what he told me?"  I thought he probably told her he wanted to save it for later. Turns out, he told her he wanted to take it to the other children at the orphanage.  So, now we are all tearing up...  She told him it was too far away, but that we would help him send some things from America to his friends at the orphanage.  We went from there to an Ice Cream shop - great delight again.  We took our Ice Cream to Dicos where there was more room to sit and ordered some fries. Joshua asked if he could have a piece of fried chicken too.    It was such a treat to have Sunny's company and translation.  She plans to meet up with us today and accompany us to the airport. She really wants to see us off. Hopefully, our other guide won't mind. We are trying to talk Sunny into coming to visit in America one day. I know Rachel and Sarah will smile when they read that.