First full day in Guangzhou

So today was our first real day here. Good grief, it's HOT and HUMID here! The weather was dry and just warm in Urumqi so quite a difference. Everything is green and lush here, the trees, grass, flowers, and plants are just beautiful. It looks so tropical and pretty. We are sweating our tails off here. Elsie, our guide is from this city. She said that this city has a population of close to 12 million people!!! Can you imagine? We're staying at the White Swan Hotel ..... very nice and scenic. The back of it is just glass windows and it's view is breathtaking out on the Pearl River. The breakfast is served on the first floor and with the river view. Felisa, I had dumplings today for the first time here in China and they were sooo delicioius! There's soo many shops on the lower level too. This surrounding area and shopping is targeted to tourists, especially adoptive families moreso. Everywhere you look around inside and out, you see all these families with their Chinese babies or kids-- no joke. It's kinda crazy...
There's a waterfall and a large pond with koi fish inside the lower level too that's just beautiful too. Earlier today, we had to take our kids to get their medical exams done. This only consisted of their height, weight, ENT exam, and physical exam lasting only a few minutes. I got pics of it all. Drew weighed 20 kgs and was 111 cm tall. He's so much taller than most the kids around here we've seen! He's going to be big....
We did a little shopping today too. There's these shops everywhere with tons of Chinese things. Most of them have an American name title and do laundry too, which is lots cheaper than laundry at the hotels. We had lunch at Lucy's which serves all American food! Yum... first restaurant with normal real food and iced tea. (We've only had coke or water since we've been here). Last night and tonight we ate at this nice Thai restaurant that was to die for! Very good!
We had Elsie show us where to buy groceries. WEll this was quite a walk away and we saw the very poor locals selling their roots, spices, and LIVE animals in tubs, cages, etc. I took pics of dried seahorses, shrimp, deer hooves/legs, snake skins, among other things. The live animals consisted of turtles, chickens, rabbits, scorpions-lots of them, fish, eels, snakes, crawfish, and other things I can't remember. This was the first time I've seen cats anywhere in China... they were sitting around the shops, supposedly as pets... So at this grocery store, it was like walking into a sauna-- it was not air conditioned and just opened up out into the street. However, I did find deodorant, the old roll on kind. I got Drew some drinks, snacks, and flip flops. He loves these dried seaweed things--looks like beef jerky but only green and crunchy. They smell and taste gross. He likes the chips too , which aren't bad if you get the right kind. He ate the pear immediately after finding it in the bag too. He also thanked me for buying all the things he likes. He now says "thank you", "bye bye", "see you later", in English as well as counts. He understands most of what we say and tell him to do. He picks up so very fast. Elsie made fun of me for only buying 1... guess she was right. Drew definitely is used to eating weird things... he ate this gross very fishy whole fish dish last night and it reeked severely. He ate lamb kabobs one day and devoured them. He is finally getting an appetite here in the last few days--thank goodness. Well tomorrow we're supposed to be going to the zoo-- that should be an adventure. I hate to think of those poor animals... where's PETA when you need them???