Sunday and Monday

After church on Sunday Rosie and Michael Cragen invited us to their home for dinner and family night.  They are extremely friendly and open people.  They live on the 35^th floor of an apartment building overlooking the Pearl River where many buildings are lit up and the river dinner cruise boats go by.   The Guangzhou Opera House has the angular roof right on the river.  Michael works for the US Consulate so they have a different assignment every 3 years.  They shared some family photos and it was like a brochure from a travel agency.  They couldn’t keep track of what country certain photos were taken in.  Rosie made a fantastic multi-cultural meal which we thoroughly enjoyed and their children gave us plenty of entertainment – from piano music to rough housing with the younger boys.   

Monday was time for the medical appointment for Scott.  After breakfast we fed the Koi fish at the hotel almost our entire loaf of bread.   Scott loved it, Pierce and Creed wanted to see if they could get the fish to eat out of their hand – they were successful.  After seeing that we had the entire pond of fish in front of us, I noticed another mother with a baby just staring at the empty water.  I told the boys to lure the fish over to the other area.  We walked over there and leaving a trail of bread, the fish soon followed.   The baby giggled and reacted to the fish splashing and fighting for the bread crumbs in front of her.  The mom seemed to appreciate it.  After a minute or so I noticed that Scott was back over in the first area dropping pieces of bread to a small group of fish that had stayed behind.   That sparked two thoughts for me.  1. Scott is sensitive and wanted to help those who were not as greedy.  2. These were “orphaned” fish that Scott was helping.  It seemed to make a lot of sense that he was over there performing that service to that small group off by themselves.

After we unloaded almost a full loaf of bread on the fish (a Chinese loaf is only about 10 slices and has no heals), we went shopping and that included a hunt for peanut butter in two stores.  There is an upscale department store with a grocery store on the top floor.  A very weird location, but the grocery store is also upscale.  They have many imported delicacies, including Skippy Peanut Butter and flavored instant oatmeal. 

After a little rest in our room and having peanut butter sandwiches (Scott even tried one, he ate few bites and was done, but that was after finishing a large cup o noodles.  I hope he gets used to peanut butter sandwiches when we get home or he will go hungry often at lunch time J - unless Casey gets his way and whips up a batch of Top Ramen…..that was a long parenthetical diversion.  Is that the correct usage of parenthetical??) we were off to do the medical exams for Scott. 

He handled the poking and prodding like a champ.  Smiles most of the way.  He had blood drawn, four not so gentle immunization shots and a pants off exam.  Not the most comfortable situation for an adolescent.  Just as we were finishing up, Richard, our guide, got a call and was told that they moved our visa application appointment at the police station up a full hour.  That was about 30 minutes before he got the call.  He drove like a crazy Chinese taxi driver putting his personally owned Honda Odessy van at risk to get there before they closed.  He said he does not like to drive fast, but he said we needed to drive like a formula one race car.  He did his best in the slow China traffic and we barely made it.

In front of the largest temple complex of Guangdong.  We made this visit on Saturday.

Awesome Budahs.

Creed and Scott taking a rest.

The Pearl River from 35 floors up.



Creed with the fish eating from his had.  Until they splashed him one too many times.  He was done getting fish water in his face.

Scott taking care of the "orphaned" fish.  (See full blog post)

Waiting for the doctor.

Just blood pressure.  No big deal.

Part of the medical exam was to demonstrate how he could write his name.  The doctor asked me if I knew about Scott's medical condtion.  I said yes, it's cerebral palsey.  He let me put that on the medical paperwork.  The notary wasn't quite so flexible.  I had to agree that he was "mentally retarded" on the official paperwork.  That was really irritating. 

Still smiling while the doctor warmed up the stethescope.

More inspection...

This just seemed like a good picture to end with....