Sight-seeing and Shopping!

Today I woke up with what feels like the onset of a virus…sore hoarse throat, swollen glands in my neck, and I don’t know if it is related, but gooky eyes.  My left one is all red and swollen.  I don’t feel good.  Abby got away from the hotel without a dose of painkiller onboard.  It was a long, hot, miserable day for her.  One ear is plugged and she can’t hear out of it and it hurts.  She doesn’t think it is from all of the swimming though.  She was able to pretend like she felt good to pose for most of the pictures.  Especially for some of the Asian guys that came up to her to get their picture taken with her!  The guy in the picture below said he thought she was very beautiful.  Lucy’s cough is getting better, but it seems like she coughs in the mornings.

It was 90 degrees today in Guangzhou and a ton of humidity…kind of like Alabama.  But it was a sunny day here and that always lifts my spirits.  Tomorrow we are taking Lucy’s sunglasses.  She borrowed mine today.  In Chengdu where she is from, they have about 20 sunny days a year.  So the sun is really bright for her.  She will probably be wearing sunglasses all of the time at home!   We had three stops today.  The first was the Six Banyan Temple.  You can google it to read more out about it.  It was interesting, but obviously not my cup of tea…hahaha!  Next we went to a Provincial shopping center and I thought the prices were a little high for my blood.  Then we went to the Pedestrian Street for pearls.  The guide took us to a reputable store.  They also sold jade there.  When Dave and I were here in 2011 for Eli, we went to the Pearl Market then as well.  This Pedestrian Street was where Abby got to pose for pictures and if you look back at Eli’s blog, you will see a picture of me standing next to a bronze statue of a little Chinese boy with split crotch pants on.  I had to go back there and take a picture of the little guy with Abby and Lucy! Hahaha.  Because of the heat and our ailments and the fact that Lucy isn’t much of a shopper, we drug through the day, but didn’t want to miss it.  When we got back to the hotel, Abby had had it and voted for McDonalds!  It was actually a very close match to the McDonalds in the US.  Lucy had not been to a McDs before, so of course we had to take her.  She pointed to the hot fudge sundae and I said yes!  So she ate that and loved the fries, but would not even try a cheeseburger!  We had to wait until 5pm when they started selling beef and rice and got that and brought it back to the room.  She ate that and we watched Chinese TV.  It is really interesting.  Then this evening we had a skype date with Erin and Neal.  The connection was really good and we were able to visit for a while.  Now we have to skype with Eli and gma and gdad.  It is tricky to figure out when both parties are available with the 13 and 14 hour difference.

I was able to ask the other Americans at the hotel at breakfast if they brought any antibiotic eye drops.  One family brought some and they are letting me use them.  My eye feels better, but it still looks bad.  The guide said we can go to a pharmacy to get some, so we will see how I do with the ones from the other family first.

Tomorrow we head to the Yuntai Garden and I am looking forward to taking lots of outdoor pictures.  We will also find out the results of Lucy’s TB test.  Actually, if our guide hears nothing by 3:30pm then that means it was fine.  We will spend the rest of the day resting.