This morning we took it a little easy and had a late, leisurely breakfast. We had a couple next to us that had just adopted a 22 month old boy from inner Mongolia--very unusual to see a boy being adopted. They told us that he had been abandoned when he was born because he had club feet--I could have cried, but then realized what a wonderful life this little boy will have now. On the other side of us was a mom and grandma that had just picked up a 14 month old little girl. I went over and started talking to her and she was all smiles--they said she had been like that since they picked her up at the orphanage. After breakfast we went out on our own--brave souls that we are! We have a piece of paper from the hotel and all we have to do is point to the Chinese of where we want to go. Our first stop was the Six Banyan Temple. As soon as we stepped out of the taxi, we were approached by several street people telling us where to get our tickets and then holding out tins for money. They were mostly either crippled or had some kind of a physical deformity, so we would put several Yuan into their tins and move on quickly. The temple was fascinating--a 17 story pagoda established in AD 537 to house a portion of Buddha's ashes. The temple was rebuilt in 1097. We saw lots of people burning incense and offering fruits, peanuts and bottled water to the Buddhas. We finished up there and hailed another taxi to take us to the Sacred Heart Catholic church. It was built by the French between 1860 and 1880 on land granted to Frances as compensation for its losses during the Second Opium war. It has two large spires that are 190 feet tall and house 4 bronze bells cast in France. There were many beggars outside of the church. It was absolutely beautiful inside! As we were leaving the church, we were approached by one beggar that just wouldn't give up. He would get right in front of us and shove his cup up--he finally gave up, but it just is so different. It took us about 20 minutes to get a taxi, so we had lots of time to people watch. At that point we were all pretty tired, it has been a busy week, so we decided to just go back to the hotel and relax. We took our books down to the outdoor pool and had a great time just enjoying the relative quiet after being in the middle of Guangzhou earlier in the day. We watched one of the women squatting in the flower beds and picking things up with a tweezers--no wonder everything looks so good here at the hotel! After resting up a bit John and I headed back out to the shopping district here on Shamian Island. We just about finished up all of the things we wanted to get. We bought quite a bit from "Sarah" across the street--we have gone in there several times and she loves to joke with us--she is the one that thinks we are rich because Steve convinced her that he was our bodyguard! After negotiating a price for what we wanted to buy (required in China, you never pay what they ask), John told her he was broke. She said, "no, no, you rich man" and he repeated, no I'm broke now, you took all my money. To that she said, "you broken, but still smelly." We hope she meant that he was broke, but still smiling!!! That's about it for now. It's off to bed, as we have a car picking us up at 7:30 to go back to the hub. Hopefully, the parts are now out of customs--we'll see!
No comments:
Post a Comment