Tuesday night we had dinner on a Pearl River cruise. Not the choice activity for a 2 year old, but we haven't had many choices in our tours. The cruise I am sure would have been a lot more interesting if we could have understood something. Our facilitator did not go with us and they did not have any English handouts or anything. We went up and down the river with a dinner buffet. The way the assigned seating works, we ended up sharing a 4 top table with other people; Ellie didn't have a ticket, so she was on our lap. The food was very local – things with heads still on them. We had a lot of fried rice and noodles. The bridges and buildings were cool – everything lights up at night. We are not sure which Asian city started this trend of lighting up the buildings, but it is cool. We rode by this cool looking stadium, which only had seats on one side. Later we asked our guide about it and she said they built it only for the Asian Olympic games (or something like that). It was used for the opening ceremony and now is only used once in a while. The floor is a floating floor and they can remove the floor and boats can come in and park. They light it up every night for all to see - gives a whole new angle on government spending.
At the end of the cruise they had a juggling act accompanied by some Latin American/Salsa type music. The music was refreshing and Ellie was totally loving the music. It was raining a bit and that added to the fun as Dana and Ellie danced to the music on the outside deck.
Wednesday - We will be sharing a van with the G family from Utah – going to Hong Kong to stay the night before flying home. We don't check out here until late this afternoon, so it will be a slow and probably long morning. Depending on which version of the story we hear from our facilitator the van ride will either be 2 or 4 hours.
We are hopeful that Ellie will sleep a lot on the flight tomorrow. She usually "shuts down" when out in public and becomes very shy – so we hope the stress of it all just knocks her out and we don't end up with a tantrum at 37k feet. We are sure our fellow passengers feel the same J 15 hours to Detroit then a final 1.5 hours to home.
