Last night Kelly got out the Chinese jump rope and the girls showed us their skills with their schoolyard routines.

Then it was shower time with sister helping sister.

While Kelly was talking to Maxwell on Skype, Riley decided to go for a ride on my back and interrupt the conversation!

This morning we loaded up the bus for a trip out to Shamian Island, the place where we have stayed the last two visits to Guangzhou.

We went out there with two other families that are here. This is our guide, Richard. He has really been a great guide and was responsible for organizing all of our in-country arrangements while we are here in China.

You have to appreciate a bus driver with these things on his dashboard.

The big issue that we ran into was that their was a marathon going on this morning and all the roads were blocked! It took us FOREVER to actually get to the island.

And once there, we basically all bailed out in traffic when the driver of the bus stopped at a place where we could get onto the sidewalk.

On the way to the island, there were several street vendors who were out on the sidewalk. I will let you know that the first two guys were pretty irritated that I took their picture, especially since we didn’t buy any of their wares.

Then our three families invaded the island!

We waited for the girls outside the Starbucks as they went to the bathroom.

We went by some of our old souvenir spots, although we really didn’t buy anything.

The girls enjoyed the one shop where there was an artist painting names onto parchments.

On one of our visits we bought a lot of stuff from this one shop, so we spent a fair amount of time in there “negotiating”. It was interesting to see how things go full circle. Here is the shop.

In 2010 when we were here with Caleb he got in trouble for being too crazy in the store so I made him go outside and sit on the curb. There is a pitiful picture of him glaring at me that I put on his blog. Today, Riley did the same thing and I made her sit in almost the exact same spot.

Here is the picture from 2010:

And here is the picture from today:

As is typical, I have to try and keep Riley occupied, so…

Here are a couple of pictures for Bobby Hamm … the old White Swan Hotel, which is STILL being renovated, and Lucy’s Bar & Grill, the worst American food this side of the Delta.

They were having a charity drive in the park and the girls heard the music and wanted to go watch, so we went over for a few minutes and listed to the music and watched the people milling about.

And, again, Riley:

I know that every time we stay on the island I post a lot of pictures of the island, but it really is beautiful and I always love the peaceful environment and the European architecture nestled in this bustling China city of 14 million people! So, indulge me a few more shots.

And yet, it is STILL China, so you do have large transformers within hands reach!

Remember the Thia restaurant we were looking forward to eating in? It is now a vegetarian restaurant. 🙁

So we opted for an old home-town stand by.

When we got back to the hotel we had to wait for the guide to come to the room and make one final pass through our paperwork before our meeting with the U.S. Consulate on Monday. We got two of the passports today and are now waiting only on Leah’s to come from Nanning. While we were waiting, the girls asked to talk to their China Mom’s, which became somewhat disastrous. Riley called and did fine, but soon after she got off, we tried to get Jessie’s mom on the phone and something wasn’t working. She had already started to get teary-eyed before she called and not being able to talk to her China Mom sent her into sobs. This, in turn, caused Leah to start crying also. We were able to get Leah’s China Mom on the phone and that helped to appease her, but in the meantime Riley got in trouble for being crazy which in turn sent her into tears. It was somewhat of a mess. I went to run an errand and thankfully Kelly was able to mend all the broken pieces of the afternoon with a little help from some small Lego sets she had brought.

We opted for a free day tomorrow. Hoping that doesn’t backfire into a day of tears! We will have to work hard to keep them occupied tomorrow, probably making a trek up to the local park to keep them out of the hotel room.

We did hear today that Jessie’s lab work came back positive for TB, which isn’t a huge concern because it is probably just a false positive. But, it does mean that an already early Monday turns into an even EARLIER Monday morning as we have to go back to the clinic and get a chest X-Ray before we head to the U.S. Consulate. Please be praying for that aspect of her medical exam and that all the information comes back negative so we can travel out of here next week!

We watched as another family took a private van from here down to Hong Kong to board their flights back home. There were four of them with luggage and there was NO extra room at all. We realized at that point that this option wasn’t going to work for us due to the number of people we have, so we are once again going to brave the train to Hong Kong next week. We were told that wasn’t a good option for us, but today all opinions have changed and it shouldn’t be a problem. That is expected tour guide language … “shouldn’t be a problem.” We took the train with Ali, even though we were warned against it, but it went just fine and was actually a fairly enjoyable way to travel to Hong Kong and is probably the fastest option. We were told that this time it would be challenging due to Leah’s wheelchair, but we are going to try it anyway. It should work out just fine!!

Cameron