Our final day in Xi’an started slowly which was nice. We had nothing to do until 2PM so why hurry?
We were downstairs for breakfast around 8:30 and it was the same old, same old. We ate and visited with some of the other families and a family who had adopted their daughter 14 years ago and were back for a heritage tour. Wonder how many years it’ll be before that’ll be us. We went back up to the room and packed up the suitcases. Pretty much all of our clothes are dirty and we’ll need to do laundry in Guangzhou. Once everything was packed we still had hours to kill. We watched TV and Blaize napped which was good as our flight wasn’t until later this evening. A quick lunch of leftover food from grocery shopping hit the spot.
At 2PM we went downstairs with all of our stuff and left the bags with the bell desk. The rest of the families were going to lunch across the street from the hotel so we joined them. We all had fun chatting and killing time and it wasn’t too long before we needed to get on the bus. We loaded the bus, which was a miracle once you see the pile of luggage 4 families has. Before we could go to the airport, we had to stop off at the civil affairs office and pickup the new passports. Our guide hopped out and it was only a few minutes before she was back.
We made our way to the airport which was a 40-ish minute drive. The last time we were here it was dark but now in the daylight we could see it was pretty big and new. Eight years ago when we were here we recall it was pretty dark and run down. Now, these terminals were big, shiny and very modern. Our guide helped us get checked in and we all were happy to be checking our luggage. Domestic security was no big deal and the first guard was nice enough to redirect all of us to “special services” and it wasn’t too long before we were in the terminal. We had about and hour and half to wait and sat around the gate area. It seems four adoptive families are pretty interesting and we had a lot of stares, smiles and finger pointing. Our flight was delayed for a bit while we waited for our inbound plane. Once it arrived we lined up and eventually boarded.
The flight was with China Eastern on an A320. The seats clearly were not designed for American frames and my knees were touching the back of the seat in front of me as soon as we sat down. Blaize was a lap infant so didn’t have a seat and we worried how he would do for his first flight. We pushed back and taxied to the runway where we sat for a bit. Flying in China is much like flying back home - hurry up and wait. We finally made it to the runway and were off. Blaize did great and once we reached cruising altitude, one of the flight attendants came and had the guy sitting in the window seat move to another seat further up the plane. This was AWESOME as it gave us the middle seat for Blaize and some extra room to spread out a bit. He was great the whole flight and enjoyed watching the lights below as we finished the 800+ mile flight to Guangzhou.
Once we landed it was a mad dash by everyone on the plane to stand up, even before we stopped. It was funny to watch as you get scolded back home for unbuckling your seat belts before the captain turns off the sign. We all made it off the plane, hit the restrooms and got all of our bags, which was good to see they made it. Our guide in Guangzhou met us outside baggage claim and walked us to
the bus. As soon as we walked out of the terminal, the heat and humidity hit us like a wall. Guangzhou is more or less a tropical kind of environment and you can tell right away how different it was from Xi’an’s heat. This bus is bigger than the one in Xi’an and has luggage stowage under the seats so room for bags was no issue. We made the 45 minute drive to the hotel and checked it. It was now past midnight and we got to our room and started to get settled in. We eagerly awaited our bags which the bell hop brought up and set an alarm for 7AM. Tomorrow morning we go do a medical exam and need to leave at 9AM. This is going to be a coffee infused kind of a day I suspect.
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