Nanning here we come

We had to be packed and up quite early to head to the airport for our flights. The hotel provided us with a sack breakfast to take with us since we were leaving before they started serving breakfast. A cheese sandwich, hard boiled egg, banana and cookies. Sounds like a breakfast my little guys might like! Especially the cookies. Three of the families were all leaving about the same time so it was at the airport we parted ways with our fabulous guide Emma and wished the others safe travels. We'll meet up again with them in Guangzhou.

Emma had prepared us for security - things not to put in checked bags and things not to put in carry ons. And you have to take out all electronics when you go through security on domestic flight, I mean everything had to be examined. They looked quite awhile at my ILTA external battery, and I was afraid it was going to be confiscated. But after quite the pat down by security they returned it to me. Whew. We only had about 45 minutes to wait before boarding. And of course, we were loaded like cattle into one of those airport shuttles to take us to our plane. I don't think Andrew enjoyed it very much, but he was happy when we were onboard and he had the window seat. And we all agreed we had more room on this flight than we had on our international flight over. Not a bad flight at all for 3.5 hrs.

The first thing Andrew noticed as we were approaching Nanning is how much farmland and mountains we could see. Not at all like when we left Beijing. It was a lot of green. And as we got off the plane we realize the next difference. It was miserably hot and humid here in Nanning. I had sweat dripping down my back, and I wasn't doing a thing but standing waiting for luggage. Boy this is going to be fun. We won't be in Nanning long. Our agency had booked us to stay until Friday before they got confirmation of our consulate appointment. Our consulate appointment is now on June 6, so we have to leave on Wednesday in order for Matthew to have his medical exam and TB test completed before our appointment. So we leave Wednesday evening, and his passport won't even be ready - it will meet up with us in Guangzhou later this week.

Our guide, Glenn met us at the airport and we headed to our hotel, about 50 minutes away. Glenn is a quiet one, not a lot of chit chat. He went over the basic plan for tomorrow, got us checked into the hotel, told us there wasn't much around us so we needed to eat in the hotel, and then left us on our own until the morning. Little did he know that we weren't going to stay there - we got aCab, and headed to a local mall. We had as close to an American night as we could - Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, and Walmart were on the agenda. Each were quite different from their American counterparts, but we had a good laugh about it. We had no problems flagging a cab back, and impressed Andrew at our ability to navigate our way in China. We have to meet Glen in the morning to go to the bank to exchange our mine, so we'll call it a night.