Guangzhou

We woke up Sunday morning and prepared to travel to Guangzhou on a
train. As I was getting ready that morning I blew up my hair dryer on
its first use! I knew this would probably happen at some point :( It
was raining so hard as well as we traveled to where we needed to catch
the bus. This was very difficult with our big suitcases trying to move
through the crowded sidewalks on the street. We asked a cab driver to
take us to the train station and he said no... we assumed he just
didn't speak English. Next, we tried to catch the bus. The first bus
turned us down as well and told us to wait for another one. We finally
were able to catch a bus and head to the train station. When we got
there we had quite a journey still ahead of us to get on the train.
Apparently they do not have many elevators here so getting our luggage
around has been very difficult with a lot of extra walking. Jes has
already blogged about all of this so I will skip to the next day.

We finally got to Guangzhou and had a good nights sleep! The next
morning, Monday, we woke up early since we were still jet lagged.
Steve and Jenny made us cinnamon toast for breakfast. It was
delicious! Then we set off around the city to meet Steve for lunch at
a place close to where he works. It was a western restaurant called
Tomatoes and it was awesome! We all split a pizza and it was the first
meal I have been full from. After lunch we walked around the streets
where Steve works. This was cool because it was much more touristy. It
was the first time since being in Guangzhou that I saw a foreigner.
There were many shops and malls and nice hotels. Jenny had to catch a
bus to go to class and Steve went back to work so this was our first
real test to find our way around alone and get back to the apartment.
We took the metro, which has very clear labels in English and fairly
easy to use, and found our way back to Jenny and Steve's neighborhood.
We were so proud of ourselves! ha We decided to rest up when we got
back and unpack some since this will be our home for the next month or
so. Jenny cooked us dinner that night with the left overs from the
night before, so yummy! After dinner Jenny took us to get a massage.
The place she goes is called "Blind Man Massage". We were all in the
same room (clothes on of course) and each had a full body massage
(mine was by a real blind man). At moments during the massage, I
actually felt like I was dying haha. He was pushing so hard and in the
places that hurt the most. Apparently, they do really hard massages in
China we were told later. This was the first time Jes has ever had a
massage so she was a bit scared thought she was going to die! He also
tried to talk to me the whole time, which was weird. Not sure why he
would think I can speak Mandarin haha.

The pictures are from the balcony of Jenny and Steve's apartment (on
the 21st floor!)