Passing the time in Guangzhou

We ended up spending nearly 2 weeks in Guangzhou.  We should have been able to leave on Thursday, September 16th.  However, our agency told us we should plan to spend several more days in China in case something went wrong - they were not used to families adopting 2 kids at the same time or families adopting kids who were aging out.  As we were doing both those things at the same time and had a couple of things expedited they were concerned something might not work out.  We had originally planned to leave Guangzhou on the 16th with everybody else from our agency and just spend the extra 4 days in Hong Kong (most people depart China via Hong Kong, which is very close to Guangzhou, as it is often the cheapest way out - if something had gone wrong we could have canceled the days in Hong Kong and stayed longer in Guangzhou), but because that was going to be so costly (Hong Kong is expensive!) we decided to take a train trip to nearby Guilin instead.

In the end we ended up canceling that and just spending the extra time in Guangzhou.  Even though we were tired of the place, tired of the heat and humidity, and a bit bored it was easier than traveling to a new place and dealing with the train rides with 4 kids.  Of course we would have been much happier to have just come home (despite our agency's concern everything worked out fine and we really should have been able to leave on the 16th, but it would have cost a fortune to change the tickets back to the US), but since we were just sticking around the hotel with nothing else to do we spent some time enjoying the pool on top of the hotel.

It seemed Joshua had never been swimming before - he was terrified of the water at first and kept a swing ring on the first several days even though he could stand on the bottom.  He did enjoy it a lot though, as did Micaelyn, Malachi, and Caleb.  The pool was almost always empty except for us.  It made a great way to pass a little bit of time each day.