Shaiman Island, Guangzhou

We left JFK on Friday around 3:00pm. We flew Cathay Pacific, JFK to Hong Kong to GZ. Our guide, Richard, met us at the gate. He asked me if I was Asian. That was the first time someone thought that I might be Asian (that I know of, anyway).

We hit a wall of heat outside of the airport at 10:00pm. We took an air conditioned bus to the Victory Hotel. We finally got into our room around 11:30pm.

The room in the Victory West is nice, but we are waiting to be switched to a deluxe room with a sofa on Thursday. The breakfast buffet is quite extensive. It even had crispy bacon. I already blew a fuse in the room with my converter and surge protecter so the maintenance team already knows us. :)

Today (Sunday), we met with our Guide, Alexa, and toured the island. She pointed out all of the 'safe' places to eat, location of the 7-11s, parks, and stopped at Jennifer's to find out about laundry services for later in the week. We then walked around ourselves and stopped at Starbucks. We ate Thai for dinner at Cow and Bridge. It was an interesting experience trying to order with the language barrier. It is hard to know the protocol when ordering and paying. We learned it is okay to call over the waitress by waving furiously at them from the other customers. There were some interesting items on the menu like intestines, pigeon, and ostrich. I went safe and ordered pork fried rice. We are just resting this evening to get over our jet lag since we didn't get much sleep on the plane.

We meet at 2:00 pm tomorrow to get Alexis Qi at the civil affairs office!! Can't believe it!!!