Monday Night-Dinner and Tuesday- Six Banyan Temple, The Guangdong Folk Art Museum, and the Island

 Views from our hotel room.

The main entrance of the hotel is closed- they are making a new one.  We hear a lot of jack hammering throughout the day.

Last night we walked to Oggi's for dinner with 3 other families.  We had to wait to get an area big enough to fit us all, but it was so worth it!   We had a good time and enjoyed the good food.  Reid got to sit by his buddy, Mason.  I will never in my life forget the loud "Bao Sha Hao" call from Mason when he sees Reid....LOVE it!

TUESDAY

We got a Skype call from Rick at 6 a.m.that woke me up. It also woke Reid up a bit earlier than normal.  I think he'll go to bed good tonight!  Yesterday he took a nap and then ended up having trouble falling asleep.  The above picture is from breakfast this morning.  There is a waitress here who seems to really like Reid and she really likes him...didn't see that until today though.   I got a picture of Evan helping Reid cut his sausages- so cute. We met our group at 9 a.m. to head to the Six Banyan Temple, which is also called the Flower Pagoda.   It is a Buddhist temple.  I learned that Buddhism is really more of a philosophy or way of life rather than a religion.  It began in India and China and many other Asian countries have created their own version of Buddhism.  They don't believe in any killing, so they are vegetarians and they believe in doing good works.  It seems that bad choices can be wiped out by coming and praying at the temple.  

 The Buddha above is the happy Buddha. There are often flowers and fruits on the alter.

 The actual pagoda.  People are not allowed in it because some many once jumped out from it.

 There were a few of these things where people lit and burned incenses.

 One of the families in our group chose to have their daughter blessed by one of the Buddhist monks.

The above Buddha is a female Buddha and is very important, especially to many women.  She is considered sacred like the Virgin Mary is to many Catholics.

 You can buy many different types of incenses.

From there we went to the Guangdong Folk Art Museum.  It was beautiful!

 The guards at the entry way.

 The rooftops were amazing!

 The stone above was to protect the meeting room-keep evil spirits out.

These are ivory carvings.  Ivory is now out-lawed so no more carvings can be made.   They had some small ones for sale- they were a small fortune!

 Beautiful handi-work.

 Cantonese embroidery.

 This man was cutting these right in front of us.  We bought one animal for Lena and one for Reid based on the year of their birth.  2009= the ox and 2007 = the pig

 Furniture inside.

From there we dropped off one family at the Pearl Market since they didn't get anything there on our last visit.  The other family and our family went back to the island.  We had 30 minutes to go pick up the things we had ordered a few days ago from Michael's and to get a couple last minute things on our list. 

 More modeling- I told you...you can't miss that on the island.

In the car on the way back to the hotel, the boys were admiring little Sydney and she was just loving them too!  We had lunch in our room and have been hanging out since.  We are waiting for our visas to arrive this afternoon.  Then it will be time to say goodbye to Brian, Sara and their little one Leah.   I am regretting staying an extra day- just wishing I could get in the van with them and head to Hong Kong and fly out tomorrow too.  I played it safe though and we will be leaving with Mark, Rebecca, and Sydney for Hong Kong tomorrow at noon.  We will spend one night there and will fly out on Thursday morning.  I started packing up our clothes last night. Tonight we will go to dinner, likely with some of the families still here.  Then I will finish packing and Skype with the family again before having our last sleep here at the Garden in Guangzhou!