Hello from Guangzhou!

So far, Guangzhou has been pretty uneventful, and honestly, I don't expect that to change. Let's sum up:

 

-Arrived Tuesday. Walked down the street with my coworkers for dinner at Lucy's, a restaurant that serves all sorts of food. Decent and cheap.

 

-Work on Wednesday, almost a full day. One of the folks here took us to a local Dim Sum place for lunch. Dim Sum is a local Cantonese food, and we were the only Westerners in the place. What is dim sum? Basically, think the Cantonese version of ravioli and other filled pastas - except with out the pasta and cheese (aka the yummy parts). We had some veggie filled things, others with pork, chicken, shrimp, etc. I was a little weary since I wasn't sure what was in them - we didn't pick from a menu because they just bring a cart around filled with little containers of dim sum, about 3 in each bowl - so I just made sure my coworkers ate each kind first, and then after I had their assurances it didn't have any sea food it it, I would try it. We also got two noodle dishes, both of which were pretty good. Dinner at Lucy's again that night.

 

-Thursday, October 1st. Went in to work for a few hours in the morning. Now, the first is National Day, and the first of 5 days of vacation for pretty much everyone in China, so the office was quiet. That does mean we are able to get our work done, without worrying about interfering with people's work. Left before lunch, and we walked around the island for a bit looking for an Italian restaurant. Couldn't find it, so we got a taxi and went back to the mall we were at the day before. There was a bbq place our coworker had pointed out to us the day before so we decided to check it out. It wasn't so much bbq as it was a buffet of unidentifiable meat dishes. I picked out some noodles that looked safe, and had a spring roll or two. 

 

After lunch, we wandered around the downtown area for a bit. There's a lot of shops there, and there were a lot of people out, so it was pretty crowded, and the weather is hotter than in Beijing. I headed back to the mall by myself for a bit, and wandered around the jewelry vendors, then found a cab to go back to the hotel. I was pretty tired by that point, and was having a nice caffiene-withdrawal headache, after one of the waitresses at breakfast filled my half finished cup of tea with coffee. The rest of the day was quiet, but it got pretty noisy as evening drew near. We had early assumed that there would be a firework display that night, and that our hotel would be a prime viewing spot. Of course, our rooms are on the other side of the hotel. I went downstairs at one point, to see about getting some dinner, and it was very crowded at that point. It seemed, by the noise, that there were about 50 people in each room on the otherside of the hotel, facing the river and presumably, the fireworks. A peek out my window later showed very crowded streets, and lots of noise. The fireworks went on for a while, and were very loud - being that this is China, I'm sure they were quite spectacular. 

 

That's about it so far. Almost lunch time, and most of our work here is done now. And we've got 3 more days in the office too. I'm really not happy with the poor planning of this trip, but there's nothing I can do about it. As great of an experience this is, I'd much rather get the work done, change my flights, and go home early. If there were actually something to do here, other than shop, maybe I wouldn't mind, but I'm really ready to go home.