Buddhist Blessings

We took off pretty early this morning to go to the Buddhist temple to get the babies in our group blessed. When we got there there was a ceremony already in progress so we had to wait a while for it to finish. It was so peaceful to just walk around the grounds and listen to the monks chant in the background. When it was our turn we were allowed to enter the temple. We had to take off our shoes and kneel down. The monk chanted for a few minutes and then walked around and sprinkled water on all of the babies' and parents' heads. It was definitely a spiritual and moving experience.









After the blessing we went to another jade store for some more shopping. Jen was able to find a jade pendant for herself and one for Grace. When we returned to the hotel we had to finish up a bit of paperwork and then we were off on another adventure. Jen realized after our flight from hell the other night that she had lost her glasses somewhere in the plane. Jen is pretty much blind without her glasses so we really needed to do something about it. We figured there is probably not much of a chance of finding them so our guides suggested taking a taxi to the eyeglasses market to get some new ones. In Guangzhou there seems to be entire streets dedicated to selling certain things. We saw an electronics markets and we wandered through a hardware market. So we made our way in and found ourselves on a street with hundreds of eyeglasses stores. We were pretty quickly able to find a store where someone spoke English and Jen was able to order herself a new pair of glasses pretty inexpensively. We have to head back in tomorrow to pick them up. The only problem we had is it was so busy in the area that we had a hard time getting a cab to bring us back to the hotel. But we did have fun wandering around and being stared at by people wondering what a white couple with and Asian baby was doing there.

When we got back from the eyeglasses excursion we were able to get a bunch more shopping done. We are trying to find a gift for Grace for each of her birthdays until she turns 18 so we have a bit of shopping left to do. Tomorrow we have a little more shopping planned and a dinner cruise on the Pearl River.

Grace was so good today as we dragged her around shopping and through the markets but I think we may be in for a rough night tonight, Grace has a cold and has woken up a few times already and it is after midnight.

A couple pics from our excursion and of Grace from today.