A Day in Guangzhou

I didn't have time to blog last night as we had an early consulate appointment this morning, so I'm trying to play catch up!
On Saturday night, Milo woke up at 2:00 am with a fever. He was crying and did not feel well at all. We gave him infant's ibuprofen and held him close as he cried. Even though it was awful to see him in such pain, it was also very tender to hug and hold him and know that now he has a mom and dad to take care of him! If we had come a week later, he would be all alone in his pain. My gratitude for the new life we share together is sometimes overwhelming!
We had to be ready by 8:00 for a sightseeing appointment with our guide. Milo ate well and seemed happy and fine. We first went to the Chen Temple. This is not a religious temple, but a temple for a family clan to worship their ancestors. It is currently being used as a folk art museum, but the building itself is indescribably amazing! It is the most detailed and intricate architecture I think I've ever seen! Every surface was covered with carved wood or brick. It was so visually stunning!

The brick wall was even carved!

A small portion of the roofline. The entire roofline is carved with little figures like this!

 

The guardian of the temple

A dividing wall

A few from the courtyard of the interior

An artist doing some paintings using his hand as a brush. So cool!

This artwork is actually EMBROIDERED! All of the embroidery was mind boggling! So amazing and gorgeous!

More embroidery.

The next room we went in had carvings from ivory and bone. Since it's illegal to carve out of ivory now, these were all obviously done in the past. It is crazy cool how they can do this!!

A ship carved out of bone. So. Amazing.

A carved piece of bone with a family ball at the top. We love the family balls so much!!

This shows the steps to creating the family ball. The family ball is one solid piece of bone (in this case) that has layers carved into it. It has a dragon and phoenix on the outside symbolizing a man and woman or husand and wife and the balls on the inside represent the children and family. The man and woman are surrounding their family protecting them, and it's round to represent eternity. They will always be a family with the mom and dad protecting the kids <3 <3

 After the Chen Temple, we headed to the Buddhist Temple. This is called the Lotus Pagoda. It was originally built in 537 AD, then rebuilt in 1097 AD and has been standing since then. It's massive!

 



These three Buddhas represent the past, present, and future. They weigh 10 tons each and are made of solid bronze! Wow!

After we finished with our sightseeing, we took a stroll down a local shopping street. It was so, so, so crowded! I couldn't even believe the amount of people there!

We took Milo home for a nap, then headed out in the evening to Shamian Island. We loved it there and got a lot of shopping done!

Mr. Milo didn't eat very much Sunday. It was very stressful to me, but Quin reassured me everything would be okay. I had to keep reminding myself that my other kids didn't like to eat when they were sick, either. I know the ibuprofen and acetaminophen helped him all day, but I absolutely cannot wait to get this kid to a doctor and figure out what's going on in his little body!