Back to Guangzhou

So it's been forever since I updated this.... 

March 22- 23 we took a two day trip to Guangzhou over the weekend. The main reason was because there was a District conference for church on Sunday and we took advantage of the opportunity to do some wedding dress shopping with Abby (since she's pretty much engaged).

So Saturday morning 7 of us took a train into Guangzhou and found our hostel. It was NOT the same one as last time and the couple that ran it were very sweet. The wife even offered Abby some dress-buying advice. 

View from the hostel window. Notice the smog?

Then we headed out to find the stores. 

The reason for shopping in Guangzhou is because there's a street known for having 99 wedding dress stores. We found the right metro stop, but after that the directions were a little vague. After asking several people for directions, someone eventually pulled up a picture of a wedding dress on their phone and we started showing that to people. When we got close, a nice girl walked with us the rest of the way to make sure we got their ok. 

While I'm not sure there were 99 stores, there was in fact a lot of dress stores in a small area. Abby tried on a few different dresses and looked gorgeous.

Interesting fact, most of the stores had thick carpet (borderline shag) and you were supposed to take off your shoes and put on house slippers before going in the store. It was not the best day to decide to wear my Converse high tops...

That night we ate some yummy street noodles and on the way home Chrissy, Lindsey and I came across a cool park that still had a bunch of lanterns up. So we wandered through it, found a place to eat, and took some pictures.

The next day we made our way to the Ramada Hotel where the District conference was held and we met up with the rest of our group and the other ILP teachers who came up by bus. We finally met the Branch presidency in person, along with the District presidency. After the main meeting, they held a young adult fireside at one of the member's home and they provided lunch. We had chili with real cheese, bread with home made jam, and ice cream for dessert. We were all in heaven.

Once all of the meetings were over we all got in the bus (including one of the ILP directors who had come up for mid-semester check ups) and went home.

Night view from the hostel