Anticipation... (excited and nervous)

So what exactly am I heading into??

While I'm far from a seasoned traveler, I have been overseas a couple of times.  One week-long trip to the Netherlands for work a decade ago, a couple-month tour of the east Texas oil area back in the 90s (if you don't think Texas is another country, you've never lived there as a NJ expat), a few short business trips to different places (England, Canada), and I think I was in Mexico for a day when I was 2 years old.  My most extensive travel experience was a recent pilgrimage Northern England with a dozen teenagers a couple of years ago.

Around the USA, I love exploring new places, generally as part of a business trip, or maybe a family vacation years ago.  But recently most of my vacation time was spent in a more quiet reflection at a nearby monastery and I haven't really ventured out since the pilgrimage. 

So when Vicky extended the invitation to accompany her on her upcoming vacation, I decided to jump on it and accepted.  I quickly realized, however, that my concept of "China" needed some updating.  I had always pictured it as a quiet rural place something like this...

... for some reason China always seemed in my head to include a covered boat and some mountains.  I knew they had decent-sized cities, but I guess I always pictured them as more of a soviet-style place full of nondescript concrete boxes.

This past weekend I showed Vicky how to access Google Earth and together, we found her community.  I now realize I'm heading into...

... a development!

After landing in Hong Kong, we're heading into Guangzhou to a community where a lot of the professional class lives.  Looking at the satellite, I found this.

You can see multi lane highways, apartment towers, clubhouses, swimming pools, shopping districts.  So far everything seems normal, and since Panoramino lets you see some scenes on the ground, I found this.

These are a couple of residential towers in the neighborhood where we'll be staying.  The first thing I noticed was that they appear to be quite modern, seem to be well-landscaped and that landscape seems tropical.  So I looked up the latitude of Guangzhou and it is around 23 degrees north - about the same as that of Havana, Cuba.  In our travels we'll get as far north as 31 degrees or about that of the northern part of Florida.  So in August, I guess we'll be warm.

So Vicky assures me that we'll have modern conveniences with western style amenities - especially toilets (whew).  We'll save the tour of rural China for another trip. 

So that leaves the last thing I'm worried about - the food.  I've read somewhere that the people from southern China will literally eat anything.  Since meeting Vicky I've eaten some "worm grass" soup (made from mummified caterpillars who's bodies were invaded by fungus), and Chicken feet (not legs, FEET!) where I learned I have a bit of a gag reflex that I need to work on controlling.

To be fair, all the food has tasted good... it's the texture that sometimes gets to me.

So to sum it all up, I'm ready to have some misconceptions shattered.  Given the places we're visiting, I'm sure we'll get to see some traditional China scenery, but I'll also learn lots about what the country is like today.  For that, I'm excited.

But yes, the food makes me nervous...