Eating

Here is how you do adventurous eating here if you don't speak mandarin.

 

Learn a few phrases in mandarin, none of which include the name of foods.

After a very long nap, bundle up and head out the door.  We passed a Korean BBQ a couple days ago and we wanted to eat there.
Walk and walk and then realize you must not be on the right street.

Give up and head into a noodle house.

Get overwhelmed by the rude citizens and lack of any knowledge, give up and leave.

Decide to keep looking for the Korean BBQ.

Start walking back towards the hotel and realize you have walked a long way.

Head down embassy road because there it is bright with lights and looks very active.

Find bar after bar after bar and realize it's not exactly the best place for food- and a 7 year old.

See a Subway restaurant and squeal with glee.

Sit among many other westerners enjoying a roast beef sandwich and Lay's potato chips.

 

Yep, that's how we do it.

 

But, we did head down into the subway station with the map and figure out how to get to places we want to visit over the next few days.  We are having Peking duck, the specialty here and also going to the zoo. 

 

Here is a few more mandarin words and phrases we've learned.

boo-how: not nice
boo-sure: no

sure: yes

zigh-gee-en: good-bye

chung-jur: orange juice

wah-wah: baby

many colors

how hightz za: good girl

mama: mom

baba: dad

choc a lee: chocolate

 

There are quite a few others; we're learning fast.  Claire is learning several English words as well.  We kind of teach each other.  She loves to tell daddy to "open the door" when he locks the bathroom door.

She does not like us drinking Coke.  When we bought a couple more cokes at the store today she gave us quite the scolding in mandarin.  It's very hard not to laugh. 

Her phrase for today is "mama yo baba, baba yo mama"  I can't wait to find out what she's saying when we see our guide tomorrow.  We're fairly certain she told the lady at Subway tonight "this is my mama and baba."  The lady looked at us and then gave her a weird look.  Who knows, she could have said these people are crazy and think they are my mom and dad.

 

We start trying to get the adoption decree tomorrow at 10.  I'm not real thrilled with the international news right now dealing our country and this one.  We are seriously at their mercy right now.  I will let you all know tomorrow.

Sunday

Finally, a day to rest.

We all needed this day to just hang out and do nothing. We were exhausted after the last 3 days so I can't imagine how tired Claire was. We slept in and talked with the kids at home over webcam for a long time before having a late breakfast.

We went to the shopping mall next door and bought Claire new shoes. They cost WAY too much being that we're in the country that most things are made in. But, the shoes that Claire came to us were worn out and I feel bad that we didn't get her new shoes before the last two days of touring. We didn't realize how little padding her shoes had in the bottom.  She told our guide over the phone later today that she likes her new shoes.  She said her old ones were too small and that is why her feet hurt but the new ones are bigger and feel better.  That makes the price totally worth it.

Today is the first day Claire has actually gotten a nap. It is normal in this culture to take a nap every day after lunch; they even base their business schedules around nap time. We noticed her getting tired around 12 so we grabbed some lunch from next door and then laid down. She has now been asleep for 2.5 hours. Part of me says she needs it so we need to let her sleep but the mom in me says her little feisty self is going to be up all night now.

Tid-bits from family day that I was too tired to write out.

I was surprised to hear we would be going to the orphanage to receive Claire because they have not allowed visitors for almost a year. I really thought we'd get here and learn that we weren't' actually able to go to the orphanage and receive her in our hotel instead but that didn't happen.

The ride to her orphanage was very eye-opening. We saw parts of the city that I wasn't expecting. I've seen pictures of the orphanage before our trip and it looked very nice so I guess I expected the area around it to be nice or OK but it wasn't. There was trash piled everywhere and the make-shift buildings that the people lived in was very humbling.

When we got to the orphanage the guard did not want to let us in. Our guide had to call the person inside the orphanage and then transfer the phone to the guard who then let us in. But before opening the gate he had to scan all of us for our temperature; thank goodness none of us were running a fever!

We only saw the lobby of the orphanage but it was huge, beautiful and spotless. We did not see or hear any other children. We gave the worker the big bag of mittens and hats and our guide explained what it was. The orphanage worker was very confused but I think she understood after a little bit.

Later that afternoon we went to the civil affairs office to formally adopt Claire and register the adoption. In most other provinces you get the adoption decree about 30 minutes but here they make you wait and won't tell you when it will be ready. We found out yesterday that the worker was quite rude with out guide and said he would call when it was ready. The passport needs to be applied for on Monday to be ready on Friday so the passport isn't what holds up the adoption in this city- it is the adoption decree being ready.

A few things we've learned about here:

Back in the 1940's the leaders thought the bigger the population, the more power a country had so they encouraged couples to have more children. The more children you had the more privileges you were given. But then the population exploded and in the late 70's they instituted the one child policy. It's been changed a bit since then but right now it is:
Live in the city you get 1 child.
Live in the rural area and your first child is a girl you can try again in 8 years. Even if the second child is a girl, you are done.
Farmers who have a girl first may try again in 5 years but still, two is all you get.
Minority group are allowed to have more children, I think it was up to 3 without any penalty.

Tomorrow (Monday) we are going back to the civil affairs office with our guide to pick up the adoption decree. We don't know if it is ready but our guide said we just need to go there in person and basically tell them we need it. Yea, I'm real comfortable with that. Hopefully it will be done and we can then go to the notary and apply for Claire's passport. I think we're going to ask our guide to take us to the zoo a day before we leave. We had a one guide the first two days we were here and then our newer guide took over. They have both been great but our newer guide is willing to do anything for us; even offered to take us to find cheaper shoes and drop off our laundry by her apartment. She will be with our group in Guangzhou as well so we really lucked out!

Summer Palace.jpg

Click here to view these pictures larger

Day 4, Great Wall

I promise to write more tomorrow.  We were gone touring from 9am to 6:30pm.  To say we are exhausted is an understatement.  But tomorrow is a free day and we are planning on staying here at the hotel and basically doing nothing.  Claire held up the entire day but then got sick on the last bus ride.  She told our guide"I didn't take my medicine.  I don't like the medicine but I need it."  We won't skip the Dramamine again.

 

So, here was the abbreviated version of our day.

Leave hotel and visit:

1. A jade factory. It was awesome and I wish I had tons of money because I would have bought everyone a jade bangle bracelet.  I'm not a huge bangle bracelet fan but these were really nice.  Did you know jade came in many different colors including purple?

2. Visit the Great Wall. (chung chum) 
I am a wuss and crapped out only part way up to the first watch tower.  J continued up the wall to 3rd watch tower and took videos and pictures for all of you.  He's going to be so sore tomorrow that we'll have no option but to stay here at the hotel.

3. Eat at a traditional Chinese restaurant with our group (4 families).  This was actually a lot of fun.  We were at a big round table with a lazy susan in the middle.  They just kept bringing Chinese food and nobody knew what it was.  I'm fairly certain I ate octopus tentacles today; the flavor was great but none of us knew exactly what it was.  We did not ask; some things are better left unsaid. 
4. Visit a cloisonne factory.  These are the very bright, porcelain looking vases, plates, etc.  We learned these are actually copper.  Again, beautiful pieces but somewhat expensive and we don't know how to get them back without breaking.

5. Visit the Summer Palace.

Another amazing, huge place for the emperors of China.  This is where they spent their time in the summer when they left the Forbidden City.  The empress and the emperor's mother stayed here more during the summer.

6. McDonalds.  Adventurous lunch, not so much for dinner and, we were exhausted.

 

Claire is starting to really test some limits.  It's very hard to establish discipline when she doesn't understand us.  She is particularly feisty and downright not nice to daddy.  She thinks it's funny and we played along for the first day but we see trouble ahead so we learned the phrase today for "not nice"- boo how.  No is "boo shur" so we got in some good practice today with that.  She responds well to no but I know we will have our first confrontation soon.

 

Row Your Boat

This is Claire's version of Row, Row Your Boat in Chinese

Forbidden City

Click here to view these pictures larger

Day 3, Forbidden City

Wow, one bit of advice for people coming to visit this country.
Actually start your diet and exercise your leg muscles- a lot.

 

Oh my goodness, one walk through the Forbidden City and one near face-plant saved by ringing myself around a tree and my legs feel like jello and I know they will feel 100 times worse tomorrow morning.  We are starting at 9 am tomorrow with a visit to the Great Wall and we joked on our way back that we'll step on the Great Wall, take lots of pictures and then get back in the bus.  We're definitely out of shape and feeling the effects of "fat America" syndrome.

 

The Forbidden City was impossible to imagine without actually visiting.  We looked at the satellite image on Google and commented on how big it looked but wow, it is amazingly huge.  And we were told that they did not use one nail in the entire thing because they were worried the nails would break in an earthquake.  YaYa knew exactly where we were when we drove in front of the gate.  She jumped up to the window and let out a long spiel in mandarin.  Our guide told us she knew what it was and read the mandarin on the front- Long live and prosper China.

 

We walked around Tiananmen Square and took Claire's picture with the national flag.  It is raised every day at sunrise and lowered at sunset.  It was her first time on daddy's shoulders and she did not like it--- at all. 

 

We learned that there were 24 emperors who lived in the Forbidden City, the last one in the very early 1900's, maybe 1904?  It was a lot of info in one day and exhaustion is making me lose some details.

 

After the Forbidden City we toured the Olympic village.  Claire loved looking at the stadiums and said she saw them on TV.  She particularly liked the Water Cube.

 

After all that we went to an acrobat show.  While it was amazing what the performers were able to do, I think we had mentally shut down and just wanted to go.  But, Claire loved it and watched very intently.

 

Other tid-bits from our day-
This little girl can eat.  I'm not sure where she puts it all but she eats more than I thought she would.

She may be tiny but she is deceptively heavy.  She wants to be carried often but she doesn't know to be carried.  Other children will straddle your hip, distributing their weight and making it easier to carry them.  She doesn't know how to do that; almost like she's never been carried.  So when you pick her up it is like carrying dead weight.

We took her swimming today before going on the tour.  She liked swimming and we were in awe with the amount of trust she placed in us.  She wanted to be carried around the pool and would just lay back in our arms and let us support her.

 

Learning mandarin at home was next to impossible but in two short days I have learned quite a few words and

phrases.
wah I nee: I love you
lay: tired
now now ma: do you need to use the bathroom?
ty how la: wonderful
jum pow: wonderful/great
dway boo chee: I'm sorry/ excuse me
shay-a shay-a: thank you
boo yaw: I do not want (we used this a lot today with the street peddlers)

shway: water
Several others but that mental exhaustion thing is setting in again.

 

When I said wah I nee to her this morning she looked right at me, paused and said I love you.  Wow, just wow.

 

I'm uploading a sneak peak of the photos from today.  We took a ton; I think enough to fill the card.