Last blog from China: Temple, Folk Art, I Fall to Pieces
Wow! Can't believe we made it to our last day in China! 15 days later and we are packed up to go home. We'll be getting up at 5:30 to get on our bus at 6:30 to head to Hong Kong! Chicago to Beijing, Beijing to Changsha, Changsha to Guangzhou, Guangzhou to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to HOME!
Things I am looking forward to: My Family, an ice cold Diet Coke, candy, my own bed, my Sonicare toothbrush (I was afraid it would start vibrating in the suitcase), a chocolate chip cookie, eating in my own house instead of taking a 4 year old to a restaurant 2 or 3 times a day : )
We started our day today with the usual breakfast and theft of extra fruit to last Miss J through the day. Then we met our guide and picked up another mom and her newly adopted son - the van door opened, she looked at me and asked if I had a blog, then named it! We adoption bloggers stalk each other as we find our dates are close together : ) It was great to meet some of the "Wild Rice House" and Alexander is adorable! We visited a temple - beautiful, very old, and from a different sect/branch of Buddhism than the Lama temple we visited in Beijing. The temple was originally built over 2000 years ago! Amazing. From there we went to the Guangzhou Folk Art Museum, which features gorgeous carvings. Apparently, you can carve anything from ivory, jade, coconuts, bone, etc! We stayed as long as the kids could really tolerate the heat, and what had to be boredom to them. June, enjoying one of the many fruits of her day, chomped an apple as we explored the museum.
Lunch brought us to Pizza Hut - don't remember the last time I had Pizza Hut ( I mean, we live in Chicago, seriously)...but it was a very close approximation to what I remember - possibly less sauce than at home. We successfully enjoyed some iced tea...a success which was not repeated at dinner time. We asked the guide to reccomend a place for spicy Chinese food, and we were led to Concubine - close to our hotel. Spicy it was, and my spicy Hunan girl loved it!!!! Our food was great, cheap, and spicy - Hunan style cuisine. We ordered iced tea with lemon, something we have had often here - and is always good. At this restaurant, however, we weren't doing a good job of communicating our desire for ice. With the intense heat of the food, it was really hard to recover with hot tea to drink. I had ordered water for June. Out arrived a steaming-hot glass (there are apparently no such things as child cups at restaurants - they must be storing them with the napkins) of water. I asked again for ice....the very nice waiter brought a glass of ice and added one cube to June's water...crazy.
Upon entering the hotel, there was some pretty loud music. While waiting at the front desk, I realized that the Chinese karaoke I was hearing was Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces" - which is a super weird thing to hear being sung in Chinese, by a man, no less. We wrapped up the night with a stop for ice cream at McDonalds, a quick bath for June, and a sweep of the room to be sure we aren't forgetting anything!
This has been an incredible trip and it has really been an experience to spend this time in China. Hope to come back some day when the girls are grown up! Can't wait to update next from HOME and let everyone know how this kiddo is adjusting to her daddy, sisters, and home "routine" - hah! I look forward to reading all the comments on the blog that I haven't been able to see during this trip. And I look forward to catching up with the other bloggers, RQers, to hear about their trips.
My final thought from China - if you've been thinking about adopting "someday", DO IT! Research the options and see if it is right for your family. In China alone, there are 2000 kids on the waiting child list (certainly this does represent all of the kids in SWI's, just those on the list) - many of them with minor or corrected special needs - boys, girls, younger kids, older kids...all kids who need families, and all kids who have already been waiting too long.