A Stranger in the Park 11/10/2004

November 10, 2004

Today was another easy breezy day. We had breakfast and Katrina ate her own buffet of steamed egg, congee and watermelon. We dressed her in a long sleeved outfit and added a blue hooded sweater for our trip to the park. It was grey, damp and overcast and since she already had a cold, we did not want it to get any worse.

We walked a few blocks to Teng We Temple. There was a beautiful park that you had to walk through to get to the temple. We sat down to have a drink of tea. People walked by and admired Katrina. An older women was quite taken with Katrina and us. She seemed to really want to know what we were doing there.

I had purchased vocabulary cards http://www.chinaconnectiononline.com/vocabcd.htm that had phrases on it written in Mandarin & pinyin. One said:

"We come to China to adopt a little Chinese girl. We will always love her and will teach her about beautiful China."

I took this card and handed it to the old woman. She read it carefully and when she finished she looked up, grinned from ear to ear and gave us a huge thumbs up! It was the one of the fondest moments that I have from China. This woman was so happy for us and our baby. You could tell that she thought adoption was a great idea.

It seemed as if we walked up a billion stairs today carrying Katrina in the stroller. We went to the 6th floor of the temple to watch a traditional song and dance performance by Chinese people in ancient costumes. Then we had to walk all the way down those billions of stairs.

We stopped at a little Chinese bodega and purchased diet coke, soup noodles and potato chips which is going to be our dinner tonight. We decided to eat dinner in our room since we are now all have colds.

As for lunch, our guide ordered all of us Pizza Hut pizza. We ordered a veggie pizza and it had pineapple on it. Yuck! Even so, the pizza was still good because it reminded us of home, which seemed so far away.

Exploring Beijing

November 5, 2004

So much for taking it easy! We met up with two more adoptive familes. As a group of 9 adults and one five-year-old, we rented a bus and a driver from the hotel to take us to the Summer Palace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace . The bus only cost us $10 a person, so it was quite a bargain. I felt better about traveling in a group. Most of the other families would be arriving throughout the day. Today was technically a free day and tomorrow was a scheduled tour of the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China.

The Summer Palace was teeming with tourists, mostly Chinese. As soon as we got off the bus, we were greeted with "Hello guys." "Hello, want to buy postcards?" and they were in our faces. After we got past these people we were beset by people wanting to be our tour guide. We politely but firmly said no.

I had my first experience with a squat toilet also known as squatty potty. Basically it is a hole in the ground. You are supposed to straddle it, squat and go. Well, I kind of cheated as I was afraid I would pee on myself. I took one leg out of my pants and underwear, squatted and peed. As I squatted, my sunglasses fell off of my shirt neckline and flew under the door. I hear a chattering of laughter. When I came out an older woman was cleaning the floor. She was laughing and pointing to the glasses. I laughed too and picked them up.

We walked up thousands of stairs and then walked down a thousand stairs. Lots of walking here and it was nice to get back on the bus and go to the hotel. We all planned to meet for dinner later this evening.