Wow! The days have been racing by. I have wanted to keep this blog updated, but the internet is painfully slow at our hotel and I am having a lot of trouble uploading pictures. Also, when we are in the room, Ray always wants to be on the computer for work. Since we only have one outlet, that means I am not able to get on it. I stayed up until 4 am the other night trying to catch up. We are leaving this afternoon to catch our flight to Guangzhou. We are all so excited to stay at a nicer hotel, have access to a pool, see the other families, be a step closer to going home...many reasons. This is a great experience, but it is a lot of hanging out at the hotel. And we try to get out A LOT. Zhao Lei gets tired of walking around after awhile, so we have been spending some time in the room the last couple to days relazing. Here is an update of what we did each of the days. If I don't write it down I will forget it.
Monday afternoon-after we saw Lei's orphanage and school we drove to another child's orphanage. He and his famliy went to Guangzhou already because he has a heart condition and needs to get to the US for medical care. We convinced our guide to let us come in the orphanage with him and take pictures and video for his family. They only let us into the lobby of the orphanage, but did call his caregiver who let us take pictures and a short video of her. It is a really nice orphanage and the people there seemed very nice. After we got back to the hotel we saw Tatum's family. We all walked aound and eventually finally found a big book store. Yeah! Lei refused to chose books for us to buy, so I had to guess what she would like to read. I had heard to stock up on books because the selection is much more limited and expensive back in the US. She did let us buy (after a long time of prompting) a little English learning system. It consists of a little pen and books. You run the pen across the books and it will say a word or phrase in Mandarin and then in English. We also bought a few other books to go with it. She finally said yes to a few books we chose for her and about five DVD videos. The videos were about $7 US dollars each. All Disn*y movies that do not look pirated since they come with Disn*y advertisements in the box and the voices sound right. Only one in six of them will not work, so we are exchanging it. She pulled me away from the videos and books and wanted to leave, or I would have bought more. I know that she will want to watch them over and over again when we get home. We wound up gong back the next day and buying a few more movies and Ray is there now seeing if we missed any we should get. It costs $2 in a taxi to get there, but he is walking. I wanted to update this blog and Zhao Lei is watching one of the movies right now. Money well spent. I took a picture of the address and will put it up if anyone else goes to Hangzhou and wants to know where the store is. We came home from the store and watched a movie Wednesday night (Tangl*d) and then went to bed.
Thursday-We were supposed to go to see West Lake with Michael and the Elliott family. We got up, ate at the hotel resteraunt and skyp*d our family. It was nice. The kids were happy to see us and us to see them. Brookelyn gave us air hugs, which was cute. I am sure my mom and Colton would like us to come home now and releive them of the child care responsiblities. When we went down to meet the others to go on the tour, we found out the Thursday was no car day so we were postponing it to Friday. No cars except for taxis, buses and other public transportation were allowed to be on the road. We walked around the area by our hotel and had lunch at a Subw*y before it was time for Tatum's nap so they went back to the hotel. We walked to the bookstore again (our second trip) and bought the movies. Lei told us she was tired and wanted to go back to the hotel, so we took a taxi back. Best $2 ever spent. Lei put on her pajamas right away and watched three movies in a row. It was really nice. She watched the movies on my computer (our DVD played will not play in Mandarin, only European languages). I read a book on my ip*d. Our beds are kind of hard, but still comfortable. We met up with the Elliotts for dinner. We walked up to a Japanese resteraunt Todd had seen. I didn't love the food, but we had fun and it was a nice change from the food court upstairs at the mall. When I say foodcourt, it isn't like the ones back in the US. There aren't fast food places, but there are many choices of small resteraunts or stands with good tasting, healthy food. We walked home afterwards and got ready for bed. I asked Lei if she wanted to take a bath. I don't think she had taken one before and asked me (gestures) if I took a bath or a shower. I told her both. She seemed nervous about the bath, but got in the tub (with her cr*cs on). I put in some liquid bath soap that made bubbles. She seemed really surprised about the bubbles so I put in more, which she really liked. She wanted to wach her hair in the sink again, but then said we could wash it in the tub. I know she was nervous about that but did great. I made sure not to get any in her eyes. She asked me to wash her back. Sweet. Zhao Lei watched part of a movie before bed.
Today we got up and went up for breakfast. I always eat a friend egg, toast and tea. Zhao Lei gets different things every day, congee, rice, eggs, toast and Ray usually gets eggs. We headed over to West Lake with the Elliotts and Michael. It was very pretty and peaceful there. It has been overcast and cool since we arrived in Hangzhou, which is great since we heard it was very hot until the day before we arrived. After we walked around for a couple of hours we headed back to the hotel. Zhao Lie watched a movie, I got on the computer, Dianne and Tatum took a nap and Ray and Todd went to buy a sweatshirt we wanted and to try to buy more movies at the bookstore (one of the pictures has the address if you are in Hangzhou). As soon as the movie was over, Zhao Lei said,"Mother, let's go!" She started packing up her things and was clearly excited about going. I don't know if it was to try something new, to ride on a plane, because the new hotel had a pool...but we could not go quickly enough for her. She paced up and down the hall until it was time to go.
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