When Lei woke up today she looked at Ray and I and said "Good morning," with the sweetest voice. We were so happy to hear that she was okay. We chose clothes and went to get breakfast in the hotel. This hotel doesn't have a great breakfast by anyone's standards, but it is okay and it is very convenient. I had a fried egg, watermelon, toast and hot tea. Lei chose congee, toast with jelly and some hot orange juice drink. She also got a cup of the hot drink and a bowl of congee for me. I tried them both. They were okay. The orange drink tasted a lot like warm Tang and the congee tasted like very watery, warm rice soup. We ate with the Martin family, which was nice, and then we met in the lobby to do the paperwork. We went to the same official looking room, turned in our family photos, and signed some papers. Each family stood up in the front of the room and took turns with a quick ceremony. It only took a minute or so for such an important event. At that point Lei became officially ours in the eyes of the Chinese law. We went from there to a place for Lei to get her passport picture taken. The place we went to was full and wouldn't do it, so we raced up the street to another place. Our guide ran us in and we got it done. Only Lei had her pictures taken because they had to be done according to where their orphanage was located. We asked our guide to find a bookstore for us, but neither he nor the driver could find one. After a little while we told him we would find it later and we went back to the hotel. Tatum's family was going to visit her orphanage and we had the rest of the day free. We spent the next two hours walking around looking for a book store. We really wanted to get Mandarin books for Lei and we also were trying to keep busy so she didn't get sad again. After a couple of hours, we returned empty handed. No one could help us find a book store. We met up with Joshua's family and went up to West Lake. They took a cab but we couldn't seem to find a free one. We wound riding in one of the go cart looking things that are powered by a moped. It holds two in the back so Lei sat on my lap. Not at all comfortable, but very fun. The driver didn't seem to know how to get there when we showed him the map, but he got us there and it was only about three dollars. We all got on a boat and headed across the lake.
It was an overcast day and a little cool, but nice. We got off the boat and walked around a little. There were a few stores to buy things like snacks and souveniers. We found a few things we liked and had fun. Lei chose a spinning top ($1.50) amd two pairs of silk pajamas ($7 each). We headed back across the lake and then got taxis back. Apparently Joshua's family had a bad taxi ride and weren't feeling well. We had actually been able to find a driver that knew where to go so we were feeling lucky. We all headed out to eat dinner. They brought us to a place that had great Chinese food. All six of us ate for $15 including drinks. It was a lot of food and it was really good. I think it was a beef and potato soup and something that tasted like orange chicken.
After dinner we headed back to the room. I told Lei that I thought she should take a shower and wash her hair. She was adament that she didn't want to wash her hair in the shower, she wanted to wash it in the sink. So I washed her hair in the sink. She has beautiful soft, thick hair. We got ready to go to bed. She played on the ipad a little while and then we all went to bed. I got up after she fell asleep to upload pictures on this blog, but I couldn't get it to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment