Thursday, September 6, 2007

Leaving for Guangzhou tomorrow...

 
Things are going SOOO well with Josiah! Let's see, it's been a while since I updated everyone. Yesterday, we went to the orphanage. We spent over 2 hours there. We were able to get a little information about Josiah's foster family. His foster dad is a boss at a construction company, and his mom stays home. They have one bio son, in second grade. They are quite well off apparently. The mom wanted to "give something back," and with her son being in school all day, she thought fostering would be a good way. Josiah was her second foster child. After telling us this, the head nanny said that the mom says she will not foster anymore because it is so hard to raise them and lose them. This made me start crying, and every time I think about it my heart just breaks for her. I wish so much we could have met her. I know it would be hard at the time but it would be healing for everyone (hopefully) as well, unless she would say, "Don't give my baby to those crazy old parents with all the kids!"

Yesterday we also visited a turquoise factory. Apparently, Hubei province is the only province in China that has turquoise. End of my knowledge on the subject. After that we visited the Yellow Crane Tower which I am not even going to try to explain. Suffice it to say it was a great place to go to look out over the city of Wuhan. I feel like my brain has been so stuffed with Chinese history this week that I can't remember any of it.

Today, we hit the museum for a bell concert which was pretty amazing. China has these huge bells that are over 2000 years old, and they made a replica of them (they don't play the real ones anymore, but the replica supposedly sounds exactly the same). Anyway, it was very enjoyable except for the army guy in front of us whose cellphone kept ringing. He would answer it in the middle of the concert and talk in a loud voice! Grrr...I asked our guide if this was socially acceptable and he said it was just as rude in China as it would be in the US.

Finally, we went to Eastlake Park which is a nice place to walk around. They have boats to look at or rent, lots of lotus flowers, etc.

Sightseeing finished, we headed off to Pizza Hut for lunch. Had a pizza called "Veggie" pizza but not quite the same as veggie pizza in the US. Ours had the typical tomato, green pepper, onion, etc. but also had corn and pineapple (!!) on it. It was pretty good!

The Knorrs wanted to buy a washing machine for the orphanage, and we wanted to buy some baby clothes for the orphanage, so next we went shopping. Actually, yesterday we tried to buy the washing machine without the presence of our Chinese speaking guide, and that was a complete laugh. It was as if the store (Carrefour- the French version of WalMart) didn't want to sell us one! They would tell us it was "no good", or it was the last one, or who knows what. So we finally gave up and decided to wait till today.

Now we are back in the hotel waiting for Eric to return with our papers from the Notary's office. Tomorrow we head to Guangzhou. There are so many things I didn't write about while we were here. We met families from Spain and Iceland. We've been stared at like a freak show everywhere we go. My efforts at buying snack foods at the Carrefour have been hilarious--I came home with coffee flavored Chips Ahoy cookies, onion flavored cookies, orange flavored Cheez Doodles, and spicy-pepper coated dried apricots. Yum yum yum!! And NOOOOOO, we don't normally eat that kind of food but we are kinda limited as to what is safe to munch on. I'd sure love a big salad and a pink lady apple right now!! Oh, I did find these wonderful little latte drinks there that come in cartons with straws like those Horizon chocolate milks they sell at Costco. They are so good!!!
Posted by Picasa

No comments: