Friday morning Kiki came to tutor me and we worked on some practical words like: north, south, east,west, up, down, left,right, stomachache, headache, and hospital. She told me that I have improved so much since the first day. We also talked about how when she came the first day she was so surprised that Nadia was Chinese. The school had told her we had a baby and that’s why I needed a private tutor, but not that she was adopted. She said that she went home and told her husband that she was so moved that we came to China and to adopt one of the abandoned babies. It was a very sweet conversation and she obviously just loves Nadia to pieces.
In the afternoon Lily from the school (who went with us to the foster home) took us to a shopping mall that the Chinese go to. The place was GIANT and we were the only foreigners in the whole place. People were going crazy looking at us with Nadia. We became the tourist attraction again. While I was picking out some gifts a girl was talking to Mike and seemed confused by how Nadia could be our baby and be from Jiangxi. I think that the mall was 6 levels and Lily said that it was like an outlet mall would be in America. Except at these little stalls you could bargain! Level one was all jewelry and other gift items, level 2 was all purses, level 3 was toys and household items, level 4 was hair holders (you have never seen so many in your life – Jess P. you could spend a whole day on that floor), level 5 was clothes and we didn’t go to level six. Instead we went out to the other building to look for shoes for Nadia. Yes, the other building for this shopping center.
So how did I do bargaining? I didn’t! Lily set up our attack plan. 1) Walk through looking at everything and decide on the things you would like. 2) Come back to the stalls you like best and show her what I wanted. 3) She would grab or point to the items and bargain for me. 4) Mike and I step away and as she said, “Don’t look at me. 5) I pay once we all agree on the price. It worked out very nicely and I was so excited!!! It was thrilling shopping for me since I am such a deal hunter at home.
We got Nadia some tiny underwear for when we start potty training. This was a suggestion from other adoptive parents who had a hard time finding tiny underwear for their small Chinese girls. And with how petite Nadia is, it seemed like a good idea. At that stall they had really cute jammies too, but every time I asked about a pair we liked they kept directing me back to these pink ones with whales on them. I said no and pointed to the ones we liked and they kept coming back to the whale ones. So I gave up and just paid for the underwear.
Then we went looking for shoes. I liked the stuff at the first stall and Lily asked the girl the price of some and then I said I wanted to look at the other stalls. After we walked away the girl offered Lily a cheaper price. Hee hee. We got Nadia 4 more pairs in various sizes at that girls stall. She had the best styles anyway, so it worked out for us. Then of course Nadia wanted to put a pair on right then. She wanted the same pair on this morning with her jammies which just cracks me up. (Once again I didn’t see any squeaky shoes Kathy P.)
I also had a goal of getting some of the adorable hair holders that we have seen on Chinese girls here. So we went back up to the hair-holder floor and let Lily loose on the 2 stalls where I liked stuff the best. Some of the hair holders I got for myself cost about $10 each in the US (which is a rip off in my opinion that’s why I don’t buy them) and we ended up with a bag full from the 2 stalls combined. We also got a whole bunch of gifts for people back home. I had such a great time shopping and Lily was a great bargainer. We are still going to the Silk Market at some point this week and then I will be on my own for bargaining, but I am ready.
Click on the photo above to see the photos that we took. Once we were home, Nadia wanted to go through the bags with me and see all the stuff we bought.
Something funny that I noticed while Lily was bargaining was that the stall owners would point to me and say something. Then Lily would wave her hand back and forth and from the little I could understand, she would say, “Don’t worry about her, this is not about her.” I think that’s kind of what was going on. She said that they were trying to get me to pay more and she was saying no. Multiple times she would come back and say, “How many do you want to buy?” and the price would go down again. At one store as I kept picking out more items Lily was bargaining as we went and talked them down again because I got so many of one item. I was feeling good about the original price, so that was even more fun to watch her wheeling and dealing.
Nadia was so good during all the shopping and we had her skip her afternoon nap. So she passed out taking her bottle at 7 pm. We wanted her to skip her nap because we are going to do the sleep experiment in reverse for the return home. Each day for the next week we are all going to go to sleep early and wake up early. It worked so well for us on the way out that we are going to try it for the return home. I will also be taking the No Jet Lag pills to see if that helps too. I felt like a bus ran over me the whole first week we were home last time and I don’t want to go through that again. After Nadia went to sleep I ran down to get us some take out for dinner. The elevator operator asked me in Chinese where my baby was. I responded that my baby was sleeping in Chinese and didn’t even think about it. That was a very exciting moment for me when I got back to the apartment and realized that it was the first time on the trip that I have been able to respond without translating it in my head first. WOO HOO!!