Author: Louanne

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!!

We had a lot of fun today, but I am too tired to post about it with any clarity. Tomorrow there will be 2 posts for your reading enjoyment. Have a great Friday everyone!

Kiki came for my tutoring today and we talked again about how totally SILLY the dialogues and stuff are in the text book. Here’s an example of the insanity. In lesson 3 (which is just past saying Hello and how are you?) you are supposed to learn the word for ‘reporter’, that’s right, reporter. Now in lesson 11 I just learned the terms for all the types of money and what they look like. The people using this textbook are supposed to be LIVING in China. Don’t you think knowing about money would come a whole lot sooner than learning the word for reporter? It’s just too funny.

Kiki brought Nadia a bunch of Chinese children’s DVDs as a gift. She also brought her some year of the dog business card sized calendars for Nadia that are too cute. For me she brought a book of her grandfather’s paintings that have been turned into postcards. What a gift!!!! I will treasure them. She told me last week that she misses him very much. They are really beautiful paintings of fish. That is what I will be doing in Week 4 of class and Jenny told me they are hard and now that I have looked at these, I can see why.

Several days ago Kiki and Jing invited us to dinner at their house tonight. I was very excited and so was Kiki – she’s been talking with me about it all week. We wanted to take something for a hostess gift and I was told that a dessert or fruit would be good, but nothing was expected. We decided to give them 4 Wonderbars (made in Texas) and I went to the pastry shop to get a cake. These cakes are so beautiful that it was really hard to decide on one!

We headed over to their apartment by bus, and let me tell you, that was an adventure in itself at rush hour. Kiki told us what bus to get on and what stop to take – thank goodness she wrote that down. We got on the bus. Here is how they work in Beijing. A) you have a driver. His job is to drive as fast as possible, stop for 3 seconds to let people on, and honk the horn really loud at the pedestrians and bicycles. B) you have a woman in the middle of the bus next to the back door who collects the money from the people who don’t have passes. She collects this after the bus is moving…none of that while on the 3 second stop.

Now I went through this once this week with Kiki in the middle of the week to go to the Tea House. Except for getting on and off in a hurry, it was a mellow event. Tonight we had as Mike said, “The Little Dictator looking out over her domain.” We got on the bus, she saw Mike with Nadia in the carrier and starts yelling at this guy to give up his seat. She then tells Mike to SIT! I give her the money and she asks where we are going. I show her the paper. She nods and gives me the tickets. Next stop. A seat opens up, so I take it. About 600 people jam onto the bus at this point. 7 get off. Next stop another 300 people get on, but at least 100 get off so it’s practically roomy inside. All the while I am trying to protect the cake! As we are getting close to the stop the lady tells Mike to get up!! And me to get up!! And she tells this other girl to take my seat and get out of the way. Then another person takes Mike’s seat. All right…..I am psyching myself out….we only have 2.5 seconds to push our way to the door and get off before the crazy bus driver takes off honking down the road. Oh yeah, don’t drop the cake! As we are standing up – jammed with all the people I say, “Oh the humanity!!!” The bus stops….we jam our way out and off the bus. I am laughing at this point because the whole thing was so crazy. If I could have got the camera out it would have been an awesome shot to see my view looking to the back of the bus. But sadly the sardine can didn’t allow me to get to the contents of my backpack.

Now we got to Kiki’s house and they were waiting for us in the courtyard area and took us up to their apartment. It was bigger than the one we are in and decorated very nicely. It was the same style though…a long rectangle with the rooms all branching off one area. Tiny, tiny kitchen. Bathroom with no shower curtain (why I ask you? why?) But, if I moved to China, their place is how I could see our apartment being. The place we are in now is just a rental, so it doesn’t have those homey touches or nice furniture. We got there and visited for a bit and Kiki served up some of her tea for us. She did the same kinds of things they did at the tea house which was fun – as she said, her set is just smaller. She had some strawberries out and Nadia had a great time playing with them rather than eating them.

Then Kiki started cooking and I had to go over and watch her with the wok (or whatever they call it here) and I was practically drooling from the smell and how fresh the veggies looked. She made snap peas with garlic, Chinese cabbage with mushrooms, pork and monkey-head-mushroom soup, English cucumbers stir fry, and rice. She also made a fabulous potato, onion and spicy bacon fry with pepper. Everything was delicious and I ate a ton. She had strawberry yogurt for Nadia which was really sweet. I was very excited about tonight because we were going to someone’s home for dinner. That was way more fun than going to a restaurant because you are able to see how people live and spend time with them in their home.

After dinner we all just watched Nadia. What’s new, right? Nadia was having a grand old time and Kiki said something about her dancing and so I started singing. Nadia started the toddler riverdance and I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. I have been working with her on it, but this was the first time that I have seen her really go to town and keep doing it for a long time. Nadia also liked their kitties, and one was almost as big as her! We all visited a little while longer and then we headed home in a cab because it was Nadia’s bed time. Oh, and Kiki gave Nadia one more Chinese DVD when we got there tonight.

Now about the cab. The guy took us right to our apartment building and as we were driving up to it he pointed to the building and I shouted out, “Si!” Then Mike swooped in and told the guy in Chinese, “Here.” I paid and got out and Mike started teasing about me saying “Si.” He was like, “We’re not in Mexico.” At that point I was just laughing hysterically. I just knew I needed to answer the guy in a different language, but the Spanish just popped out! That was a great funny way to end our evening out!

First off – I was sleepy last night and forgot to say what the food was. LOL. The first one is the pizza hot-dog. The second has dough like a croissant rolled up with thin layers of hot dog and cheese. The third is like an eclair, but the pastry part is made of cake rolled up with cream in the middle and topped with chocolate. YUM!!!

Here is my 3rd Chinese painting. Mike thought it was great and that I seem to be really good at this style of painting and I didn’t know. I have never tried to do any type of painting and I am finding through this that I really like it. My Grandma Johns paints with oil and if you have been to our house, you have seen her stuff. My sister Tahni paints too and she made the wonderful painting for Nadia’s room that was on the blog in the past.

Here is my teacher Jenny.

Here are some shots of me on my practice flowers.

Jenny showing me how to make the petals. On the left side is the traditional Chinese black ink that is used in most Chinese painting. A little goes a long way.

At lunch time we took the subway over to Wal-Mart to pick up some presents for Savanah at New Day. I just loved her and she is the oldest at the home…if you look at the photos from there, she is the one who was sitting in Mike’s lap while he was taking pictures of Emma. We also got some crayons and other gifts for the rest of the kids. We were searching for some coloring books for the kids when we came across a bunch of children’s books. There is a set of 10 called “Happy Baby” that has all the items in Chinese and English. We went through them all and found all 10 and bought them for Nadia along with some other children’s books. Total cost for all 13? — $11.90. It would cost that much for 2 at home. 4 if you hit Half Price books and could actually find a whole set. The prices here are crazy!

P.S. Kiki didn’t give me any homework today except to watch the DVD that goes with my textbook. The lessons introduced about 50 new words this week alone and they are all starting to sound the same to me. Hee hee.