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First things first – we are claiming today as Nadia’s first sentence day. I was taking some video at the aquarium and when I walked back over to Mike and Nadia she said, “Hi Mama!” Is that cute or what? I guess I should also take this time to say that Nadia’s speaking has just exploded in the last week. She is really saying a large variety of words now and can identify many more things. It’s a relief when she is hungry and thirsty that she can actually answer us now about which item she wants. For example, “Do you want rice? Or yogurt?” She will nod or say “No” now, which is really great. Then we are not trying to give her stuff that she is just not interested in at the moment. It’s really cute all the new words she is saying and how she is associating sounds with objects and photos. I am also convinced that she has gotten taller since we got here based on how her clothes are fitting.

Today we relaxed at home in the morning and then after Nadia’s nap we got ready to go. Nancy from the school met us on the bottom floor of our apartment building and we caught a cab over to the Beijing Zoo. We also wanted to see the Aquarium in the zoo, which they claim is the world’s largest in-land aquarium. We got to the zoo and while waiting to buy tickets this lady came up and put this cool pinwheel in Nadia’s hand. Nice salesmanship, right? Nadia probably would not have been upset if we took it away, but it was very cute, so I asked the lady how much. She said 5 kuai which is about $0.70. So I gave her the money. All the Chinese behind me probably paid less, but I wasn’t worried about it. I should also say that I asked 3 different Beijingers if they had been to the aquarium and they all told me, “No, it’s too expensive.” It’s $14 a person, but it’s only $1.40 to get in the zoo. Mike and I expected it to be great because $14 to get in to something in Beijing is pretty steep from what we have seen.

We went into the zoo and looked at some of the animals on our way to the aquarium. We needed to get in there and get seats for the dolphin and seal show at least half an hour early. They had some pretty cool birds at the zoo that I have never seen before. Some had the most gorgeous colored feathers. We also saw the red pandas that aren’t really pandas. Nancy said that the character for them is little panda. They looked like reddish raccoons to me and they were so cute! We also saw some beautiful tigers and female lions. There was also a jaguar that was making a whole lot of noise, but he was really pretty. Nadia wasn’t really aware of what was going on during this part, but she was having a great old time waving to other kids and playing with her pinwheel. We saw the use of the split pants walking through the zoo. Many people just had their kids walk up to a tree or the grassy area and go.

We got to the aquarium and had time to go through the Rainforest section of it on our way to the pavilion for the show. There were a lot of cool looking fish in there and we have the photos to prove it. We got in for the show and there were a lot of people already seated and ready to go. We saw a bunch of kids with these LED dolphins and star fish and Mike thought Nadia would like one, so I ran down to grab her one. Of course she liked it. And she immediately found the button on the back to make it work. It came on a Beijing Zoo lanyard and you can change the batteries. Very, very cute for a souvenir. Once the show got started it kept Nadia’s attention on and off. She is not quite old enough to appreciate how cool it was, but big enough to watch the flashy parts. She got very interested in the people in front and behind us though. At this point waving at people is more exciting that dolphins and seals.

I really enjoyed the show and Mike got some amazing shots and I took some really good videos. I think once we are home I will try my hand at the Movie Maker software and make an aquarium movie. I really wanted to see the dolphins, they have a special place in my heart since Jess and I swam with one back in 2003. These three dolphins were really big! It reminded me a lot of Sea World, but not quite as flashy. And we couldn’t understand anything that they were saying. Nancy translated some of the jokes for us, but otherwise we were just observing the show. The seals came on next and they did some very cute tricks that really entertained the crowd. They also seemed like really big seals compared to ones I have seen at other zoos. After the show ended we looked through the other parts of the aquarium and the biggest part was the coral reef section. They had tons and tons of beautiful fish in there. I really enjoyed getting to see the wonderful displays that they had and all the colorful fish.

We left the aquarium and wandered over to see the elephant house. Now I am by no means an animal rights activist, but now I understand why I have heard people complain about the housing of the animals at the Beijing zoo (except for the Pandas). The elephants were really in some small rooms when you consider the size of them. The tigers were also in small cages, but there was an area for the tigers and lions to go out in where people could look down and watch them run around. After the elephants, we walked over to see the Pandas. They are really cute, but very lazy since all they do is eat all day. Each little area just had one panda and a boatload of bamboo for them to eat. The little baby panda was sleeping, but the other two were eating and eating and eating. In the gift shop I got the cutest Panda umbrella and some post cards. After the panda we tried to see Monkey Hill, but an employee told us it was gone. It was 5 pm by then so we called it a day and took a taxi back to the apartment.

Here is Nancy, Nadia and I with the Panda Umbrella.

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!