This photo is the view from our little enclosed balcony/clothes drying area of the apartment. It was taken as the sun was coming up on Sunday morning.
Okay so with some sleep Saturday arrived and we all bundled up and headed to the Lotus Center across the street from our apartment. There was American pop music blaring from one of the office buildings and as we were getting ready to cross the very busy street where traffic laws don’t apply, “Staying Alive” came on. I started laughing and told Mike it was the perfect song to be playing as we took our lives in our hands! As our guide told us on the adoption trip, “If you need to cross the street, get behind a Chinese person. If they move, you move. If they stop, you stop. This will save your life.”
The Lotus Center is a very big multi-level mall and grocery store. There is a Watsons Drug store on the bottom floor that reminded me of CVS. There were also multiple restaurants on the bottom floor and a bunch of shops and kiosks. “Learn English for 8 yuan a session!!!” and those sorts of things. We moved up the second floor and started shopping. For housewares we got another quilt and some pillows for our bed. Towels and wash cloths and a tub to give Nadia a bath in. For the kitchen we got 2 each of forks, knives and spoons, plus 3 bowls. Assorted cleaning supplies. Assorted snacks including Ritz (which are better here – light and fluffy) and of course what I have decided is our China tradition – Snickers. They had all kinds of yogurt including what looked like Dannon in Chinese. They have some wild flavors, but I just got Nadia the old strawberry standby. I think she might like to try Kiwi and a couple others, so I will pick them up while we are here.
We ran all that up to the apartment and then came back out in search of food. We ended up at the Pizza Company which is a sit down restaurant. We learned last time that the Chinese are serious about their pizza and it’s a big deal. We got some garlic bread and a couple of pizzas and headed back to the apartment because they were coming to set up our Internet access. The Internet guy fried our wireless router that we brought so we could use both laptops. We were trying to tell them we had a transformer and adapter and he just plugged it into the wall and it started to stink and by then it was too late 🙂 The man from the school ran over to their offices and got us one of theirs, so now we are all set up and good to go.
There was a little boy who looked about 7 years old at the pizza place waiting on a to-go order with his dad who was fascinated by us and Nadia. He kept staring at us and making comments to his dad. We handed the father the little laminated cards that I made up and they read it (it has a family photo on one side and then some information about our trip on the other side in Chinese). Then the little boy tried to talk to us and his dad said, “Speak English.” The little boy wanted to know if Nadia could speak English and we said yes and that we were also going to teach her Chinese. He was a really cute kid and obviously thought that we were quite the oddity, but that Nadia was really cute.
We put Nadia down for a nap at 5pm and thought she might sleep a couple of hours, so we decided to nap too. At midnight we woke up and she was still asleep, so we woke her up, fed her and forced ourselves to stay up until 3 am even though we were all fighting the jet lag. We got back up at 6 am and are all feeling a lot more alive. So for those who wondered if our sleep experiment from home worked, I would say so. We all need to move about one more hour and we will be perfectly on China time. Go Mike with the great idea!!!! The shower set up is just fine. The water gets really hot and I am sure by the end of the month we will have our speed racer technique down to perfection.
After Nadia gets up from her morning nap we are going to head back to the store for some other odds and ends that we realized will be helpful to our stay. It’s funny how you just get used to all your “stuff” at home that you have accrued over time and when you don’t have basic items it throws you for a loop. We are going to go out exploring today and I will get lots more photos of the area that we will be living in for the next month.
It’s a little surreal that we are back in China, but so cool! School starts for us in the morning. Mike will be going from 8 am – 12 pm. The tutor will be coming to the apartment for me from 10 am – 12 pm. Then Mike will be working every night from the apartment and he has a nice little set up in our bedroom to be closed up in. I am planning on taking Nadia on walks and to the park and stuff in the afternoon so we can explore and leave the apartment quiet for Mike.
