Shaiman Park playground for our first day here without rain. It wasn’t a
big surprise to find that GG loves to play. He and LilDude delighted in
running from one piece of play equipment to another. The only difficult
thing was that he had absolutely no sense of the necessity in staying near
us. If there’d been more people, it would have been easy to lose him. He
just ran and ran. In this park, about half the “play equipment” is for
adults to exercise. We watched military guys work out alongside older
women and young couples. It was truly a gathering place for the whole
neighborhood. We also watched several couples playing badmitten, sans
nets. And probably saw 3-4 couples having wedding photos taken. We have
seen a LOT of wedding couples in China. At least one wedding was at our
hotel in Beijing. I think the Majestic hotel in Nanning had a wedding
party there each day. And here, everyone came out to have photos taken as
soon as we had a sunny day. Couples, particularly brides, are dressed
very elaborately here. Huge, gorgeous wedding dresses. One couple today
looked like they were straight out of Gone With the Wind.
After playing, we stopped at “Jordon’s”, picking up a couple more items,
including a carryon suitcase to bring a few purchases home. Jordon, the
shopkeeper, saw us on the street earlier and invited us into his store.
When Dh told him that we’d actually made purchases there on Sunday, he
apologized profusely for not being there then and invited us to come back
so he could write GG’s name in calligraphy. Jordan told Dh that he is a
Christian. He has a very good reputation amongst adoptive parents on the
internet. Today he gave me a history lesson, talking about how prior to
1977 that Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hunan provinces were all one large
province. He says that it’s not in the history books but that old folks
know about it. He said to be sure to tell GG since Guangxi is his
birthplace.
By this time we were hungry. When we discovered that the island
restaurants close at 2pm and don’t reopen until 5:30 or so, we made a deli
stop, picking up a few simple sandwiches and a California bag of potato
chips. Interesting China fare.
We enjoyed a short nap before I took the kids back to the playground and
Dh & Lizzi went to do a little last minute bargaining on a teaset
I’ve had my eye on. I hate bargaining; they love it. I, unfortunately,
fell in love with the most expensive teaset on this island. It’s the
cutest one I’ve seen, with pictures of Chinese children on it. Again,
unfortunately, it’s a “limited edition” set and they started off by
telling us it would cost 1200RMB. I couldn’t justify that much. One night
as I passed the store they begged me to come back in and look at it. Dh
wasn’t there and he had the money, but I asked if they’d take 800RMB. They
said yes. I still hoped they’d come down further today, but no dice. So I
spent my birthday money. I don’t want to get home and “wish I had.” I
don’t anticipate coming back anytime soon.
Meanwhile, over at the park, things were very busy. A nearby school let
out and big kids were playing along with parents and little kids,
grandparents with babies, and more military guys and folks working out. It
was full. I was afraid to send Dh back to the store again (he’d come
out to tell me the latest) cause I didn’t think I could safely watch both
LilDude and GG at once. So we all played a bit before making our purchase
and heading to dinner.
We tried a new restaurant that I’d heard good things about on the
internet. (It’s the Guangdong/Cantonese restaurant across from Lucy’s,
FYI.) It was delicious and we paid slightly less and received more food
than at the Cow/Bridge. The only thing that was hard to get used to?
Having servers hover around the table, constantly refilling our tea and
filling the kids’ plates. Anakin seemed to take it in stride, however,
and had his plate refilled many times.
The little boys had baths and are now in bed as I type. They both did well
today even though I’m guessing that GG may have had a mild
immunization-related fever. GG gave us a few kisses at Lizzi’s
suggestion. He also hit LilDude a few times, but often as not it was
probably provoked. We were very proud of LilDude in one instance. GG threw a notebook at LilDude’s head in such a way that LilDude would normally have reacted and hit him back. But LilDude was calm. We praised him for not decking his brother! Another thing GG did today was flirt BIG TIME with waitresses. At breakfast he called to them repeatedly so he could grin at them and say ni hao (hello). Since we were the only ones at breakfast, they really played it up, even hiding from him and peeking out. At dinner,
he caught the attention of about 3-5 more waitresses. Several came up and
talked to him in Chinese. They carried on quite the conversation. I have
no idea what they said as I don’t think the waitresses spoke English. GG
spent much of the afternoon writing in a notebook with colored pencils.
We’ve decided that he is trying to write Chinese characters. I don’t know
if he actually knows some specific characters or if he is just imitating
the look of them, but he was marking the paper very precisely.
Anyone recognize this?Tomorrow Dh has a brief agency meeting in the am and then we all head to
the Consulate from 2:45-5:30 for the adoption ceremony. Then to HongKong
by train.
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