Hilarious Moment Alert...

First of all, I seem to have a thing for FLOODING. Some of you know that in July, our basement flooded (COMPLETELY). We ultimately had to postpone our China trip by one week (rescheduled Gotcha and Consulate Appt.). The 2^nd day here I must not have completely closed the shower room door because when I was finished my shower, I stepped out and most of the bathroom floor was covered with water (making it very slippery).

So, last night, I went in the bathroom to start the bathwater for Sarah’s bath. I turned on the hot water faucet knob when suddenly water started spraying all over me. I stood up and water was STILL spraying ALL OVER me. I tried to get away from it, but it was still spraying me. Immediately my glasses were covered and I couldn’t see. There was water EVERYWHERE on the floor and I started screaming, “Rupert, Rupert come in here NOW. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He was able to rescue me but by then I was SOPPING wet and the bathroom floor was completely covered with water. Across from the tub are two sets of wooden closet doors. The water was running down those doors onto the floor. (These are the doors.) And I was trying to get to one of these doors to hold onto the handle while trying to figure out what was going on but water was splashing down the doors and off of them and the floor was so wet and I was slipping and sliding all over. 

What had happened was that the cleaning lady must have used the spray nozzle (see below) to clean the bathtub, and did not turn the knob that would turn it back to the regular faucet. And the spray nozzle was positioned JUST so, that it sprayed OUT and ONTO me. And it was POWERFUL - like a firehose!

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The spray nozzle is the one farthest away. Now aimed towards the tub, not me.

I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants. I was laughing so hard I was crying. And then I suddenly realized, THE WATER HAD SPRAYED IN MY MOUTH in the beginning. And then I really wanted to cry. You see, here in China, you have to be VERY careful not to drink the water (parasites). We brush our teeth with bottled water, do not drink any water from the tap, keep our mouths CLOSED in the shower, and do not eat any raw fruits or vegetables (as they have been washed in the water...)  Here's hoping that I do NOT get sick!!!

Hot, Hot, Hot (110) here in Guangzhou, China

I.Will.Never.Again.In.My.Lifetime.Complain.That.It.Is.A.Hot.Day...EVER...OHMY GOD. This heat and humidity is BEYOND BELIEF. I am thinking of Dante's Inferno! OMG! It is 98 degrees ("but feels like 110" according to the weather report). Tomorrow....heat index of 105. OH MY!

Here is Sarah dressed in her outfit for the HOT weather.

Needless to say, we are mostly staying inside our hotel room and using the hotel pool! This morning, after breakfast, we did walk over to Shamian Island for some shopping. I had a few more items I wanted to pick up. We also had to drop off some laundry for Rupert and Sarah. For those of you who have been here before...the walk from Holiday Inn Shifu over to Shamian Island takes us about 7 minutes and we do it EASILY. OMG! In this heat/humidity, the stairs on the overpass seem insurmountable!

When we came back to our room, we played, ate lunch, and are soon heading up to the hotel pool.

Here is evidence of all the shopping we have done. Here are 13 of the 15 dresses we have bought for Sarah.

                             
Here is Sarah modeling one of the outfits.
                                                  

Friday's Dress for Breakfast and Dinner

The Hottest Friday of My Life!!!

OMG! It is SO HOT. SO HOT. SO HOT.
It's 95 with bright sun and the weather says 97 but "feels like 103." Yeah, and then some...OMG!
And the next two days are supposed to be HOTTER (98 and 99). We will be spending most of our time in our hotel and hotel pool. There is no way to accurately describe HOW HOT THIS IS!

After breakfast we went to the little bakery (where the young lady who I like so much works) to pick up more cookies, and thank them for the birthday cake. Then we did a little (just a little) shopping. We came back to our room, played with Sarah, and then went to dim sum at one of the restaurants in our hotel. After lunch, we spent an hour in the rooftop pool. Sarah is SUCH A LITTLE FISH. She LOVES the water. She dunked her own head underwater multiple times, and was laughing. What a change from her first bath on Monday night when she was hysterically crying when I carefully washed her hair. Sarah's in for a nap right now. We are planning to eat dinner in one of the restaurants in our hotel tonight, as our guide, Alexa is coming this evening, around 7 or 8, to prepare the documents for our Consulate appointment at the U.S. Embassy which is Monday.

Here are photos from our time swimming:

Looking at Daddy (who was taking the photo)

so much fun!

 Today Sarah was willing to let go of Mommy and put both hands in the water, splashing, and waving them back and forth in t he water.

dunking one side of her head in the water (and loving it!)

Just after she dunked her entire head back into the water and loved it.

practicing her backkick

pure happiness

so happy!

after she got out of the pool (and she did NOT want to get out of the pool)

wrapped up like a burrito and allowing Daddy to hold her

Sarah in her beachrobe and ready to head back to the hotel room for nap. (She was asleep in less than 2 minutes, after an hour in the pool.)

Ready for dinner.

Some Random Observations

- It is SO HOT and SO HUMID. OMG! We are going out early in the morning and walking around and shopping, before it is unbearably hot out.

- The stairs of the overpass to Shamian Island are quite a workout in this heat and humidity.

- This area of Guangzhou seems less polluted than when we were here in 2010. We are actually seeing the blue sky each day, instead of a layer of smog (which was the case in 2010). While Guangzhou still has the same "China smell," it just seems less polluted. Definitely less people smoking than 2010. I've heard from our guide that there has been a huge attempt (possibly some regulations) to ban smoking in public places in Guangzhou. It just seems cleaner overall.

- I miss seeing the students in their uniforms, since it is summer vacation for them.

- The breakfast buffet at our hotel is still fantastic.

- Sadly, the hot pot restaurant we ate at 14 of our 17 nights back in 2010 is no longer here. In that same shopping center there are 2 hot pot restaurants (right beside one another) but the food you select to cook in your hotpot is buffet style, which does not appeal to us...There is a very hopping/crowded Korean restaurant where you have a grill and a hot pot. We may try that, if the food is not buffet style.

- Near the subway about 10 minutes walk (or less, we are FAST walkers) there is a new, very modern and upscale mall. There is a FANTASTIC hot pot restaurant in there. We have already eaten there twice.

- At breakfast at our hotel most days, I find myself looking at other families. Chinese families.
Monday - 9 different families with children. 8 families had one son each. Only one of them a girl.
Out and about on the streets of Guangzhou, the gender imbalance is still very clear, but we are seeing more little girls than we did in 2010.
Interestingly, we are stopped often by people who say, "beautiful girl." They are women, often walking with a little boy (their son or grandson), and I can't help but wonder...did they have a little girl that they abandoned (or their mother-in-law abandoned, as is often the case), or if there were not a One Child Policy, would they want to try for a 2nd child...

- At that HUGE, very high-end, shopping center not far from Shifu, there is a grocery store which would be like a Walmart (sells everything including food). Tons and I mean TONS of American food. We were very, very surprised to see this type of facility here. It is quite new and it was very interesting to see the Chinese people figuring out the shopping carts. Normally the Chinese people shop for their food at open air markets. The food is very fresh and since they have very little storage area in their apartments, and many do not have fridges, buying large quantities is not feasible.
The stores in the mall were VERY HIGH END. Rupert was quite taken back that there was an Ashworth store...it's not like the average Chinese person around here is out golfing! Lots of window shopping going on. There were lots of restaurants in that mall too. It was air conditioned and not too crowded (compared to the streets around Shifu on a Sunday).

- I didn't mention this on Monday, but the bank was a nightmare. Worse than 2010. We were there 90 minutes and this time the workers were able to speak Cantonese, so Rupert could communicate with them, but it still didn't help. And talk about causing a scene. We held up one teller for 90 minutes...don't have to tell you how many Chinese people were staring at me...walking over near me to see what was going on (which of course made me so uncomfortable. At one point Rupert had to go back to the hotel to get the hotel address and phone number for one of the forms, leaving me sitting with the teller. A man kept coming close to me and I was thinking..COME ON, I'M SITTING HERE WITH $10,000 and you are seriously creeping me out.) One of Rupert's forms was rejected because one letter of his name was not clearly formed. Penmanship CLEARLY MATTERS to the Chinese. By the end, we had about 7 ripped up forms that had been refused.
REALLY REALLY feel that all agencies should be able to have their clients wire the SWI fee. If we had, we could have exchanged the rest of the money needed at our hotel each day. Definitely my least favorite part of our trip (both last time and this time). And it was SO LOUD. OMG! I shall never complain about having to wait in line at a local bank in Vermont.

- CNN is on TV. I strongly suspect it is prerecorded and that the government blocks the stories it does not want the people to see, but still I we were surprised. It was not a station here in 2010.

- YouTube is blocked completely in China. Even with a great VPN.

- PandaPow is a fantastic VPN. I can access blogger. Last time I could not even do that with a VPN.

- Blond hair still intrigues the people. Definitely less people are touching my hair though, compared to 2010.

- I have seen maybe 5 Chinese people in the whole time we've been here with sunglasses on...That's it! And it's really, really sunny.

Birthday Photos! and English ALREADY!

Geez, I no sooner brag to everyone that PandaPow VPN is THE WAY TO GO as we'd had zero Internet issues, when we start having them! It really is not PandaPow though; it's just the overall internet connection/wireless. I tried for over an hour last night to post these birthday photos and finally gave up.
We skyped with the boys and they sang Happy Birthday to her and played all sorts of musical instruments. (They went with Grandma to Walmart and Buttered Noodles and bought some shakers and a little piano, etc.) Sarah LOVED to see them this time (last time she cried). She even picked up one of her balls that makes music when you shake it and was shaking it and holding it to the Ipod.

Here are the photos:

Birthday girl in her special pajamas.

Pointing to Mama!

Waving to the camera

First Birthday Cake

Mama made a wish for her and helped her blow out the candles.

First bite!

YUM!

Looking for more. She LOVED it and ate a huge slice of cake.

Considering one of the chocolate decorations

Oh yeah! This cake is delicious!

Sarah is showing interest already in learning English! We were not expecting this. It was the case with Aaron, but he was a year older than Sarah and was very, very verbal and articulate in Mandarin already. Sarah wants to learn the names of her body parts! She is fascinated with "eye" and is pointing to the eyes of her stuffed animals, dolls, herself, us and all of us in the photos we take. She lifted up her shirt, pointed to her belly button and looked at us inquisitively, until we gave the name. When we tell her a word in English, she does her best to repeat it.

Day 7: Happy 2nd Birthday Sarah! And We Have a Fish on Our Hands! AND it is SO HOT!

Today, according to the Chinese/Lunar calendar, it is Sarah’s birthday. Chinese people celebrate birthdays according to the lunar calendar. (In our family we celebrate lunar/Chinese birthdays and “real” (Western) birthdays.) So, while we missed Sarah’s actual birthday of August 1, today we celebrate her Chinese birthday. And for her, it’s the first time her birthday is being celebrated. There is no recognition of birthdays in the orphanages in China. (The exception is if a child has a family waiting to travel to adopt them, and that family arranges for a cake and/or care package to be delivered to the orphanage. That’s what we did for Aaron’s 3rd birthday, which was 3 months before we traveled to adopt him.) Last year for Sarah, her 1st birthday passed with no recognition. Today we celebrate, and every birthday after this!

We ordered a birthday cake from a bakery near our hotel.

This morning, after another great breakfast, we had a change of plans. While we would have loved to have gone to Xiangjiang Safari Park today, (It was a highlight of our trip when we adopted Aaron,) it was just too hot and humid today. It’s a good 45 minutes by subway, and we would have been spending at least 5 hours there and it is SO UNBELIEVABLY HOT AND HUMID TODAY. And it is supposed to be HOTTER and MORE HUMID the next 3 days. We are NOT going to the Safari Park this time!

So we opted instead to take the subway to Yuexiu Park and walk around. The subway was quite an experience. It made the NYC subway at Rush Hour seem NOT crowded at all! Oh my! When we got on the first subway, there was a bit of a commotion and two men tapped (or jabbed) a young man (college age most likely) and pointed to me. He jumped out of his seat and pointed to me and to the seat. I sat down with Sarah on my lap, between two young men. They kept glancing at me, as did most people around me. I noticed there were several Chinese women holding young children and they had been on the subway before we got on. Made me feel like some sort of celebrity, receiving special treatment. On our second subway, a young woman jumped right up and offered me her seat. On the way back to our hotel, there was the same response. On our final subway home, we had only 2 stops so when a young woman offered me her seat, I declined and indicated we only had 2 stops (quite short) to go. 

Something humorous today was we were in the elevator of our hotel. There was a Chinese family with a little boy about 4 or 5. He said "Ni Hao" (Chinese for Hello) to Sarah and his mother shushed him, and said, "AMERICAN baby." Then they said, "Hello" to Sarah. Rupert and I chuckled to ourselves. (Well, technically, she will be an American when our plane lands on U.S. soil on the 14th...but she is just as Chinese as that woman and her little boy! Oh, if they only knew!)

It is humorous the looks and double takes we get, especially me pushing the stroller. For example, they walk by me, look back at me, look down at Sarah, and then say something in Chinese like, "Their baby looks Chinese." Today on the subway several people said, "Beautiful baby" to me. Two families stopped us in the park today (one was a grandmother and grandfather with their granddaughter, and another was a mother and father our age, with a little girl) and told Rupert in Chinese, "Your daughter is very beautiful." She is! Rupert said many people look at us and say in Chinese, something like, "Look his wife is American but the baby looks totally Chinese." Of course they have no idea, and would not guess we just adopted her. The majority of Chinese people have no knowledge of the MILLIONS of orphans in their country, or the thousands of orphanages here. This makes me very sad. They are allowed to adopt a child from an orphanage, but very few do - very few people here know these children exist. (An exception was after the earthquake tragedy a few years ago - those children were all adopted. To the Chinese, helping from that tragedy is different than helping a child who was purposefully abandoned..)

The entrance to Yuexiu Park is very close to the subway. However, after riding the subway, getting UP all the stairs, and walking to the park, we both said, “There is NO WAY we could have done the safari park today!”  IT IS JUST SO UNBELIEVABLY HOT! Not just for this Vermonter either. Rupert said that today is 34 degrees Celsius (93 Fahrenheit) and probably the hottest he experienced in Hong Kong in his entire life. Saturday is supposed to be 37 degree Celsius (99 Fahrenheit). YIKES! The humidity is close to 100% right now. It is BRUTAL!

Yuexiu Park is the largest park in downtown Guangzhou. It is most famous for the Five Rams stone sculpture, which is the emblem of the city. Here we are in front of it.

There are hills, lakes, waterfalls, and walking areas. Many Chinese people do their morning exercises there. We spent about 90 minutes in the park.  Here we are in front of a small waterfall:

We came back to the hotel, had lunch, and decided to attempt the pool with Sarah. We had very low expectations. We expected she would scream and we would each separately jump in to cool off and then we would race back to our room with a screaming child.  We did not even bother to bring the camera (our mistake). When we got there, Rupert went right in. Then he got out and sat near Sarah while I went in. Sarah started crying, as expected. I got out and Rupert got back in. I took Sarah and sat at the edge of the pool with our feet in the water, splashing Rupert. She was okay with that. After only about 5 minutes, I just got right in the pool holding her. She was totally fine with it. For about 10 minutes she held on for dear life. We showed her how to move her arms in the water and splash. She was very interested. She spent about 20 minutes gently splashing and moving her arms in the water. Then the last 10 or 15 minutes she was wildly splashing, getting us very wet, and even getting her own face wet. She was also starting to move her legs, although most of the time they were wrapped tightly around me. We ended up there for 45 minutes and she was laughing and giggling so much! We of course wished we had brought our camera. We will absolutely be going to the pool each of the next 3 days and will bring our camera.

When we got back to the room, Sarah fell asleep quickly for her nap. After nap we plan to walk to the hot pot restaurant for her birthday dinner. Rupert just went and picked up her birthday cake, and we will celebrate after dinner. Donovan and Aaron are going to sing Happy Birthday to her over Skype.

When it comes to holding hands, being carried, or being held, Sarah has a very strong preference for Mommy. She will allow Rupert to feed her (and she LOVES to eat) and play with her. This afternoon they were playing basically Dodgeball with a beach ball in the hotel room. It was wild and crazy and they were both laughing so much.  

Today Sarah started repeating some English words. Last night she was quietly saying “Mama” while looking at me.

Here is information on the Five Ram sculpture. “The Five-Ram Sculpture is one of the most famous structures in Guangzhou. It has become the emblem of the city. Legend has it that more than 2,000 years ago, the city was a barren land with people who despite hard work were suffering from famine. One day five immortals in five-color garments came riding on five rams, playing their legendary music. The rams held sheaves of rice in their mouths. The immortals left the sheaves of rice for the local people, gave blessings to the city and left. The rams turned into stone and the city became a rich and populous place. Guangzhou got the name of the City of Rams and the City of Ears.”