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Updates:

Have started something new - a BLOG! Check it out on the links page.

Still writing the last Travel Entry

Now posting on the Home Updates page 01/31/09

Email from the website is not working. My personal email address larawade@sbcglobal.net

China Time:

Travel Date: 1/15/2009
Subject: Napping = Priceless

What we did today:
Another day…more adventures!

Today was a planned touring day - the Chongqing Zoo and a silk factory.

Princess Hui Dong still is not a morning person, but with a busy day ahead she had to get out of bed. We woke her up around 7:00 am. Still sleepy we made a Skype call home. She was not interested in talking to her siblings and decided to get dressed during the call.

While Christopher chatted away and I dressed her for our day, silent tears began streaming down her cheeks. The language barrier is such a giant chasm between us. The confusion of a family so far away, but who can talk to her parents seems to be such a struggle. She seems jealous of our time together and the relationship we have. Tenderly I wiped away her tears, but I have no words to comfort her. She can not explain her grief to me.

Breakfast time again! Some of her favorite things to do at meal times: One is to sit on my lap. After eating the major part of her meal, she wants to sit on my lap. So much fun trying to eat and balance a wiggly little girl. Then she likes to feed us both. This started on day one with our first meal at McD. We get bites of her food, she takes bites of ours, and at breakfast she loves to feed me my own food…fast. Whether I’m still hungry or not, I get to eat. Big bites and small bites, food she cuts for me (gotta hide the knives at home), with a fork, or with chopsticks.

Charlie met us at 9:00 am for the drive to the zoo. Hui Dong did a little better in the car. She still doesn’t like it. We tried a new trick to help. We let her listen to music from an MP3 player. I have recorded songs from a “Teach Me Chinese” CD for kids. The songs are in Chinese and English to teach English speaking children Chinese. I figured that it could work in reverse just as well and give her something comforting to listen to in her native language.

For all of the firsts that we have missed in her six years of life, we now also get to experience some great ones now. Maybe we didn’t see her first smile or hear her first laugh, but we do get to see her first smile with us now, hear her laughter, and receive her first kisses and hugs (Christopher is very proud that he got the very first kiss).

Today was the first time she had ever been to a zoo. The first time she ever saw live animals she had only known from books. To see her chase after birds to scare them away and point with delight at the animals was so precious.

She chattered away with Charlie our guide. He said she asked lots of questions and had answers of her own for some things. “Do all the animals eat? Do some animals live in water? Do all the animals poop? Monkeys like fruit and leaves.” Pandas are bad animals that she didn’t like (she said this before we saw them). She didn’t want to see tigers because tigers are everywhere; she only wanted to see lions (also before we got into the zoo).

As fun as the zoo was, it was still hard for me. My daughter can’t ask me questions, and I can’t answer them for her. She can talk to strangers, but not her parents. Charlie got to talk with her, and I was jealous. I want to know what she says and answer her questions. The zoo is very similar to the zoos I remember as a child. Animals kept in cages and pens. Nothing like our zoo at home where the animals have freedom within their specially designed habitats. At times it made me think of my daughter. She was also caged by the situation of her existence. Now my lion-hearted little girl will have the freedom to pursue her dreams and goals in America. She can make plans “to go to university”. Her inquisitive and curious questions will serve her well.

We went to a silk factory in Chongqing and were given an informative lesson on the process of removing the silk from the silkworms. It was truly fascinating. Then we received the sales pitch to buy a silk quilt. As much as we would have loved to have such a precious treasure for Hui Dong, the prices were too high for these “rich” American parents, much more than we had expected. We settled on purchasing a decorative, pillow cover in red with a dragon and phoenix design similar to ones we had seen at the Imperial City. We also purchased a silk outfit for Hui Dong. She can wear it on the day of the AWAA family pictures in Guangzhou, we could have pictures taken back home (our great photographer friends Doug and Barb), and then we can keep it as a special momento for Hui Dong, preserving a memory of her size when we first met her.

We have learned a very important lesson today about nap time for Hui Dong. It is a MUST!

She was tired and whiny at the silk factory. She insisted on being carried or was misbehaving, so she literally fell asleep in my arms as I carried her. Then she wouldn’t wake up. We flopped her into the van and drove back to the hotel. Charlie had proposed stopping for a hot pot lunch, but we decided she must surely need the rest.

By the time we got back to the hotel, she was wide awake again. We walked down to McD for a familiar lunch. With leftover French fries and chicken nuggets in tow, we came back to the hotel. Charlie was still waiting in the lobby. Later in the afternoon, he had arranged for a laundry service to pick up our dirty laundry. Since we were available now, Charlie suggested that we take a trip to the bookstore now instead of waiting till after the laundry was picked up.

The bookstore was not far from our hotel. We had thought at one time that we could make such a trip on our own if we just knew where to go. WRONG! Charlie was so right that we needed his help. We wanted to find some DVD’s in Chinese for Hui Dong to watch. We purchased one while at home, but we have grown tired of listening to Dora over and over again and thought she might enjoy something else. The bookstore was huge! We rode the elevator up to the sixth floor to find the children’s section. The DVD section was even overwhelming. Charlie even had to help us decipher which videos were in a dialect she would understand. Though all Chinese learn to read Mandarin in school, different areas of the country speak a local dialect. She speaks a Chongqing province dialect, but at one time we had picked up a Sichuan dialect DVD.

Something else we learned. Chinese DVD’s are encoded in a different format than American DVD’s. Our DVD player won’t play some of the DVD’s we bought. It must have something to do with trying to protect against imported counterfeit DVD’s, but it is really frustrating when you just want your Chinese daughter to watch a movie. We finally got Christopher’s computer set up to play “Kung Fu Panda” in Chinese (hoping someone would fall asleep – NOT!).

After the laundry person arrived, she wanted to watch “Tom & Jerry” which is in both languages so it will play on our player. I used the time to catch up on my journaling from the day before. When the battery died on the DVD player, you would have thought that the world came to an end. She cried and wept and couldn’t understand why her Mama and Baba would deny her more TV time.

After the storm calmed, we knew we needed to venture out to buy her an outfit to wear for tomorrow. What we have left is short sleeved and too cool for Chinese standards, much less Hui Dong who will even layer her coats. Plus we wanted to get as many of our clothes washed as we could before packing up for Guangzhou. Off to the mall again! We found an outfit she approved of in a size we think will fit. Gotta love stupid Americans shopping.

Now we just had a very sleepy girl and we all needed to eat dinner…SOON. We tried asking for directions to Pizza Hut which should be close enough to our hotel that we could walk. But after three people helped us in the lobby and even drew us a map, we never found it, walked in a circle, and Hui Dong had fallen asleep. Back to the hotel! Leftover McD, Ramen noodles, and Room Service sounded great.

Fed, bathed, teeth brushed, and ready for bed, our very tired out princess wouldn’t go to sleep. We had turned the TV on to watch a movie in English. We just wanted to understand what was being said. Though she will often fall asleep to Dora, she watched it all. Then even with the lights out, and only my computer illuminating the room as I’ve typed, she fought sleep. “Mama” and wiggles out of bed behind me over and over again. Finally, she is asleep.

What we learned today: Napping = priceless. Mini, power naps just fire her engine up, but don’t give her the rest she really needs.

Challenges ahead in our future: Flying to Guangzhou during naptime, over 24 hours travel time home next Friday, her nights and days reversed, and not having had a napping child to schedule around for over six years (all the others gave up naps by the time they were two).

Living the adventure of life every day!

Photos... (click image to enlarge)

Seeing my first giant panda