China Day Seventeen -- The Day it Would Have Been Helpful to Know Our Chinese a Bit Better

 Today we got a later start in the morning, which was nice.  We were able to relax a bit more and not rush everything for breakfast.  We left in the late morning to take Minsy back to the medical clinic so that they could read her TB test results.  It simply involved a nurse measuring the area of the reaction site, so it wasn't a complicated or painful procedure at all.  Minsy's reaction site still looked awful.  The redness was definitely larger than the ten millimeter limit they allowed before requiring a further xray to look for a TB infection.  We were a bit worried, especially after looking at the reaction site of the adopted girl who traveled to the clinic with us.  She is fourteen, and her arm only showed a barely perceivable dot.  Minsy's redness definitely looked worse than hers.  But when we arrived at the clinic the nurse took a long time figuring out where to measure the reaction.  It isn't the redness that they measure, but the hard reaction in the skin that you can feel underneath the redness.  The nurse felt all around the shot site and placed dots with a pen at the four edges of the reaction.  Then she measured the distance between her dots.  It turned out that Minsy's reaction was 9 mm by 8 mm, just inside the normal limits.  Hurray!  She wasn't going to need further xrays or any possibility of having to stay in the country for six more months.  That was such a relief.

Outside the medical clinic

After the clinic visit Herman, Minsy and I walked back to the hotel.  I stopped back by the shop where she got her visa photo done and looked at their cute clothes.  I needed to get her a few more outfits that she could wear in the heat of Guangzhou and Hong Kong.  I tried to get outfits that I could layer so that she could still wear them in the cold weather of Missouri when we return home in a week.  The owner/saleslady was very attentive to me, and she helped me find tons of cute things.  But I really don't like having salespeople hover me as I shop because I feel this crazy need to not disappoint them, so I purchase way more than I really want to.  But, luckily Herman was with me, so we played good cop/bad cop, and I was able to put stuff back and only get the things that I really wanted to get.  Minsy is at least prepared with clothes she will need for the next week or so.  I'll worry about Missouri weather clothes when we return home and everything is not heavily quilted as the winter clothes are here in China.

Minsy made some new friends!

When we got home we gathered the kids and walked back to the island to explore Shamian Island.  It really is a beautiful place that was once thriving, but is now quieter and more serene, especially while the White Swan Hotel is closed for renovations.  We started our circle tour of the island at the White Swan.  Although it is closed for renovations, the bottom stories are still open with some beautiful decor and shops.  I avoided the shops there because I have an innate distrust of hotel shops.  I am convinced that a person never gets a great deal in them for anything.  They prey on those who are two busy or too nervous to step outside the boundary of the hotel entrance.  But we did love to see the beautiful decor there at the White Swan.  Laney, who has been following way more adoption blogs than I have, said that we absolutely had to get our pictures taken on The Red Couch there.  I'm not sure if we found the right couch there because there were more than one red couch in the area, but we picked the one that had a nice view of the river and the city in the background.  Everybody was suffering a bit from the grumpies at that point, so I'm not sure just how nice the picture will actually turn out, but we took it.  Mission accomplished.

The beautiful lobby of the White Swan Hotel

Minsy with a happy face! Love that smile!

Striking a Chinese picture pose

If it is an iconic picture spot we are required to get a kissing shot.

After visiting the White Swan, we just got on a walking path and traveled in a circle around the island.  The architecture here definitely has a British influence, and I loved looking at the buildings and thinking of the international history of this island.  The rest of the family wasn't nearly as excited about the old buildings, but we had a fun time walking together.  Hyrum took some time in the park to finally fly the helicopter he bought in Beijing without having to worry about the limits a hotel room placed on what he could do with the helicopter.  While he played with this Laney walked around the park area of the island and took some pictures of Minsy.  There is a nice statue garden there that has some neat places for pictures.  Lots of people were around us taking pictures as well.  It was neat to see all of the brides getting pictures everywhere on the island as we walked.  There is a wedding photography place on the island, and they had many brides and grooms all over the island for various photo shoots.  It was interesting to watch these sessions.  The brides and grooms were dressed so differently.  Some were in traditional Chinese wedding attire, some were in the more traditional wedding attire you would see in the west, and others were in modern and quirky clothes.  All of them were absolutely beautiful.  They all looked like models, and the pictures seemed like the kind of photos you would find in magazines.  It was amazing to see all of them.

Exploring Shamian Island

As we walked around the island we came to a set of boards that had been erected to share the history of the island.  The history it told was a different slant on the history I learned as I studied about Guangzhou before coming here.  The same basic events were told, but with a Chinese twist.  It is interesting to see how our perspectives change our view of history, and it shows just how subjective our study of the past can be.  Our own experiences color our view of the events of the past. 

I LOVE this picture!

There wasn't a lot to do on the island other than enjoy the peace of the walk, but that was nice for us to do for a relaxing day.  We did stop by a shop where a man drew the Chinese characters for Minsy's new American name -- Eliza.  We have no real way to know whether or not they are truly the right characters, but they are beautiful.  He has a nice little shop there, and I might stop back by to pick up some Chinese memoribilia later.  I did appreciate that he didn't pressure us to buy anything.  That was refreshing.

After our walk on the island we headed back through the medicine and pet markets to the neighborhood around our hotel.  We decided to try and find a local restaurant to eat at that didn't seem to cater to tourists and westerners.  We wanted some authentic Guangzhou food.  We walked through the pedestrian mall and avoided the chain restaurants located there.  Instead we chose a side street and entered a place that looked a bit more run down, but was filled with locals.  We have found that in our exploration of China, those are the best places to eat.  Luckily, the restaurant had a picture menu, but it was still difficult to know what to order, so Herman used his sometimes hilarious, but always able to get the job done sign language to tell the waitress to just get us six orders of something yummy that wasn't too hot.  They brought us out food that was contained in stackable bowls.  The bottom bowl contained rice, and the top bowl contained a different type of meat and veggie combination that we could mix with the rice.  I discovered that Minsy absolutely loves cooked spinach.  She ate all of it that we could find for her.  She doesn't really like bread.  That might be a bit of a problem once we return home because bread makes up such a big part of our diet there, but we'll work things out as we have to.  I'm getting to be a pro at using chopsticks.  That was one of my worries when we came to China because of my weird thumbs that make using chopsticks more difficult.  But I have done wonderfully with it, and now I have no problem picking up small items like rice as I eat.  The rest of the family has managed to do really well also.  I bought special training chopsticks that the younger kids could use, but we often forget and leave them in the hotel, but everyone has still managed to eat without any problems at all.  I haven't heard one complaint from the kids about having to use the chopsticks.  We really enjoyed the food at this little restaurant.  Herman said it may have been his favorite of the entire trip.  I don't quite agree, but I still thought it was very good and very filling.  I would go back there again, for sure.

After dinner we decided that we wanted to go karaoke again because we had had such a fun time doing this in Wuhan.  There was a karaoke place right next to our hotel, so we headed there.  It was still pretty early in the evening, but the place was kind of dark.  It was different from the hotel karaoke place we visited in Wuhan.  This place was darker and a bit more run down.  It wasn't the posh sort of place we had been in before.  We thought that this might just be because it was not affiliated with any hotel.  It was just a stand alone karaoke place.  The nice thing was that it was considerably cheaper than the Wuhan place, so we purchased a two hour block of time.  Savannah remarked on the atmosphere of the place with such little lighting and said, "I hope we don't find a pole in the room when we get there."  We probably should have checked the place out completely before we headed in, but we were naive tourists, and we just thought this was what all the karaoke places in China were like once you left the big hotel karaoke places. 

Once we got into our room, however, we found that it was nice enough.  We had a horrible time figuring out how to work the computer so that we could choose our songs.  It was not as easy to get it to be on an English menu, and it was difficult to choose the songs once we did find the menu.  We just stayed in our room and made it our own.  The staff still brought us some fruit and popcorn to have while we sang.  It wasn't cut in such a picture perfect arrangement like it had been in Wuhan, but it was yummy.  This place just had a second tier kind of feel to it.  Instead of having the actual song videos in the background as we sang like it was in Wuhan, this place had what looked like stock video playing behind the lyrics.  Some of the background images were hilarious to watch as they had little to do with what we were singing. 

After what seemed like forever figuring out our computer we were able to start singing.  It was just as fun as it had been in Wuhan.  The kids really enjoyed singing the Mulan songs they had.  There were a lot of older songs that only Herman and I knew, so we had to educate the kids about some of the songs as they watched us sing in horror.  This room had a small circular window in the door, and we began to notice a steady stream of Chinese people coming by to watch us through the window.  We thought that they were the workers just checking on us, but then I started to notice that there were too many of them.  It turns out it was other patrons watching this American family act goofy to music.  Great entertainment, I'm sure. 

At about the end of our two hours Laney left the room to take Minsy to the bathroom.  When she returned she commented that it seemed like the atmosphere had changed a bit since we had arrived.  We finished our songs and then left.  Once the door to our room opened I saw what she meant.  During our two hours of singing the place had filled with patrons.  This was not just a karaoke place.  This was an actual bar.  If we'd been able to read Chinese a bit we would have realized that we had just taken our family to a Chinese bar.  No wonder everyone was stopping by regularly to peek into our room.  We were the crazy American tourists that brought our seven children into a bar so we could sing for a few hours.  Oh my goodness!  My face was burning red as we hurried the kids past the evening drinkers and made our way to the door.  What more crazy experiences could we run into while we are in China?  I think we've just about had them all.

As we headed back to the hotel, totally appalled at recent events, we stopped at the shop next to our hotel.  Laney, Savannah, Katie and I got manicures there inexpensively.  We were able to get all of our nails done, and Katie even had a pretty flower design hand painted on her fingers.  The total cost was only the equivalent of  twenty American dollars.  As we started the manicures we got the basic services, but at each step in the process the workers asked us if we wanted an additional service added to the price.  Normally this was something small that cost less than a dollar, so I would agree to it.  Sometimes I wasn't quite sure.  None of the ladies who worked there spoke any English, so they would ask this through a series of gestures and signs.  At one point they were asking if they could add a nail conditioning agent that would cost 10 RMB to do.  I wasn't so sure about it because I didn't know if it was necessary.  There was a lady getting her feet done who spoke very good English, and she explained what it was and why it was so good for our nails.  I ended up allowing them to use it.  As I agreed she turned to the worker and said something in Chinese.  Then the worker laughed.  I thought at that moment of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine got her nails done at a Korean shop and was convinced that the ladies were making fun of her, so she needed to get George's dad to come and interpret for her.  It was not any big deal to me.  The situation just made me laugh.

When we got back to the hotel we found Minsy asleep.  Apparently she had felt very badly done to when she was not allowed to stay with the girls and get a manicure.  She threw a mighty fit about being left behind.  But Herman was able to calm her down enough so that she could finally fall asleep.  She has really attached to me in the last week.  It is not necessarily that I have to be holding her or paying attention to her exclusively for the entire time.  She will play with others and enjoy playing by herself as well, but she gets upset if I ever leave the room..  That is normal and to be expected.  I don't feel as tied down by it as I expected to feel.  I still have some freedom to move about and get any jobs done.  It is just harder for everyone else if I ever do have to leave on my own.  That should get gradually better as Minsy gets more and more comfortable with the family.

So another eventful day passed in China.  Tomorrow we have our appointment with the US Consulate here in Guangzhou.  We are almost done with everything we need to do with our adoption here in China.  Hard to believe.  I'm loving every minute of this trip, but I'm ready to be home and back in a good routine.