A Market Adventure

We started off the morning with our yummy breakfast buffet again and I included a picture of Chun Le in one of the high chairs they have for use. They have little wooden trays and then a nice silk type fabric Chinese pillow that you put behind their back to sit them up at the right level. It works great! At 10am we met our guide and walked a block or two down from our hotel to the medical clinic for Chun Le's required exam. It was a very routine, quick checkup of height, weight, ear/nose/throat, and feeling their abdomen and checking hands and feet. She did not mind it except when she had to lie down on the table while the doctor did a quick exam. That made her pretty scared and she quickly reached out for us the second that was over. I guess that is a good sign of growing attachment. :) After that was over we asked Lee to walk us to an area right over the bridge off Shamian Island that another adoptive family at our hotel was telling us about last night. It is the open market area and prime shopping spots of Guangzhou and it sounded like a neat place to visit. We love the beautiful Island area but it is really small and we have seen all of it a couple of times now and still have a week left of our time here...so we were ready to explore and see some more of "real life China". The markets were soooo interesting! I have several pics included below but they just don't do it justice. The first section that you hit when you cross the bridge is the wholesale herbal and medicinal remedy area. Lee said that it is famous in Guangdong province as storeowners of herbal/medicinal shops come here to buy their products in bulk. There is just shop after shop lining both sides of a very narrow street of these pails and bags full of dried roots, plants, fish, seahorses, you name it!! They even had a seller with tanks of live scorpions in one shop and Lee said that people purchase them and put them in soup and it is supposed to help with bedwetting...interesting stuff! The next section long of open market was the pets area. These shops and the middle of the streets were filled with all types of pets, pet toys, pet food, pet cages, etc. There were cages of little kittens and puppies, birds, squirrels, ground chipmunks, hamsters, bowls of fish, plastic tubs of turtles...you name it they had it! Lots of puppy yaps and kitten meows going in that section. Chun Le was pretty interested in this part of the shops. Actually she was interested in all of it as she loves to explore and soak things up. At the end of all the open markets there is a strip of stores and restaurants. It is pretty much like an outdoor shopping mall back in the States. We were there right before noon so it was getting more and more crowded and we had to get back to the hotel to feed our little girl and get her down for her nap. I am sure we will go back there sometime before we leave China to explore again and try out a couple of the little restaurants Lee pointed out that we could easily order from. It was a fun adventure! The rest of the afternoon was naptime and some hotel playroom time. When we went to the playroom today there was a little Chinese girl with her mom there and they offered Chun Le a packaged snack of dried seaweed. I watched how the mom was ripping off small bites of the seaweed and putting it in the little girl's mouth and figured I would see if Chun Le would like it and be able to eat it. Since it was not too crunchy I thought it would be something she could try eating. She really liked it and kept opening her mouth for more. The only problem was that when she finished it all so much of it had become stuck to the spot of her cleft behind her teeth and in the open part of her cleft. I could tell it was bothering her as she kept trying to use her tongue to push it out but it would not budge. Also, it had stuck to her teeth in front quite a bit and looked like she had green teeth. :) So we had to head back to the room and get a washcloth to do some cleaning of the cleft and teeth. She liked the help in getting that all taken care of. We are heading to bed now and will have a very LONG day ahead of us tomorrow. We meet Lee at 7:30am to head to Chun Le's orphanage for a tour. It is going to be like a 4 hour or so drive each way so we likely will not be back at the hotel until 7pm or later. As we come to your thoughts tomorrow please pray that this will not cause a "backsliding" in the bonding/attachment process. We are a bit anxious about what she will think about being back there, why she is there, wonder if she will prefer her nannies to us, etc....lots of unknowns and worries. But we feel very strongly that the things we will get to see and learn there are going to be invaluable for us to be able to answer questions she may have one day about her life history before she joined our family. Hopefully any temporary setbacks our trip may cause will outweigh the benefits of what we will gain and learn. We are excited to see what life was like for her the last 22 months and have been so impressed with how the nannies have taken care of her and prepared her so well for meeting us. It will give us one last opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude for all they have done for Chun Le. Here are a few pics from today's adventures: