Swimming, McDonalds & More

Today, we took a taxi to the Marriott, which is where Carl & Kim are staying. It is a much bigger and more luxurious hotel, but it is not on Shamian Island. The perk for us today is that the swimming pool is heated. Shaling & Natalie (Ma Meixin) mostly sat on the ladder or the side of the pool, getting their legs wet, but not daring enough to get in. Preston, Matt & Andrew all swam from end to end of the pool. They even made a human ladder, 3 guys high. The girls formed an alliance against the boys, though…splashing the boys whenever they came near and chattering loudly & pointing at them. We tried getting them to let Matt carry them around in the pool, but they would have none of it.

Kim & I took them in to the girls changing room, which had a sauna and a hot tub. They girls LOVED the hot tub. There was a woman in the tub originally from New Zealand who has lived in China for 14 years. She knew Mandarin and conversed with the girls. She discovered that not only were the girls cold, but they had never gone swimming before either. Shaling was happily telling me something I did not understand. The woman kindly told me that she was telling me that it was fun to play in there. After about 15 to 20 minutes, the girls got out and hurried back out to the pool. This time they were more adventurous…still not venturing away from the wall, but following the wall from end to end of the shallow end.

After swimming, we went to a McDonald’s near their hotel for lunch. Preston had his usual – a double cheeseburger & a McChicken, plus warm milk & a hot fudge sundae; Shaling had chicken wings, milk & a strawberry sundae; Brock had a spicy chicken sandwich & a Coke; I had a Big Mac & fries. Our total was 90RMB, or about $13.50 in American dollars.

After lunch, Brock, Carl, Matt & Andrew all went walking down one of the local alleys with all of the local merchants. Kim, Natalie, Shaling, Preston & I went up to a room at the Marriott with a wii and let the younger 3 kids play. Then, we reconvened in the lobby, where we met up with our guide to go to the police station, where we registered the adoptions and applied for the girls’ passports. The girls became quite lethargic and both families were a bit concerned that they might be sad. Once we got back in the van, however, it became readily apparent that they were worn out. Shaling zonked right away.

Our guide gave us some changes in our upcoming schedule. We were supposed to go to the orphanage tomorrow (December 30), but are now going on Friday. Our Safari Park visit is now going to be on January 5. So, for those of you following our schedule that I previously posted, it is now somewhat inaccurate.

When we returned to the hotel room, I laid down on the bed for a bit. Shaling came in and smiled at me…crawling on the bed next to me. Then she picked up my netbook and handed it to me, asking something. I turned it on, figuring she’d get bored because it wasn’t connected to the internet at the time (she obviously knows the internet & goes on the PC a lot). She found the built-in camera and pulled it up. She laughed when she saw herself. Then, she made a motion to me of typing fingers over the keyboard. I pulled up Microsoft Word for her. She typed her name (with a space in the middle), mom & dad. Then she asked me to type Preston. She typed want, backpack, cat, dog, and a handful of other words.

Then she said something to me that I couldn’t decipher. She made a motion of drawing a smiley face. On paper, she drew a human figure and two Chinese symbols. I asked Brock to bring the Chinese-English dictionary. I showed it to her and asked her if she could show me. She flipped through it meticulously, trying to figure out how it worked. There are pages of Chinese symbols, but there is also the typical alphabetical sections of Chinese to English and English to Chinese. It took her at least 10 minutes, but eventually, she found the Chinese word for paint/draw. I was sooo impressed by her due diligence in trying to communicate with me. I pulled up Paint.

We were all pretty lethargic by then, so we had supper in the room. We cooked up noodles that we had bought at the store yesterday. She had some spicy beef flavor and literally slurped it all up. As she was finishing up, she ran to the other room and grabbed the Chinese-English dictionary again. She scanned through it, stopped on a page, looked at her dad, and said quite clearly, “ice cream”.

I may be biased or even just stuck in the “honeymoon” stage, but I think they’re going to love her at school. Even as I finish typing this up, she is on her own, studying some of the basic English word books that we brought with us.