DAY 3 ADVENTURES

Friday, April 7th was a nice relaxed morning. We didn't have to be anywhere until 3:00 PM which was awesome. We had a slow breakfast and then just hung out. After breakfast we popped into the little playroom in the hotel. There was another kid in there who was pretty wild and he freaked Vivi out. She ran right over to me and sat on my lap hoping for me to save her. It was a good sign that she was coming to us for comfort.

The girls had a bath. I wasn't sure Vivi would go for it, but with Stella in there she wasn't scared and she started loving it right away. I'm always so shocked how fast she adapts to new things and accepts them as a part of her new life. Seeing both girls in the bath was pretty adorable.

 

Stella wanted her and Vivi to wear their matching shirts. They looked pretty sweet together. We tried to see if Vivi would sit down and color pictures with Stella, but she really wasn't that interested in it. She did however enjoy playing with the markers and taking off the caps. Her fine motor skills are pretty impressive. She can pretty much do anything she wants. At this point she had really warmed up to us and the hotel room and she was all toddler now. She started getting into EVERYTHING. It was pretty adorable and frustrating at the same time. I was happy and relieved to see that she was showing typical behaviors of her age. After coloring, Stella hosted a little dance party and Vivi loved it. She bounced and bounced doing her dance moves. It was so cute.

 

After yesterday's laundry disaster, I was hesitant to try to do laundry again. However I was determined, since we were basically out of clothes. I wasn't going to let some Chinese machine be the boss of me! The trick with the machine was that you have to be patient and let the cycles do their thing. After about four hours of being patient and hoping for the best I actually had a load of clean and dry laundry! It was a real triumph for me. I was pretty dang proud of myself. 

Vivi took a nap and then we met our driver in the lobby at 3 PM. We were applying for Vivien's Chinese passport. I have no idea though what really happened in the short time we were there because Vivi had a very stinky diaper and I had to go to a very stinky and unpleasant restroom and change it. At first I was horrified by the whole thing, but I just said (out loud) you can do this, suck it up! By the time we were done everyone was ready to go and head to Baiyun Mountain--applying for the passport ended up being a very quick errand.

Baiyun Mountain is a great place to get an overall view of Guangzhou, but we didn't go on a very good day for that because visibility of the city was really low. Honestly, the whole place didn't really interest me that much. We passed an old temple on our tram ride up the mountain and THAT was what I wanted to see, but it was too far of a walk for everyone so I just had to do without. In fact if you Google images for the mountain you will find all sorts of cool stuff that is supposedly up there that we just didn't see.

So overall, I feel like I could have skipped that adventure, but it was fun to be out. The highlight was watching all of the Chinese people who wanted pictures with Stella. This is the first time we had been out that people actually asked for a picture, and Stella thought it was very strange and didn't like it. She smiled and was gracious though and I was pretty proud of her. I personally think it is an hilarious and adorable quirk of Asian people that they do this. I want to take pictures of everything, so I respect their enthusiasm. I'm still not sure why they get so excited about having a picture of some kid that they don't know, but they do and it's best to just embrace it.

Pretty soon we were down from the mountain and waiting for our ride. Brent started pretend dropping Vivi and she LOVED it. Pretty soon she was actually giggling. These were her first real giggles and they were awesome to see.

That night we headed over to one of the malls to have dinner at Pizza Hut, but they actually have a Papa John's too, and if given the choice I pick Papa John's everyday of the week. It was pretty great even though the language barrier still gave us some trouble on our orders. When it was time to pay it surprised me that they didn't take credit cards! After that I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would need to have plenty of cash on me at all times. I was glad I at least had enough for dinner!

As we were walking out we decided to get some ice cream. I picked melon, which was a mistake! Vivi had tried ice cream before when I brought some home from the store and she didn't like how cold it was. This ice cream gave her pause at first, but tasted good enough for her not to spit it out. And then she was going to town on Brent's ice cream cone. It melted so fast and made a mess, but she loved it, and it was a great way to end the day.