Ni zao (good morning)! It is almost 6am on Friday for us. James is off running the stairs (I’ve already walked them), which is not a stairmaster, but the stairwell next to our room. The hotel has 27 floors, but it is really 25 floors as the 13th and 14th floor are non-existent. We’re guessing 13th is for Americans, 14th because the number 4 is bad luck in Chinese (but we have a 4th floor and a 24th floor, must have been easier to just have two floors in a row disappear).
Today is another scheduled day consisting of applying for Kara’s passport and completing our adoption registration. That will take us past lunch today. Part of the reason things take so long is because of the time it takes to get anywhere. We asked how long it will take to get to the governmental office we’ll visit today. Our guide, Joy, said “45 minutes, but 10 minutes with no traffic.” Well, we have yet to see the mythical “no traffic.” By the way it’s supposed to be 100 plus degrees today, with a billion percent humidity (seriously, I’m sure that’s what the weather channel would say).
Kara has been laughing more and seems to find walking almost freeing. She walks with her legs wide apart and falls quite a bit. At one point when we were in our room she would walk from one end to the other, back and forth. I was her usual point of reference as she would walk toward me laughing and then walk away and come back and repeat the process. We enjoyed that quite a bit and felt that maybe she was really comfortable with us…until we got to the lobby (insert “dum tee dum tee dummmmmmmm”).
As we were trying to Skype the kids from the lobby, a lady sitting near us started to talk to Kara in Chinese. That set Kara off. She started to cry and wriggle out of our arms and then went to the other lady. The lady scooped her up and promptly walked off with her. We knew she wasn’t stealing her as the gal was part of some conference at the hotel. But still, there went our baby who was then passed to another lady! We felt helpless as Kara seemed to be comforted by them. She finally came back to us, but was clearly stressed by the whole situation. We talked to our guide about it and she said that Kara is probably very confused and wants to go back to what she knows (which is the orphanage). Confidence level…descending…rapidly…..
Thankfully we were able to rent a stroller (which she enjoyed) and be off to exchange money at the bank. As an aside, the whole deal with the crisp clean 100s is no joke. One of the dads here tried to exchange one bill that was crisp, but had the tiniest pen mark on it that he never saw until it was pointed out to him (as it was being rejected).
So our scary Beijing moment...
We decided to venture out to go to another store which is supposed to be like a WalMart. I wanted to get Kara shoes that fit (and did not squeak) and our friendly local market (called Hypermarket, mind you) did not carry any (but it carries plenty of “love fish” which I guess is just dried fish…that you love?). We went with Pat, a grandma that came with one of the families. We brought a card that had the name of our destination on it as well as the hotel name and address. Another card we had included a map of how to get to the hotel. We did our shopping at this store which was like WalMart on psychedelic drugs. We ate at Pizza Hut (we got a normal pizza instead of venturing out and getting the one with octopus) and then tried to get a taxi to come back. Did you get the “tried” part? When we’d finally get a taxi to pull over, the driver would shake his head “no” when James would show him the hotel card. So here we are far from our hotel, sweating profusely in the oppressive heat, carrying our baby, and it is almost 9pm. As the third taxi refused us, a guy pulls up in a car and motions that he can drive us. He has stickers on his windshield that make me think that maybe he’s a hired driver of some sort, but how can we know? He offers to take us for 30 yuan (we paid 18 to get to the store). We say no, and then are promptly refused by a fourth taxi. The driver has stuck around and watched us getting refused and makes his offer again. Taking our proverbial chances, and out of desperation, we agree to go with the guy. I am of course praying like crazy that we will not be driven into an alley and be robbed for being goofy Americans (and me for not knowing Chinese when clearly I should!). I am sweating it (literally and figuratively). Ah, but lo and behold, we spot our hotel. Hip hip hooray! We said “good job” and James patted him on the back, which made him laugh. So the guy went from being a psychotic serial killer to being a guardian angel.
BTW, I got the 411 on the non-stop eating thing Kara was doing. Joy said that since we are strangers to Kara, she does not know if we will feed her again so she will keep eating like it’s her last meal. Joy said, as we had already figured out, that we need to stop her from eating too much. Joy also said that older kids will often hoard food for that same reason.
Okay just expect long posts from me, cause, after all, it’s from me!
And now some words from the quieter one:
Yes there are the missing 13th & 14th floors, but there are also the -1 & -2 floors as they label them. In total, 627 steps. And with the top few floors even more closed up than the rest, the temps really get oppressive there.
BTW – If you want to see Julie at a loss for words, start rattling off to her in Chinese. All she can say is “English! English!”, much to the confusion of the local populace.
No comments:
Post a Comment