Day 17 -- Changsha, China

We were awake and down to breakfast by 10:15 today. I had seen Mom, Netta and Tai go by in the hall and assumed they were going to breakfast as well. Turns out they decided to go shopping while the rest of us stayed in the hotel for about three hours not knowing where they were, when they would be back, or if we should wait for them. Shortly after they got back, we decided that we wanted to go to Wal-Mart (there really isn’t much to do in Changsha, so we have to find our entertainment somehow). We split up into two cabs and headed out. After being dropped off, Dad, Daniel and I waited around for a few minutes before calling Mom and Netta to see where they were. They said that they were outside the McDonald’s by Wal-Mart, but we never did find them. Apparently there are two different Wal-Marts in town and the hotel sits roughly in the middle of the two of them. The doorman didn’t bother to let us know this before we split up though. The three of us decided to go ahead and eat at McD’s. As soon as we walked in the door, the employee sweeping the floor ran to put away his broom and rushed behind the counter. I guess that he is the only one that speaks English there, though not very well. I tried asking him both in English and Chinese if there was another Wal-Mart and he never understood the question. At Wal-Mart (Wo Ma in Chinese), we mainly looked around to see what there was to see and were stared at by many people. We didn’t see any other white people while we were there, which was kind of surprising to me. Changsha really isn’t a destination for Westerners aside from adopting children. We did buy a suitcase and a few other incidentals. Figure the suitcase is relatively inexpensive and I’m sure we will fill it by the time we leave China. Finally went back to the hotel and rested for a while [vacationing is just so draining! ;) ]. Went to check up on Tai to find him sitting in bed and feeding himself with a spoon. He is quite dexterous and also ambidextrous. He is also very meticulous when eating and will put food in his spoon with his free hand if he can’t get it scooped up. He also scrapes the food off of his chin after messy bites using his spoon, just like a parent does when feeding a baby. About 8:00pm we went to eat ‘Latin style’ food in the hotel. Okay, so only the meat was Latin style; everything else was pretty much the same food we were served at breakfast and mostly Chinese food. By the end of dinner I had a killer headache, so I went to bed pretty quick after returning to our room.