Day 19 -- Changsha, China

Our plan today was to go with Jason, the guide, to a local mountain at 9:30am. The weather was too rainy for hiking at the mountain, so he decided to take us to the embroidery museum instead. Dad wasn’t feeling well, so he opted to stay at the hotel. At the museum, there was another family that we had seen at the adoption center. They were there with the six-year-old girl that they adopted. She was all smiles and her parents say that she hasn’t cried at all. She seems to understand her situation and what is going on. Tai was a grump most of the time. I gave him a fruit leather and that kept him occupied and in a better mood for a while. I asked the girl’s parents if she would probably like one too. They said it was okay. She figured it out pretty quick when I reached in my bag to grab one and said “Thank you aunt” in Chinese (I think it is ‘xie xie shen’). After the fruit leather was gone, Tai threw an even bigger fit, so we decided to forgoe another traditional lunch and went back to the hotel. Dad was feeling better by the time we got back, so he, Mom, Daniel, and I went to KFC for lunch. They screwed up the order (forgot two sandwiches and forgot to charge us for something else we had). I managed to use my Chinese to communicate well enough and got everything straightened out (no one there spoke English this time). On the way back to the hotel from lunch, it started snowing. It didn’t stick to the wet ground, but there were plenty of big snowflakes falling. Back at the hotel I went to the Business Center with Mom to finish booking our reservations. I had to use MSWord in Chinese to print out a document. It wasn’t so much reading the characters (I only know a handful) as remembering where different functions were found on Word. I took a short nap after we took care of the hotel reservations, then we headed to the other Wal-Mart. Again, this was just for something to do. When we got there, there was such a rancid smell outside. Not just a funk in the air, but something so bad that I was literally gagging and threw up a little. I really wish there was such thing as a smell recorder for cameras because there is no way to really describe the smell. Maybe fried baby shit mixed with dog shit? But then again, who would really want to smell a recording of something that disgusting. We rushed into Wal-Mart to escape the smell. We took some photos of the various things we saw and got funny looks for doing so. Bought a few to-go type snacks for us and for Tai. We also got him a little stuffed Winnie the Pooh. Hit McDonald’s again for food and had to use pointing and Chinese to get by as no one spoke English there either. I think my Chinese is improving a little as I managed to get the right number of the right things. We meandered awhile in the adjoining shopping center and again saw no other Westerners. We did manage to find a China Mobile so Dad could put more money on his SIM, or so we thought. They couldn’t handle it there because the phone was from out of town. They did give us directions to a big China Mobile about 10 or more blocks away where we could do it. We decided to hoof it and actually got to see a little bit of the city, but mostly just shopping centers and local restaurants. Finally made it there and Dad got the money added. Shortly after returning to the hotel, I got a call from Netta asking me to come get Tai. Apparently he had a poo accident and had to be showered. I went to the door and grabbed Tai, all wrapped up in a towel, and took him to Mom and Dad’s room to hang out while Netta finished cleaning up. We gave him the Winnie the Pooh and he was uninterested until we showed him that a spoon would stick to Pooh’s magnetic hands. That seemed to be pretty amusing for him. Netta came over and got Tai dressed for bed. Daniel and I were not at all tired, so we went to our room to watch movies for the rest of the night.