Sunday, March 27

We had a really fun day in Beijing today!  We were "on our own" this whole weekend without a guide and I'm proud to say that we did just fine!  Today we even got somewhere in a taxi on our own, got what we needed, and got back to the hotel!  We headed to a store called Baby International for an Ergo Baby Child carrier.  I had heard of these back at home and wasn't sure whether or not to order one because I just couldn't decide if we would need one.  I just didn't know if TingTing would be too big for us to carry in one, so I procrastinated ordering one until it was too late.  Well now we are here, and after the morning of carrying her all the way through Forbidden City, I decided I REALLY wished that I had ordered one!  So instead I got on line optimistically, and found out on the Ergo Baby website that there are three stores in Beijing that carry them!  So we had our guide write the address of one of them in Chinese for us to give to a taxi driver and we braved going there today to buy one.  Success!  So now when we go to the Great Wall tomorrow, we can try it with a hands free carrier.  A stroller would of course be useless at the Great Wall, and at many of the attractions around here.  And carrying her up and down all those stairs could be more than my arm muscles could handle!  We'll see how it goes with this carrier!

Here are some pictures from our adventure out this morning to find the Baby store...

In the shopping center trying to find where the store was located.  We had to work our way through a maze of a building and hope that we could find the right store!

Having found the right place, here's Jim trying out the carrier.  It didn't work too well with Jim yet, but I had more luck and TingTing could actually ride on my back in it.  Finding a child carrier that both Jim and I can fit in is like finding a recliner that we both think is comfortable!

All proud that we found our way and found the right product in this big confusing city!

LUNCH - Hot dogs and blizzards!  Gotta train this girl for home turf!

This one's for you, Pastor Wichert!  This little peanut ate two of these things!!

Oreo Blizzard - same as Mama!

Not exactly like the ones at home, but close enough!

Like I said, not exactly like home.  Grace and Mary Emma, this is for you!  Chocolate Green Tea and Green Tea Pie blizzards!  Mmmmm!

After that outing, we stopped back in at the hotel breifly, and then we headed out again.  This time, we went to meet someone who I had connected up with online and through email.  She is a Canadian who lives in Beijing and teaches at an International School.  Before we left home, she had emailed me and offered that if we needed anything while in Beijing to contact her, and she left me phone numbers to get ahold of her.  We decided we would give her a call since we had some questions - like where to get laundry done without getting ripped off!  (That brings up our laundry experience from the last couple of days - a week's worth of laundry for $80 US dollars - yikes!)  So we gave her a call, and got a very friendly invitation to come to her house and do laundry and have dinner!  After a week of being isolated from really any other company we thought that sounded like a really great idea!  So we loaded up our laundry and headed her way in a taxi.  The result was a really great evening where we could talk and laugh with people who speak English while TingTing could chatter with them because they also speak Chinese!  We got a LOT more insight into the big personality of this new little daughter!  She is a complete riot!  

We learned several new things about TingTing tonight.  First we learned that she is terrified of dogs.  Persistently terrified.  And I'm not talking big dogs - lots of kids are scared of big dogs.  No, this little bully (as she called him!) was none other than a pug!  Yes - she was persistently terrified of a pug.  Yikes - Aunt Julie, I think Toby is gonna have to keep his distance for a while!  The second thing we learned is that our sweet little daughter has been saying (and teaching us for that matter) the most crude and nasty way of saying that she has to poo or pee!  And we've been so proud of her all along for being able to communicate clearly about going potty, and proud of ourselves for learning that phrase!  Now we find out it's the equivalent of a rude bar phrase for saying you have to go to the bathroom!  Oops!  Well, how would we know?  It's what she came to us saying, and our guide even told us that meant go to the bathroom!  Well, thanks to Kirsty tonight, we now have a couple more appropriate ways of communicating about the potty!  Third, we learned that this new daughter of ours is actually extremely articulate and bright, it's just her Mama and Baba that are incompetant!  It was really really fun to see her communicate with Kirsty and her 13 year old daughter Yuan.  They talked to her in such a relaxed and real way which helped to really show her level of communication and understanding.  That is something we just don't get to see when it's just us and TingTing.  She says all kinds of things, but we don't know what she is saying, so we are missing all kinds of insight into the mind of this little sweetie.  Kinda sad, but it was really fun to get a glimpse tonight!  Let's see, what else...we learned that TingTing loves tomatoes, marshmallows, and bounce houses!  Seriously - it was quite an evening!  The very kind neighbor of very kind Kirsty, who hosted us, had a birthday party for her son today, and they had a bounce house set up in their courtyard area.  Gitty laughter, lots of jumping, and a deleriously happy TingTing were the result of that experience!  We really had an excellent evening - such a welcome reprieve from our hotel and the area around our hotel.  Kirsty, if you find you way to the blog here, thank you so very much for your warm hospitality and for the delicious dinner!  Both you and your daughter were such fun to visit with and you were so kind to let us do our laundry there!  And no doubt, TingTing loved being able to actually talk to someone who is not only competant in her language, but who is also very real with her.  Thank you!!

Talking and laughing with Yuan, Kirsty's 13 year old daughter, who was adopted though the same orphanage as Ting Ting like 12 years ago.

Eating an orange with BaBa at Kirsty's house

Delicious dinner!  What a nice change to be in someone's home!  This picture also shows the fierce Pug named Genghis Khan who "bullied" TingTing.  She told him to stop bullying her!

Done with dinner, but now TingTing is eating cherry tomatoes, peanut butter cookies, and juice.  What a combination!

Kirsty was nice enough to drive us back to our hotel too.  TingTing fell asleep on the way, worn out from all that activity!

 I have to say, before this trip I was preparing mentally so much for the challenges, that I completely missed how much FUN this was going to be!  What a blessing to be accepted by a little child so quickly.  This isn't just about us making her our daughter - it's about her making us her family.  She is so easy to make laugh that it amazes me continually.

One more picture because it's just too cute not to include...

This super cute picture makes it look like she loves her hat.  Actually, I just got her smiling for the camera, Jim snuck up behind her and dropped the hat on her head, I snapped the picture, and she snatched the hat off a second later!

Three things we are thankful for today - 

1.  For partial English menus at restaurants here.

2.  For the hospitable reprieve from our hotel life that we were offered tonight.  This was quite possibly the first family meal in a home that TingTing has experienced.

3.  For all of you back home who are waiting eagerly to welcome Lydia home!