Saturday, August 26, 2006: Night Tour to See Lights

This post will be short partly because we really didn't do anything today and partly because I'm completely exhausted and probably should have gone to bed an hour ago. Jason and I both caught this cold (we think from Marcie), and we are relatively confident it's about to hit my mom, too. It's wiped us out. So yesterday we took Sudafed 12 hour in the mid-afternoon. Totally a dumb idea. The stuff kept us wide awake until I'd guess around 5am this morning (maybe a little before that for Jason because I heard him snoring while I was still laying in bed awake). Plus the stuff gives me crazy, crazy dreams that seem real but make no sense. Anyway, when Marcie woke up around 7:15 for her bottle, I got it ready and fed her, then Marcie and I left (with my mom) around 8:30am to head to Starbucks with some others. We left Jason behind to get some sleep.

I made the mistake of ordering a blended cream frappacino, which is not like a regular one. But at least the banana walnut muffin was good. After Starbucks, we hung out with Marcie in the room-- I napped for about twenty minutes, then we went to play group, hosted by Jill. I didn't think to snap any photos of either of these activities, so I'll have to borrow from others later.

When Marcie went down for her noon nap, Mom and I decided to try out the foot massage in the hotel. We'd heard it was great-- and I was surprised Mom wanted to try it because she hates massages. I, on the other hand, love them. This was not a very good experience though. They started by soaking our feet in a hot water mixture and massaging our arms, which is fine in theory. But I think the guy sought out and hit every nerve in my arm. I still had numbness in my pinkies when the hour and a half experience ended. Then the guy decided to rub off all my callouses. I know it's gross that I have them, and if I'd known what he was doing and could figure out how to tell him to stop, I probably would have. Plus, they charged extra for it (and for cutting my toe nails really short, which was odd because I already keep my toe nails very short by American standards because I run). It took a long time to build up my running callouses, so I'm a little bummed they are gone. After he scrubbed my feet, he massaged my feet and legs. Again, he was very rough. The rubbing was hard enough, but all the slapping and stretching- it nearly brought tears to my eyes. And he didn't use lotion, so it was dry skin (his hands) on dry skin (my legs), so it felt like he was pinching me. . . I'm not sorry I opted to try it out, but it's not something I'll do again.

Later in the afternoon, we headed out to do some grocery shopping. We found our way to Carre-Four and bought some Pringles. Then we headed over to the grocery store in the sleepless town below our hotel and picked up diapers (we thought they were cheaper).

After Marcie had a bottle, we headed back out in the heat to Pizza Hut because I had a hankering for it. It's strange to me that you can't get diet soda in many restaurants, and Pizza Hut is one of them. Jason tried to tip our waitress and she got really embarrassed. She said she wasn't allowed to take the money. Marcie was pretty good during dinner, but her teeth were bothering her. I gave her some cold apple juice, which really goes agains my typical parenting approach (Casey didn't have juice until he was 3), but I'm feeling kind of desperate to help her have a normal bowel movement. Jason got online today to read about what to do, and we think another glycerine suppository might not be good for her. We looked for prunes in the store, but we didn't find any. We might begin searching more diligently for apple sauce tomorrow, though.

After dinner we walked over to the department store we call Summersale. It's not really the name of the department store. The store is something like DCDS (I know those aren't the right initials), but we call it summersale because it has a bunch of signs outside that sa Summersale (as in they are having their summer sale). We picked out a couple hats for Marcie, which you can see below:





Then Mom and I headed out on the night tour to see Chongqing. Marie explained that Chongqing used to be pronounced Chong-king but in the 1950s when the government decided to standardize the langugage (into Mandarin), the pronunciation changed to Chong-chin. This was also the same time that Peking became Beijing. Anyway, the tour started with the People's Square and building-- this is the same building that is on the metal plate the adoption registration center gave us for Marcie. But the lights weren't on, so my photos are terrible. Then we went to where the Yangtze River meets the other tributary (I forget its name and will have to add it back in later when I'm not so tired and I've looked it up). This was very pretty, but my photos of it stink, so you will just have to take my word for it.

While I was off on the night tour, Jason gave Marcie a bath and put her to bed, which is where she is now. Tomorrow we have group photos and we get final instructions for our departure on Monday to Guangzhou. I can't believe Monday is almost here-- that is one step closer to Friday, when I can hug and kiss my sweet angel Casey again. . . I can hardly wait until our family is finally together.

Oh. And here is one more photo of Marcie for good measure. . .