Thursday, August 24, 2006: Half Day Tour of Ciqikou Old Town

So I'll begin this post by writing about what I didn't do go do today. The group took a half day tour to Old Town, also called Ciqikou, which was near the river. (That's one of the tributaries of the Yangtze River, for those of you unfamiliar with where Chongqing is located. Also, while I'm being a bit snotty-- after all, I'd never heard of Chongqing, let alone did I know it was off the Yangtze River prior to Marcie's referral-- I thought I should let you know that Chongqing is pronounced Chong-ching, not Chong-King, the way it looks. I've heard it pronounced both ways, but only the first way here in China.) I didn't go on this tour because it was to go shopping and such, and it was going to be hot today. So I stayed back at the hotel and played with Marcie until she napped. While she napped, I surfed the Net looking for a good Law and Religion paper topic, because my topic proposal is due on the 6th of September. If you have any suggestions, feel free to e-mail me. One thing that is really nice about the hotel we are in is that Internet access is free. I think the wireless is also free at Starbucks, though I haven't lugged my computer over there to verify. Just one more reason the China Starbucks is superior to the ones in Poway.

Anyway, Jason and my mom went on this half day tour, and Jason snapped the two photos I've included. If you've been following my travel blog, you might remember that Jason and my mom are way more adventuresome than I am. They went down this alley and snapped a photo. Apparently they were adventurous enough that Marie, our guide, chased after them to make sure they knew where they were going (because they were going places no one else was). And while I'm on the topic of things that didn't happen to me, Jason wanted me to relay his Beijing airport experience. I didn't even realize it was happening at the time, but he apparently got pulled into "secondary" for security screening when we left Beijing for Chonqing. In the U.S. that usually consists of the wand they wave all over your body, followed by a thorough search of your bags. Here in China, apparently it means a pat-down. Or as Jason described it, a groping. His exact words were, "I felt violated!" I guess the woman (yes, they didn't even have a man do it) made sure he wasn't carrying anything he should not have in his underwear, if you catch my drift. . .

So after Jason and my mom returned from their miniature excursion, we headed over to Pizza Hut for some good, old-fashioned pizza. It was a sit-down Pizza Hut, and we ordered Hawaiian pizza. It was the first time since I've been here that the food placed in front of me was exactly what I was expecting it to be. I was so happy, I could have cried.

Next door to Pizza Hut was a department store we walked around. What drew me to it was the entire floor of shoes on sale. Keely and Grace, if you are reading this, you would have been in shoe heaven. If weight weren't an issue, I would have gone crazy. Plus they don't take credit cards. It was quite a sight to behold.

I think this is as good a time as any to mention the split pants children wear in these parts. If you look back in the archives to the post titled Cutie-pie Marcie, you will see Marcie's little bottom sticking out of her outfit. This is because the clothes here are made split open so that kids can just. . . well . . . squat and go. I've been totally awed by this phenomenon. I haven't seen anyone actually squat and go, but my friend Kyndra did see a woman holding her child over a trash can to go at the department store. Totally crazy.

After our shopping outing, we headed back to the hotel to put Marcie down for a nap. I set up a little play area earlier in the day with the tablecloth we brought from the U.S. I'm glad we brought it so that we could let her play on ground without rolling around on the hotel's grubby carpet. Then I went to pick up our laundry. They returned it to us all packaged in little plastic packaging-- like they were new clothes! Our laundry cost us about $25 U.S. Mine was around $9 and Jason's was $16. (He turned in more clothes to be cleaned than I did.) It was pretty neat to get it all back. We also received the notary paperwork for Marcie's adoption. We are still waiting for them to process her passport here in Chongqing, and then we head off to Guangzhou to get her visa.

The doctor stopped by to check Marcie's ear and her cough. Her ear is still really bothering her. He told us to put cortizone cream on it-- which I of course did not bring. Luckily, my mom did. We also have removed rice from Marcie's diet. She had three bottles with no rice today, and a couple ounces of apple juice, and some prunes. If she doesn't poop by tomorrow at dinner, we'll have to do another suppository. I'm pretty desperate to avoid that experience again, so I'm hopeful her bowels will feel moved (so to speak) to relieve us of that possibility. . .

For dinner, a bunch of us went a Japanese place in the "Vegas" area beneath the hotel. The food was actually really good. I snapped a photo of Kyndra and Joia. If you want to check out Kyndra's blog and see photos of her cute peanut Cassidy, or you want to read her account of our Chongqing experience, you can check it out at www.cassidytao.blogspot.com. It's so hard to know what is safe to eat and what is not-- I could really go for a salad right about now, but I'm staying away from anything that might be washed in the water but not peeled. . . Anyway, you can get an idea of how much food there was just by seeing how much we left behind!

For those of you feeling like I didn't give you enough to fulfill your Marcie fix for the day, here are a couple more photos of the cutie . . .



P.S. For those of you who follow Mary-Mia's blog Do They Have Salsa in China?, the answer is yes-- at the Japanese Restaurant in Chongqing, of all places!