the breakfast table, laughing and throwing food at Daddy and playing the
"throw toy on floor and watch them pick it up" game. I forgot what it was like
having a baby!!
We left for a shopping trip at 9:30am. We were going to a place called the Apollo. It was a HUGE, fancy mall. Daphne automatically took us to the floor with all of the baby stuff. (Imagine that) I must say, what an experience! First off, there was NO AIR CONDITIONING! A big fancy mall and there was no AC. Eek. It was sweltering in there. No air movement whatsoever. Now, shopping in China is WAY different than it is in the states. There are different "sections" of the store, each separating a certain manufacturer. You pick out what you like (the staff was very helpful, but spoke NO English...we used a "cheat sheet" that Daphne gave us), then they give you a ticket (not the merchandise). You then go up to the central pay desk and pay for whatever you wanted. Then you go back to that section, show them the receipt, THEN they give you the merchandise. So if you pass by something you want, you have to go through the steps all over again. Not fun if you are buying from SEVERAL different departments and manufacturers. Absolutely crazy.
Oh...and we got yelled at! An older lady came up to me and was talking very loud in Chinese at me. Then she would tug on Mary pants and pat her bare skin. Then she did the same for her arms which were showing skin too! I felt like saying "Lady...its 100 degrees in here!!" but couldn't. I just smiled and pulled her pant legs and her sleeves down. We got KFC to go before leaving the store. We did get Mary a few outfits because all of the one piece outfits don't fit her. She's too long!
We went back to the hotel and laid Mary down for a nap. Dad went over to the post office to see if he could get come collector stamps for Mary and Mom was really hoping for a short nap. Ha! Mary had plans otherwise. She didn't sleep for very long. So we decided to go down to the pool. Mary wasn't too sure of the pool. It was a big cold bath tub and it took a while to get use to the water. She splashed a little.
In the afternoon, we took the hotel bus over to the river. We walked around the
gardens on the riverbank. It was raining a little so the hotel sent us all with
umbrellas. There were many people out (in the rain, mind you) flying kites. The kites were amazing! There were HUGE lizard and dragon kits and rainbow colored kites. It was so neat to see. Daphne says on a good day, there are hundreds of people out there flying kites.
For dinner, we went out as a group to another Dim Sum restaurant across the street. Our rep pre-ordered several dishes for us which made things easier. I have no idea what some of the dishes were, but we tried them. The radish balls were the best! There were huge tanks with LIVE fish and such in them that you could "pick out" for your dinner. They had HUGE fish, rays, shrimp and many other things. They also played live music although I have never seen some of the instruments they were playing. It was very nice. I was really hoping to update the website last night, but again, Mary had plans otherwise.
Here are some pics from today.
The popular mode of transportation in Changsha
Playing with Mama at the play area the hotel set up for the families
At the Xiang River
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