Monday and Tuesday in Nanchang

The rest of Monday in Nanchang--

First let me tell you about the rest of Monday. Fortunately, we got Z's passport problem fixed. I still don't know what happened exactly, but they took her picture yesterday afternoon & said everything was OK. We should get her passport on schedule this Friday.

After that stop, the whole group went to a department store in downtown Nanchang. An old lady came up to us on the sidewalk and was saying something, then followed us into the store. She even went up the elevator with us to the fourth floor and followed us around up there. It sure sounded like she was berating us for something, but we have no idea what it was all about. There was also a pack of about half a dozen boys, maybe eight or ten years old, who followed us everywhere we went. They kind of tried to hide and spy on us, but they were laughing so much they were pretty bad at the hiding thing. So the store -- we went there in case anyone needed baby clothes. We didn't really need much, but it was a pretty swanky store with amazingly cheap prices, and we wanted to buy Z something just for fun. I was looking at shoes, because I only brought one pair with us, a Target knock-off of Robeez. We were standing in front of a shoe display, and I picked up one or two pairs to look at them. Z, who I had in the Baby Bjorn, reached out and grabbed a hot pink pair trimmed in white with little sparkly blue and pink circles. I was impressed by her taste in shoes, so we bought them for her. Here they are --

There was a grocery store in the basement of this department store, so we went down there to get diapers, more rice cereal, water, and a few other necessities. Shopping in a Chinese grocery store is an adventure. We just wandered around, picking things up, trying to figure out what they were, until we had what we needed. Once we got home & opened everything, it turned out we'd done just fine. No dried squid or sheep intestines or anything like that.

When we got back outside, we saw a crowd gathered around an adorable English sheepdog. We went over to see him and give him a pet, and before we knew it, that crowd was gathered around us. Apparently Americans with a Chinese baby trump an English sheepdog.

Last night, the group went out to dinner, but we stayed in. Z was clearly tired and not feeling great, and I was afraid she was a little feverish. We put her to bed early and dosed her with some Chinese baby tylenol cold medicine our guide bought for us, and she seems to be doing a lot better today. Oh, and last night -- there are about 150 businessmen in this hotel for some kind of convention. Last night, all 150 of them got falling-down drunk and decided to hang out in the hallway outside our room, yelling at each other and smoking. I stuck my head out the door once around midnight and shushed them, saying "baby." They responding by inviting me to come down the hall with some rather crude-sounding language and some hand gestures. I gave them a hand gesture of my own and shut the door. M had to go out there at least two more times during the night to tell them to shut up. Each time he did he'd say "baby" and they'd say "sorry sorry" then go back to yelling. It was a fun night.

Tuesday in Nanchang--

We decided to make a serious effort to keep Miss Z on her regular schedule from now on. The orphanage provided us with a copy of this, including what time she eats, how many naps she takes, and how many times a day she poops. We've discovered that we're all a lot happier and easier to get along with when we stick to this.

In what is quickly becoming a daily routine, we gave Little Z her morning bottle, got everyone dressed, and were at the breakfast buffet by 7am. They started putting our group in a separate room today, to keep us away from those aforementioned rude businessmen. While we were eating, our favorite waitress Nikki came in and started taking all the chopsticks off the tables and replacing them with forks and knives. I didn't surrender mine though -- I ate my whole bowl of noddles with chopsticks. I'm getting good with them! And I've discovered that noddles with bean sprouts, cabbage, broth and chili paste makes an excellent breakfast. Yum. Nikki also brings us coffee now, instead of letting us get it ourselves. It's REALLY strong (just the way we like it), and must have about four sugar packets in each cup. Oh well. She's so sweet about it that I don't have the heart to tell her it's way too sweet. I just drink it anyway.

After Z's morning nap, we had a quick visit with a pediatrician. The agency brings him in to see the babies, just to make sure they're all OK. Z was pronounced both healthy and pretty. Of course, we already knew she was pretty, but it was nice to hear the official diagnosis. After a few minutes in a rather sad playroom at the hotel, we decided to get outside for a walk.

We crossed the street (an adventure in itself) to drop off the two disposable cameras we'd sent the orphanage for developing (we'll get those pictures tomorrow), and then went for a walk in the neighborhood across the street from the hotel. After about a block, we found ourselves in a very narrow residential street. So narrow that we didn't think cars went down it, but it turns out they do. Yikes. And they are not afraid to lay on the horn and graze the back of your heels with their front bumper to get you out of their way. This street was real China. There were chickens all over the place (including one in the early stage of the plucking process), baskets with not-quite-dead fish, and laundry hanging from the power lines. All the doorways were decorated for Chinese New Year-- gold chinese lettering on red paper down both sides of the door, with more over the door. Kids were coming home from school for lunch, and parents were cooking & eating lunch out in the street. We were quite the curiosity. A few people said hello or came up to see Z, but mostly they just stared. One guy bumped into a lady crossing the street because he was so busy staring back over his shoulder at us. Heh heh. We're rock stars. We happened upon some sort of ceremony that we assume was somehow associated with the Chinese New Year. There was a table draped with a red cloth, with rice scattered on it and an egg in the middle. There was a duck right by it, and we suspect he might not have lasted very long after we passed. People were all wearing white scarf-like things on their heads. There were some gongs first, then someone lit a big string of firecrackers. We really don't know what was going on, but everyone who lived nearby that didn't have a direct role in it was standing around watching.

We ate lunch at the hotel, which has a pretty impressive buffet. M tried some stewed pig ears (they still had bones in them - ick), but I stuck mostly to vegetables. They were spicy and yummy. No fried blood or baked intestine for me, thankyouverymuch

After Miss Z's nap, we're heading with the group to a park to take a walk. I'm honestly not sure what else is on the agenda for today. I'm hoping we'll stop by the porcelain street. In China, they have streets that specialize in certain things. For instance, we walked down the home improvement street today. There were a bunch of kitchen stores, several that sold nothing but doors, one with nothing but ladders and right next door to that one a bamboo scaffolding store. But there's a street that specializes in porcelain, which is what Jiangxi province is known for. The provincial official who finalized our adoption gave us a piece of porcelain for Z yesterday, but we'd like to buy more. There was some very pretty stuff in the hotel gift shop that we thought was amazingly cheap, like $20 for a whole tea set, but our guide said that was too expensive & we should go to the porcelain street. So I'm hoping we can do that today.

A few other little things:

- Z stood up by herself for a few seconds today, without holding onto anyone or anything

- she's getting pretty good at walking while holding my hand or M's

- she says mama and baba, and a perfect bye-bye with an adorable wave

- she'll clap her little hands if you say huan yin (I'm sure I'm butchering that spelling, but it means welcome)

And one last thing I just thought of -- I heard so much before I came here about how awful it smells in the streets of Chinese cities, and how bad the pollution is. So far, neither is really true for Nanchang. Maybe it's the time of year -- it's pretty cool, maybe in the 50s. Most of the smells I caught today made me hungry -- everyone was cooking lunch and it smelled like garlic and chilies. The pollution, at least for today, is no worse than it is in an American city. I can see how both might be a lot worse when the weather is really hot though.

Buh-bye until tomorrow!