Sept. 13. Even though housekeeping gave us a feather tick to put on top of the mattress to make it softer, it still isn’t like home. However, last night I finally figured out a comfortable way to sleep on my side, so I slept much better. Megan did well too and only woke up once. We also woke up to sunshine. It was nice to get a full view of the city and the Pearl River.
Today was our US consulate appointment. Ironically, we don’t even go to the appointment. Our guides just take our paperwork to the consulate. However, we had to stay in our room from 9:30-10:30am in case there were any questions. While we were waiting, we skyped with the girls for about an hour.
At 10:30am, we took a hotel shuttle to the pearl market. The area is actually a big shopping center with indoor and outdoor malls. The pearl market mall was an indoor mall with many levels and had more wholesale jewelry stores than you could count selling everything from pearls to crystal and all ranges of quality. Our guides took us to a reputable pearl wholesaler. We decided to purchase a couple of pearl pendants and some pearl earrings. Then we decided to wander around the shopping area and finally had lunch at McDonalds. When you are in China for 2 weeks, sometimes you just need comfort food. We took a taxi back to the hotel. Megan spent about 45 min. playing in the Mattel room.
As a general rule, China has definitely become more economically developed since we were in Beijing in 2005. Pretty much everything is more expensive. Even the exchange rate is less. We got about 6.71 RMB per $1 US and in 2005 it was about 8 RMB per $1 US. You can still find cheap stuff, but the quality is poor. Most of the Chinese dress just like Americans, especially the young people. I would say that the girls/women tend to be a little more dressy than we would be. One of the sad things about China’s development is the # of smokers, especially men. I don’t think I saw any women smoke. Our guide in Nanchang said that 80% of Chinese men smoke. This was very evident in Nanchang, but not so much in Guangzhou. I would imagine the lung cancer rate is very high. They don’t have any of the social norms about smoking (like not smoking in front of children or pregnant women) like we do in the US.
At 4:30pm, we all met on the 2nd floor of the White Swan hotel for the obligatory “red couch” photo. I’m not sure where this tradition originated, but every family that I’ve ever read about that adopts from China takes a “red couch” photo, even if they don’t stay at the White Swan hotel. I would imagine it has something to do with the fact that the White Swan is essentially the China baby hotel and someone just started taking pictures there and it stuck. I thought that the “red couch” was some fancy couch that was something akin to a shrine. Not at all. There are actually 4 red couches that are just out in the open for people to lounge on just off of the lobby. Most people dress their children up in traditional Chinese clothes. We picked a lavender qipao (traditional Chinese dress) for Megan. First we took individual family pictures with our babies. Then we lined up all the babies on the couch and on the couch cushions on the floor. This is the one that everyone talks about. Of course trying to get 10 babies to cooperate for this ordeal is no small feat. Poor Megan. It was nap time and she could hardly stay awake. She did fine for our family picture, although she didn’t smile. For the group baby pictures she was literally falling asleep as we were taking the pictures. She would nod off and then catch herself and try to sit up. It was pretty funny. One of the other families got about 15 sec. of it on video so we have to try and get a copy of that. We also took a group photo.
After Megan took her much needed nap, we headed off on a Pearl River dinner cruise. We had very nice seats at the front of the boat and sat with another couple from CCAI. The food wasn’t very good, but the cruise was very nice. The evening was comfortable and there was a breeze. Megan fell asleep on the bus on the drive back.
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