Free day in Zhengzhou

Thursday, Dec 2

Today was a nice relaxing free day. Like a true member of the family, Zhilu slept in until 9:30 when we woke him up… we skyped with the girls again, then rushed down to catch the breakfast buffet before it closed. We are going to miss the breakfast here… the Guangzhou hotel doesn’t have nearly the selection as this one, and for foreigners who are picky eaters (like us!), breakfast is the primary meal of the day.

We first ventured down to Walmart to find a memory card reader and a stroller. I found a card reader, but it only cost 6 dollars so I was a little worried it wouldn’t work properly. But when I got it home, it worked fine, so we once again have pictures! Adam saw his first child held over a trash can in order to go potty… he said the child was about three or four, and right in the middle of Walmart, the dad lifted the child up over the trash can. Adam first thought that he was going to drop him in there! Nope, just needing to go potty… definitely a different culture over here.







We then decided to do Pizza Hut again for lunch, since we were close to it… we ended up having the longest lunch ever… about twenty minutes after they had brought our pizza, we asked where our other dishes were. In a comedic minute of trying to confirm with the waitress that No, we hadn’t already eaten them, we waited another ten or so minutes for Zhilu’s rice and Adam’s waffle fries (apparently, a huge treat here… “Western style” waffle fries). I visited the ladies room hesitantly, as most of the public bathrooms are very dirty and only have squatty potties. I nearly shrieked with excitement when I walked in, the bathroom was immaculate, and there was a Western toilet. Ahh, the things we take for granted back home! Pizza Huts are very classy establishments here in China, as opposed to back home. We brought our own soda this time, after the great drink fiasco of last time. I did feel wrong not purchasing drinks there, so we ordered Pepsi with no ice and then asked later if it was bottled. When she said it wasn’t, we just politely pushed them away, told her we’d still pay, and cracked open our bottled water. The waitress came back to the table later, and asked us why we didn’t drink it… she told us she had had other foreigners come in and not drink the fountain soda, and wanted to know why. We just told her we had foreign stomachs. Zhilu was SO tired at that point, he barely made it through the meal. So instead of taking a leisurely stroll down to the park, we headed back to the hotel for a nap.




Around 5:00, we got a call from Yisha, our guide, letting us know that our paperwork was complete. All the families met up, and we received our children’s official paperwork. We need these to bring to the US consulate appt next week, so we had to carefully review everything to make sure they were perfect. We also received receipts for all our expenses, and our children’s immunization records. Zhilu’s record was all in Chinese (some of the books would have the English abbreviations for the imms, so you could actually make them out), so I asked Yisha to translate the names for us so that our docs back home can make some sense of it.

After I got back to the room, we woke Zhilu from his nap and headed up to the playroom. He had a ball… he was rolling all over the floor, and doing somersaults. Cracking us up, as always. He was super generous with hugs and kisses too… we loved it. We then went back to the room, ordered up some fried rice for dinner from room service. I’m now working to get all the videos and pictures of the children from yesterday who have waiting families… I’m cursing this hotels slow internet right now. Its taking forever. I promise I’ll email you all as soon as they are ready, but it may be a few days. Hopefully, the connection in GZ will be better.



We are missing our girls like crazy… Adam will be home with them in only four days, but I’ve got 10 more. We are ready to be home now… living out of a hotel begins to grate on you… and although moving to Guangzhou tomorrow gets us one step closer to home, its just not getting me close enough. I would have loved to spend more time here, in Zhilu’s province, getting to know more about the area he came from. But we really got to spend very little time here, and I will be having an extended stay in Guangzhou where I don’t feel that same connection to the area like I do here. We will miss Henan, and look forward to returning in the future. Tomorrow, we catch a evening flight to GZ, and arrive around 8:30pm (I think), so I might not be able to update the blog tomorrow night if it takes too long to get settled in. Will return to regularly scheduled blogging on Saturday, though!