Day Eight - Monday, April 22, 2013

Today we had our US Consulate appointment.  We had to meet Mr. Li at 7:45 a.m.  That was an early one for all of us to get up and around in time.  We were still able to fit a brief Skype session in with the family back home though.  Poor Elora had to cut her breakfast short and was very tired all morning.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, traffic here is always crazy and I'd hate driving here.  Mr. Li is an amazing driver.  I've been in many big US cities, but I've never seen traffic flow like it does here.  The people walking, the bikes, the cabs, the buses and the other cars all over the roads but it somehow works.  Every time we go anywhere, there are about 30 times that if I was at home I would be certain we are going to wreck.  Somehow though, Mr. Li and the other drivers just squeeze the cars in everywhere.  He has also had to park us in some seemingly impossible places.  I truly am impressed every time I ride with him.  I'll have to post some videos of it if I get a chance.

This city is huge, too.  Traffic flows decent because of the way people drive, but it still took us an hour to get across town to our appointment.  Mr. Li could not go into our appointment with us, but dropped us off at the entrance.  We went in and again we were in a loud room of crying kids and adopting parents.  Something else I forgot to mention before is the adoption system here really is a well oiled machine.  We have these appointments, and here in this city of 10 million people, we continue to run into these same families we've seen since the day we met Elora.  Today was no different.

Anyway, we were feeling pretty lost and hoping we didn't miss our name being called when a lady came to a window and began providing instructions for us adopting parents over the loudspeaker.  After her announcement, she had all of us recite an oath affirming that all of our papers and information in conjunction with the adoption were true and correct.  They then began calling names individually.  We were elated when Elora's name was the first to be called.  We went to the window, signed a couple of things, and were sent on our way.  If all goes according to plan, Mr. Li will be able to pick up Elora's passport and visa and our other needed documents tomorrow afternoon for us to fly home as planned on Wednesday!

After the appointment, Mr. Li was kind enough to take us to another special shopping area.  We made a couple of purchases, and he took us back to the hotel.  While driving around, we asked Mr. Li about those mad phrases Elora kept saying.  He didn't really have an answer based on our terrible pronunciations.  Later on, though, Elora said them both and he laughed and told us what they were.  We were right, our little sweetie isn't always being as sweet as she looks...DaBenDan means "Stupid!" and DaPiGu means "spanking."  She thinks we're stupid and is threatening to spank us!  Nice!!!  Now that we know what she is saying, she apparently thinks many things are stupid.  I looked online and it says DaBenDan means "Big stupid egg" and that it is a very bad insult.  Now every time she says it when we are walking down the street we are mortified...LOL.

We also asked Mr. Li if he knew why everyone would have been looking up on the pedestrian street by our hotel, or if he saw anything on the news about it.  He stated it may have been because of the earthquake in another part of China.  I told him no one was looking at the screens though, and it appeared everyone was looking up at one of the apartment buildings.  We told him there was an ambulance there, and we wondered if someone was threatening to jump or something.  He said that does happen from time to time, but it would not make the news.

After making it back to the room, Heidi and Elora ate at the Guangzhou Restaurant near the hotel.  Another neat place where I gladly watched them eat. (From Heidi: The menu items were: gyoza, a beef and black bean stir fry, and a noodle, tofu, veggie dish.  Elora seems to really love beef, so that's why I chose that dish.  However, she didn't care for it.  She LOVED the pea pods in the tofu dish tho.  And she is a noodle monster!  I think I will be carrying a pair of chopsticks in my purse when we get home....) Heidi took Elora to the restroom and they waited in line.  When it was their turn to go next, a lady in a red shirt came in and began yelling back and forth with the cleaning lady at the bathroom entrance.  The lady in the red shirt then got in front of them and continued her tirade.  Another lady got in line behind them and seemed embarrassed to even be around the scene.  A stall opened near Heidi and Elora, and the lady behind them told them to go ahead.  Heidi had no idea what the yelling was about.....uncomfortable situation, but there was no sign of the yelling lady when they left the bathroom.  The cleaning lady smiled at them on the way out, so all's well that ends well.

After their meal we walked around again checking out some more stores.  We finally walked into the Pepsi Sports store.  It had intrigued me since we arrived.  I am such a soda guy, and I just had to know why Pepsi had a sports store.  It really was interesting, as the store even sold Pepsi shoes.  I don't recall seeing any Pepsi for sale there though...LOL.

We hoped we could kill time so housekeeping would be done with our room.  They still had not come when we got back, though, so we decided when they showed up later we would go out and find me something to eat.  It has become like a daily activity to try and stay out for awhile in the afternoon for housekeeping to come.  Elora keeps the place pretty clean anyway.  She likes to take baby wipes and scrub underneath the desk.  It must be really dirty under there.  Poor thing, I don't know how she'll tolerate our house.  Oh well, the real housekeeping came later and we went out again.

We decided to try this hole-in-the-wall pizza joint that had on their menu a "typical American" pizza.  I was skeptical, but I was tired of the Pizza Hut.  Although pizza sauce stills seem to be in short supply around here, their pizza was amazing.  We really liked it.  I wish I had found it my first day here :)  Oh well, I'll probably go back one more time before we leave anyway.