Bringing Home Elora: Day Six - Saturday, April 20, 2013

The weekend! What do we do with all the free time? Before we came here, we heard a lot about Shamian Island. The island was previously home to the U.S. Consulate section that handled adoptions, so many adopting families previously stayed on the island at the well-know White Swan Hotel. The island is a scenic area and somewhat removed from the busier part of the city. The consular section has now moved to another part of the city, though, so much of the tourism to the island has slowed down. It is still a popular area for photo shoots though.

We decided we would walk to the island and check it out. It is about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. We had gotten the general idea of how to get there from Mr. Li, and we hoped we wouldn't get lost going or coming back. Heidi's sense of direction is much better than mine, but around here we both feel pretty lost because it is all so busy and looks the same to us.

There are stairs up to a bridge that crosses over the highway and takes you over to the area. We found our way there with no problems. Once we got there, we decided to basically just walk up the middle of the island and get a feel for the place. Not too far into the walk, Elora started telling us she needed to potty. She does very well with all of that and has been a real trooper everywhere we have gone. We were freaking out some though because we were having trouble finding a potty for her, and she was quite grumpy about it. We finally found one for her, but the experience left us all a little leery of being too leisurely during our visit there.

The restrooms in our hotel are very clean and nice and just like what we have at home. When out in public, though, the restrooms are often less than desirable to use. They have the squat toilets that are flush to the ground and often have no toilet paper. Additionally, the stench is so strong in many of the bathrooms that you seriously don't want to breathe. Many of the bathrooms just make you feel dirty and kind of scared to even touch the fixtures to flush or wash your hands. The restrooms we found on the island were as I just described, but we were still very thankful to find one for her.

We saw a Catholic church on the island, several wedding photo shoots taking place, and we ate at Lucy's. It is a diner here that is known for its Western food. I fumbled my way through ordering my first plain burger since arriving in China. It definitely wasn't like home, but beggars can't be choosers :) Elora is still loving french fries. You know an American family has adopted a Chinese girl when you see her using chopsticks to dip her fries in ketchup...LOL.

There was a playground right outside of Lucy's that Elora was able to play on. She was kind of wild there, just bouncing from activity to activity. She runs around yelling at people and doing what she wants. It is sometimes horrifying to think about what she may be saying to people :)

After the playground, we started walking back and took some more pictures on the way out. We then walked back to the hotel. We took a different way back and got disoriented for awhile, but got back on track quickly. On the way back, Heidi finally found some rice bowls she liked so we picked those up. We then got back to the room around 2:30. We had to make sure we were back by 4:30 p.m. anyway, because our laundry was supposed to be dropped off then. It came back on time and we were very pleased with the service. Everything was folded so nice and plastic wrapped. We estimate it cost about a quarter of what the hotel would have charged us.

Later that night we decided to try and go to the hotel rooftop pool. It was warm enough outside, but the water was just too cold to really swim in. Elora still had fun sitting at the edge of the pool with me kicking and splashing. At one point she decided she was going to wash my arms and legs. They must have really put her to work in her foster home. She is always busy and working so hard.