We didn't have anything scheduled today because our two guides were taking other families to other cities to apply for their children's passports. Because of that, we had the luxury of sleeping in and wandering downstairs for breakfast at a leisurely pace.
The girls enjoy feeding Xiao Yu. And he enjoys being fed. At this point, we know he will eat almost anything put in front of him. We have started to limit his intake of watermelon (which he loves) because it is causing issues "later on".
After we were back in the hotel room, we decided that we needed to do our laundry. Given the fact that the laundry service charges $4 to wash a t-shirt, $6 for a pair of jeans, and even $2.50 for one underwear (basically you can almost buy new clothes for the price they charge to wash), we decided to convert our room into a laundromat. The bathtub was filled with water.
And Elvin brought string just in case we needed to hang up clothes on a clothesline.
The kids busied themselves by playing. Generally all the kids play well together. However, also Karina and Gabriel sometimes pair off and Eliana pairs off with Xiao Yu. She has been really great with him, able to keep him entertained and laughing. She is old enough that she knows how to play little games that he likes.
Gabriel and Xiao Yu sometimes do play with each other. However, Gabriel is only 8 months older than Xiao Yu and sometimes they play tug of war a little bit. To give Gabriel credit, he is trying...here he is trying to explain to Xiao Yu how to navigate the iPad. He kept saying, "No, you don't do like this; you do like this!" But unfortunately Xiao Yu was not getting the memo and this made Gabriel frustrated.
We ate a light lunch in the room and put the boys to bed.
During their naps, Emily and the girls went out to go shopping for trinkets. Eliana got some sticker sets, pens, and other things.
Karina got a little doll with brown braids like hers. Gabriel got stickers of sushi and other food.
In the afternoon, we decided to go to eat dinner at Pizza Hut then do some shopping at Walmart. So we boarded the bus. It's easier to ride the bus for 2 stops rather than walk over a mile with our little kids. On the bus, we were impressed with the Chinese people's etiquette. Although the Chinese can be pushy in grocery store lines, every time they have seen Elvin and Emily carrying children and entering the bus, they ALWAYS give up their seats so that the adult holding kids can sit down. Elvin feels bad when young ladies give up their seats and insist he sits down on their seat.
Pizza Hut, here we come.
Hey, this menu doesn't look like the one back at home!
The pizza we ordered was a large half cheese-half bacon wrapped shrimp pizza. The white blobs are big pieces of mozzarella cheese. This is a so-called stuffed crust pizza. The kids ate the cheese half and they also had spaghetti and meatballs. They slurped down the noodles.
We found out that Xiao Yu has quite a baseball throwing arm, during dinner. Apparently he got bored, and so he chucked his water bottle clear across the table. It would have hit Erica if the aim had been a foot to the right. Then he threw his cup of crackers, and then went the metal knife. At that point, we removed everything from within reach. Also, he didn't enjoy being scolded and this made us think that maybe he has not been disciplined very much previously. The term "little emperor" comes to mind.
After we shopped at Walmart we returned home. We put Karina to bed early because she caught the sniffles today. We are hoping that she'll shake it off with a long night's sleep.
Tomorrow, we, along with a couple other families, visit the orphanage that Xiao Yu spent some time at. He lived in this orphanage until he was nine months old, when he went to live with his foster parents.
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