So, Freakouts, Outings, More Monkeys, And A Passport For Gracie!

Okay, I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, you may have read about Matt’s mini freak-out. For the record, I want to clear up a few things: 1. Gracie had the meltdown, it was actually, that she needed lunch. From Matt’s description, it wasn’t clear who was melting down. 2. I didn’t look at Matt like he was a dumbass, but it was sweet that he thought that I did. :)

Okay, once we got through the paperwork / nap, we decided we just had to get out of this room. We went out with a few others and encountered pretty much all the families at various locations throughout the 6 block radius that we have all felt pretty comfortable walking around. I will state for the record, after coming up from the Walmart side of the street, there was not one but TWO spider monkeys hanging out at the top of the stairs!

We were out for about two hours. It was way colder than the 47 and sunny that they keep calling for. I’d say we were at about 38, and of course, as soon as we were about 5 blocks away at a park, it started to rain. It was light, but very cold. So, more department stores… It’s all very Americanized, but there are tons of sales people, everything is really a hard sell, and everything is a negotiation. This is all exacberated by the fact that we don’t speak each other’s languages. Eventually, we wound up getting Gracie these cool piggie shoes (she was born in the year of the pig, so it’s in all the stores right now). Also, we found this cool little red cordouroy snowsuit, very Chinese.

Good news about our outing:

a. I only got yelled at by one Chinese lady, who wanted Gracie to look like Ralphie from a Christmas Story.

b. Gracie was completely chill the entire outing. She was not happy while we were in the room, there was nothing that we could do to appease her. As soon as we got her outside, she was all giggly, waving to her fans and generally content hanging off of mommy’s hip (in the hip hugger).

c. The monkey’s didn’t seem to notice us, so we avoided an attack!

d. I finally realized that I’ve been wearing my newly acquired wool hat, backwards. Hey, Kristen was so full of it when she said that sleep deprivation needs seven weeks to really kick in… We’ll talk after I leave my running shoes in the fridge..

Tomorrow is a travel day to Guangzhou. It’s only an hour flight, but it will be a long day, by the time we pack up the carry ons for Gracie, get to the airport and deal with our first flight together as a family unit, then check into the hotel. We’ve heard that there are some pretty cool things you can get near the White Swan. There is a family portrait carved in stone…(nope, that won’t affect the weight limit at all…), there are poeple that paint the kids from photos. I wanted to try and find some original artwork for the house, I know another family that did that, and it was just very cool. We also really need to get on the “gotcha day” gifts.

Gracie’s passport just arrived, whoohoo! One step closer to becoming parents on the US side!