Seeing Guangzhou

Guess who loved her bath!!! I was fully prepared for a battle when we finally decided to try a second bath for Sadie. She had completely freaked out when we gave her the first one and we had decided it would be ok for her to be a little dirty for a few days so she could get comfortable with us before trying it again. She was so happy in it. It must have just been how scared she was of us in the beginning that made her so fearful of us bathing her. She played and splashed around, and I think she may have been taught to bathe herself. She would splash her hands down in the water then rub her face, then down to the water and rub her ears, legs, etc. 

She is still fearful when she goes to sleep. Up until the last couple of days, I think she was so exhausted by the time we laid her down that she would fall asleep so fast. Now that she is more comfortable, she takes a little longer to go to sleep so she is fighting the crib a little more. While we would at times let our other kids cry it out if needed, we are staying by her crib when she needs it until she falls asleep, and trying to be next to her crib as she wakes up. We are trying to teach her that we are in charge, and she does need to stay in her crib and nap when we tell her, but that we are here and she is not alone. So we rub her back or lay next to her crib and she seems to do fine with that. She wraps her little arm around the stuffed bunny we brought for her and she still has been using a paci to sleep so she stuffs that in her mouth and sleeps really well once she relaxes.

Walking around the city last night we were all commenting how much more welcoming this province feels. In Guangzhou you will occasionally pass people of all different nationalities and this seems normal here, where in Shanxi province I think we were the only non-Chinese people we saw and we felt pretty unwelcome most places (though our guide and the hotel staff were super nice, as well as several others we came in contact with).

Getting ready to go to dinner with the other LL families

Playing in the hotel

When we checked in to the hotel, they gave us a gift that they give all adopting families...
a backpack for Sadie with a nice little bib, this stuffed panda with a chinese outfit on,
a water bottle, and a marshmellow panda on a stick. Sadie likes kissing the panda.

This girl gets sillier every day. She likes running around, loves being tickled and tossed around, likes when we imitate her and imitates so much of what we do, and she thinks it's really funny to make crazy noises and growls. I think it's pretty funny too.

It is also a pretty funny thing to see her eat noodles. She slurps them down so fast and says "AH AH!" for more. She also does a funny little "aaaaaah" sound after she drinks a sip of water or milk. Like you would hear someone make after a really refreshing gulp of something but its almost every sip! Love it.

We are wondering if her foster family called her "Mei Mei". They didn't mention it, but this nickname means "little sister" here in China and is used often. We had planned to call her Sadie Kou-Kou (pronounced like Cocoa) for awhile to get her used to her new name. They told us the family called her Kou-Kou and this is typical of her orphanage. (They use the same first and last name for all babies born in a particular year, and their nicknames are usually the middle name repeated twice). However, she doesn't respond when we say Cocoa, Cow-Cow, or Q-Q, all of which we have heard it pronounced by locals. She has looked in the mirror a few times though and pointed saying "Mei MEI!!" Since then I have tried calling her that several times and she always looks at me. So who knows! She is starting to respond to Sadie as well so we are calling her Sadie some and also Sadie Mei Mei at times.  

Here is a picture of our hotel lobby. Very nice.

And while there were no grits on the breakfast buffet as hoped, it was still very good and had plenty of breakfast type foods.

This morning our guide took us, along with the other 5 families, to the Pearl and Jade market. These are wholesale markets with a massive amount of pearls and other jewelry for wholesale prices. There was an outdoor area with lots of stores and an indoor area which had 6 floors, each floor with over 100 stores. We had one hour. The pearls below were in one of the stores...a little overwhelming to try to make a fast choice, right?

We got a strand of pearls so that if Myah, Sadie, and/or Carter's future wife would like to wear them on their wedding days, they will have them.

Jade for wholesale prices and then discounted for families that our guide brings

Such a huge market

a whole shop of oriental turquoise :)

Sadie seems to really like the carrier. She does well in crowds for the most part but if a stranger gets too close she will sometimes get nervous and start to whimper and squirm. I just squeeze her close & she usually calms down pretty quick. I think she just needs to know she is staying with us and that whoever comes near is not going to take her.

Next we went to see a family home from the Chen Dynasty. The carvings throughout it were amazing. There were a ton of shops with different Chinese things. The best was a shop with paintings by local artists and one unique artist there doing his work for people to see and purchase. He did these little paintings with black finger paint and the side of his hand. They were really neat looking and strange to watch him just hit the paper in different ways with the side of his hand and end up being a landscape or something. He also painted scrolls. Some were paintings done by local artists I think, and he would hand paint a name on it in Chinese. Others were blank scrolls and you could choose what you wanted him to write. We got a couple of these but I don't have pictures yet because our group ordered several so he needed time to finish them and will send them to our hotel.

This guy was interesting. He had this brush thing and he was painting Chinese characters
on the sidewalk with water. I'm not sure what he was writing, and it would dry and disappear.

The hand painting

you can't really tell in the picture but each one was a different landscape...they were neat looking

The artist with one of the scrolls

Two things we really miss (besides our family of course!), cold drinks and good air conditioning. Apparently the government regulates when buildings can have cool air and when they can have heat! It took awhile to figure this out...we kept trying to blast the cool at our other hotels and it came out as heat so we would just try to get some cool air in from outside. We packed more winter clothes than summer clothes because predictions were for colder weather but apparently 40 something here feels MUCH warmer than 40 something at home. And here in GZ the temps are 60s-70s. This hotel does actually have some cooler air blowing rather than hot, but it still won't get super cool in here. I guess it is good, we will have to ease Sadie in to our cold temperatures in our house anyway! They don't seem to like things cold to drink here either. The little fridge in both hotel rooms has only slightly cooled the drinks, and we can't drink things with ice because of the water. We actually have both forgotten and brushed our teeth with the water at least once and been ok...neither of us has gotten sick at all here which is great! But another dad in our group told us today that his friend thought he was good and then a parasite showed up a couple months after returning home!! So we will continue to take our probiotics daily and avoid the water!

Yesterday there was a terrorist attack in Beijing at a train station. So sad. Thankfully we are no longer in Beijing but please continue to pray for safety.

God is teaching me a lot about Himself and about trusting fully in Him through this process. I love how He gives us just what we need when we need it.