Well, this is our last post from Langzhou and Amy's province, Gansu. We have to check out of our hotel around 5am tomorrow to catch an early flight to Guangzhou to complete the American side of the adoption. Guangzhou is where the American Embassy is.
In the morning we visited an electronics market. Brent had fun looking at all the amazing bargains (hmmm) and he bought a copy of Microsoft Office Professional at a really great price! :-)
We just realized today that we had a map of the city in our room this whole week and we also realized we are within walking distance of the Yellow River and all the nice parks that lined it! We were almost there on a couple of our walks around the city just killing time. So after Amy's nap we walked to the Yellow River. I guessed we walked down cell phone row because there was nothing but cell phone stores on both sides of the street and hoards of vendors selling cell phones, mp3 and mp4s on blankets and cardboard boxes on the sidewalk. Brent had fun looking at all of those as well. I like looking at all the sidewalk vendors selling their wares. A lot of fruit that looks really good to me but I've been wary about buying any since I don't want to get sick. I've bought some local crafts off the sidewalk. Some people just sell socks, wouldn't think that is a booming business. Some sell newspapers, food, hair accessories and toys. I don't know if it was because it was Saturday or not but today we saw several vendors selling turtles and goldfish. I'm just going to believe they were being sold as pets.
Anyway. We got to the Yellow River and found ourselves at another Water Wheel Park that looked like a nice stroll but we had to pay admission to get in. It took us quite a while to figure out how much we were supposed to pay. After we paid, the lady gave us 2 yellow tickets or coupons. not sure what they were, and she made the motion of drinking. So I figured we get a free drink with our tickets so we stopped at every vendor and offered our tickets for a drink! It never worked. They always shook their head, pointed at a cup but wouldn't give it to us. We never did figure out what it was for. At the end of the park, there was an amphitheater where a lot of people were relaxing and drinking hot tea out of one of those cups. We tried to give our 'tickets' for one of the cups and we were again refused and we were told we had to pay for the tea. Oh well, a mystery we will never solve.
The park was very pretty, Amy enjoyed herself and we took lots of pictures. There were huge water wheels throughout the park and statues depicting everyday life that I really liked. There where a lot of fountains, but it got to be kinda funny because every time we'd see one in the distance we'd get to it and the fountain would just be turned off! I started making Brent run ahead to get a picture of fountains that were still on!
After the park we went to our standby, KFC. I usually let Amy just eat part of my meal. But we were all hot and tired from the long walk so I ordered Amy her own drink. She doesn't like carbonated soda so we ordered just an orange drink for her. It was served to her piping hot! We couldn't even touch the cup it was so hot! Our "sprite" was just carbonation, no syrup. It took them a couple tried to figure out that we like our soda with syrup, no ice!
We're slowly working on English with Amy. She can say her name and ours. She mimics me a lot so now she likes to say, "wow" and "yeah". Apparently I say "yeah" when she says something right so she thinks that is how you end the word. "Doll, yeah!" :-)
Today, Amy is wearing an outfit I bought for her here. It's a cute little dress but again the English doesn't make a lot of sense. It is a picture of Monchichi (remember Monchichi?) and it says, "Soul Kiss, CHU CNU" it was harmless enough so I bought it. I've been teaching her to say "Monchichi" all day and she says it so cute!
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