Tuesday, December 8, 2009
SHOPPING, PAPERWORK
AND HOT POTS!

This morning we ate breakfast for the first time as a family. It felt a little strange to be looking for a larger table. Opal shortened our time together by refusing to stop squeaking (a high pitched giddy kind of squeak) and Brandy brought her back up to the room for her first time out. That left me on my own to get food for myself, Amalie, and Sophie. Sophie helped me by promptly pitching the first sausage I gave her onto the floor (it slid off her tilted plate). I gave her a short lecture and picked up the sausage. “What do I do with this thing?” I thought. For a brief delirious moment I considered putting it back into the serving tray. Nah, can’t do that. Put it on my plate? Nah, I might confuse it with one of my good ones. I settled on handing it to the Omelet Cook. I handed it to him and made a face with a crinkled up nose. I think he understood and I hope he just threw it away. Either that or somebody got an extra special omelet.

After we had been eating for about 10 minutes Brandy arrived back at the buffet with Opal. I was relieved. I was afraid they were having an all out war back up in the room. It was good to hear that Opal just paid the penalty and didn’t make a big deal out of it. We finished our breakfast as a family and headed back up to the room.

We had a couple of hours before we had to be in the lobby to head to the Civil Affairs office to finalize the paperwork. I took the chance to go to the department store next to the hotel and look for a new camera. Brandy stayed in the room with the kids and started them doing some school work. I walked all around the department store looking for a camera. I must have asked at least a half dozen aisle girls if they had cameras. None of them spoke any English at all. They all just bowed and said, “Good Morning Sir”. I call them aisle girls because one is stationed at the end of every possible aisle in the store. There must be over a hundred of them in that huge store. That’s one way to keep unemployment at 2.6%. Just make jobs for everyone! I noticed as I was walking through the store that about half of the women were under 4’6” I’d say. Indeed, Brandy towers over many of the local women. She said it’s the first time she’s ever been able to see in a crowd. It’s the first time I’ve ever thought of my wife as being tall! When I finally did find an English speaking aisle girl she told me that they didn’t have any cameras. Oh well, back to the room.

When I got back to the room I started playing a game with Amalie. We made it up on the fly. I’ll call it “The Negotiation Game”. I said, “I’ll bench press you 10 times if you give me 4 kisses”. “OK!” she said. Ten bench presses, four kisses. Next I said, “I’ll give you 10 regular kisses for 5 butterfly kisses”. “OK!” She said. This kind of trading went on for about 10 minutes. Then Amalie’s negotiating started to really favor me. She said “I’ll give you a whole body massage if you give me 3 kisses”. “Really?” I said. “Yep” she said. Ok, this game is starting to get GOOD! The game slowly evolved to a point where Amalie was giving me massages and I was paying with imaginary money. She was thrilled, so was I! A classic win win!

After our game was over Amalie started to do some schoolwork of her own. I started to help Opal. She was doing a book that was teaching about colors. I was surprised at how quickly she was learning. At the end of the hour I could hold up a red, blue, green, yellow or orange crayon and she would say the correct color. I was AMAZED! We’ll see tomorrow how much of it she retains. We realized that we needed to get ready to head down for the bus so we called it quits for the day.

We took the bus to the bank to exchange the money and make the donation. Mandatory donation? Hmmmmmm………………Whatever. I was surprised at how much fuss they made over counting the money. It took almost an hour and a half just to get the money exchanged and the donation wired. Matt and Faith had to trade us one of their hundreds. The bank for some reason refused it. It was one of 61 bills. Strange. We gladly loaned them another one so that they could finish their business. The kids were going bonkers in the bank. Sit in a chair in a smoky room for an hour and a half? Not exactly a kid friendly activity. I am just happy to be rid of all of that cash. It was nerve wracking carrying it around. The girls actually handled all the waiting very well. When we were done we headed for a quick lunch at a McDonalds across the square. My girls consumed their happy meals and at least 15 packages of ketchup on their fries. Then we were off to the Civil Affairs office.

We finalized all of the paper work and got to ask the Nannies a few more questions. When Opal saw one of the Nannies she jumped off my lap and went running across the room and gave to woman a big hug. I could see that the she was truly happy. That particular nanny’s stock went way up in my eyes. I was very surprised that shortly Opal left the Nanny and came back over to me and crawled into my lap. She has bonded to me very strongly already. For that I am truly grateful. The proceedings here in Chongqing were much more formal than they were in Beijing. It was kind of nice that they made a big deal out of it. After all, it is a BIG deal!

As Brandy was finishing up the last details, Matt and I and one of his kids found a window looking down on the busy street and marveled at the crazy driving. Cars were 5 or 6 wide across four lanes. It looked like a free for all to us. How do they not crash? We were wondering out loud. When we left the Civil Affairs office our guide took us across the square again to a huge electronics store. There I purchased a very nice new Canon camera. We got an extra battery and a man at the store was nice enough to change the display language on the camera to English for me from Chinese. They assured me that the manual would have many languages in it. It doesn’t. Chinese only. I guess I’ll figure it out by poking buttons. That’s probably what I would have done anyway! As we left the store I started snapping pictures like crazy. It was nice to have a camera that would take clear pictures again.

We headed back to the front of the Civil Affairs building where we were to be picked up by the bus. As we stood there waiting I became aware of an awful smell. I was standing over one of the sewer grates. Sophie walked over to hug me, stopped, backed up, plugged her nose, and then told Brandy using sign that I stank. It took some doing to convince her that it wasn’t me. While I was explaining it to her, a crash happened right on the street in front of us. “Well, I guess they DO crash!” Matt said to me. All I could do was smile. Traffic started backing up very quickly and I started to think our bus would never get through. Not more than 2 minutes later, a second crash about 35 feet away. At this point it was total grid lock. Sirens. People arguing. People taking pictures of the cars with cell phone cameras. Total and complete chaos. The police moved that cars out of the way quickly and the pandemonium resumed. In a few minutes our bus arrived, cut across 5 lanes of traffic, and picked us up. Again we were forced to load on the street side of the bus. Our guide said, “I’ll go first.” I had visions of her flat as a pancake. Then our daughter Sophie bolted for the street. She was about to jump out from behind the front of the bus when I grabbed her. Actually I was a bit slow and if it had not been for our guide our daughter would probably be dead. I took her by the arm and gave her a stern lecture. Indeed I believe I scared her with my tone and body language. She just about gave me a heart attack! After a few minutes in the bus she was calmed down and back to loving Daddy.

When we got back to the room we made arrangements to meet for dinner and go for some famous Chongqing Hot Pot. Our guide took us to a local restaurant and ordered for us. The food here is famous for being very spicy. We got a “Half and Half” Hot Pot. Meaning half of it was mild and half of it was spicy. The food was excellent. Opal ate us all under the table. The nannies told us that she will eat whatever you put in front of her and that she doesn’t self monitor on the quantity. We had to cut her off before she ate so much she would burst! I talked myself into trying some of the spicy half. It wasn’t the hottest food I’ve ever had, but it was close. Too bad my friend Shane Heidemen couldn’t be here. He would have loved it. Suffice to say it gave me a runny nose! Towards the end of the dinner, Matt’s son Charlie decided to see if his playdoh would float in his orange juice. “Uh Oh” he said, as it sank to the bottom. The look on Matt’s face gave me a good belly laugh.

We walked back to the hotel. Tonight Opal was the first to be ready for the bath. She is settling in nicely. After their bath the girls settled down to sleep much quicker tonight than last. Right now all three are snoring like crazy. My secret weapons for staying awake to type our blog? Chocolate and Pepsi!!!! I hope you all enjoy the pictures!

Still going strong,

Brandy, Ted, Amalie, Sophie and Opal