Today we got a special treat and the boys woke up 5:00 A.M., SCREAMING. I know that any of you who have children, whether they are adopted or not, know about this phenomenon. In fact, this reminds me of a friend whose daughter would wake up at 5:00 A.M. every morning for years with night terrors. I know that at this moment he is smiling at these reports because he has told me that he is going to sit back, watch, and enjoy the ride…
Once the boys were up they required refueling. They need a primer before we go down to the breakfast buffet. So, we feed them rice cereal and bananas before we head down for the main course. As soon as the food is served they become different children. They continue to eat until Mary and I can’t lift our arms to feed them anymore. They are not shy about letting us know when they want more. They will start chanting Maa,Maa,Maa until they are given the next mouthful. Now this is different from MaMa which means mother in Chinese, which they also say. But that is about it. No BaBa which means father. I keep trying to get them to say this, even going as far as bribing them with food. But still no luck.
After breakfast, we went back to the grocery store for more food. If this is starting to sound familiar, that’s because it is. We are making regular trips to the store. So we carried the boys without the carrier today. It has been unbelievably hot here in Nanjing. The temperature hovers (hangs, because of the humidity) around the mid 90’s. This is every day. Our facilitator told us on the day that we arrived that it was the start of the rainy season. She said that it would last for about 30 days. We are hoping it does rain and that it cools things off but it doesn’t look like we can count on that. I did not get into any confrontations with the locals today so it must be a good day…
After the market, we did a quick tour of the local shopping district around our hotel. There are so many shops and booths that carry the same thing. It is amazing that anyone can survive in this business environment. The shops in this area are just like the ones in our malls or strip malls. The booths are similar to the booths at flea markets. Everyone is selling clothes, silk, jade, crystals and other assorted Chinese cultural trinkets. They come out of the spaces and try to get you to come into their space to spend money. We did a short loop because it just keeps getting hotter.
When we returned to the hotel we put the boys down for a nap. Mary and I took advantage of this time and went down for a nap too. This only lasted about one hour because Hao woke up screaming and woke up Ming. At least we got the hour, but after the nap we made another huge breakthrough. The boys got off of our laps and started playing with each other in the room . They were not hanging on us or requiring any type of interaction from us. Cindy walked into our room and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. No matter what else happens today we are feeling great.
Today we are scheduled for the first of two Nanjing city tours. Our tour of this historic city that is filled with structures, relics and artifacts started at Walmart. Yes, I did say Wal-Mart. So off we go with the other family that we are traveling with. We arrive at Walmart and find that there are three floors and it looks like a Wal-Mart. We bought some clothes because we traveled to China with only three sets of clothes for the boys. We didn’t know what size they were going to be and instead of wasting the luggage space we figured we could buy clothes here. After all, a lot of what we buy is made in China. We’re saving the import/export taxes. We bought a stroller for 89 Yuan (about $10) and some more groceries. After this we went to the most famous of the city gates, the Zhonghua Gate Castle of Nanjing. It was about 96 degrees and we were tired, sweaty and the boys were screaming. Once we got to the top of the gate we were treated to a spectacular view of the city. It is easy to see why these spots were chosen some 2500 years ago to defend the city. By the way, Nanjing like a lot of the other big cities in China was once completely surrounded by a wall. This was how they defended their land and people. Today there are still some amazing sections of wall in these cities. We saw some in Beijing and here in Nanjing. These sections are carefully taken care of. There is always some sort of restoration project under way.
We got back to the room and changed the boys and went down to dinner. Everyone knows what happens from here. After dinner we read the boys a story and put them to bed. They were exhausted, today was a busy day. We were able to put them to sleep very quickly. Soon after this Mary and I went to sleep. The last thing we said to each other tonight was that it would be great if the boys slept past 5:00 A.M. Cindy has got to be wondering what happened to the Mary that she used to drink frozen mudslides with at Tyler’s because were are like two old people.
