Today was a day of firsts and the only thing on our scheduled itinerary was a group trip to Nanchang's SUPER WALMART (insert Jaws theme song here.)
First thing before starting out we decided to unstinkify Juni with a wee bath. She reeked of a combination of cigarettes, sweet sticky something and dirt. It went over like a soggy wet blanket. We'll have to work on that one. Maybe our boys can show Juni how fun bath time can be.
After bath, she seemed to be much better and we had a little walkabout. Oh by the way, Juni is stuck to Mommy like glue. She screams if I leave her sight and seems to be scared of men in general. She is slowly warming up to her Daddy though and even allowed him to feed her squashy bits of banana and hands him toys today. Each day seems to get a bit better.
After a quick bite to eat in the lobby restaurant, we were off to Walmart. For those of you at home, this might be one of my least favorite things to do on the planet. Right up there with sawing off my own head. At least this trip was visually interesting and filled with new adventures.
Like this man working on a chair, on top of a scaffold.
And city folk, dragons and neon.
Juni was so excited that she passed out on the way there. (Isn't she beautiful?)
Here it is, lurking behind this giant tree.
Picture the biggest Walmart you have ever seen, a few stories high, sitting on top of a KFC with 8 billion chinese people inside. Oh and loud chinese pop songs blasting on the radio. And EVERYONE was staring at us. Apparently, not too many blond people walk around in Nanchang carrying a chinese baby. They stare right at you from a foot away. We also had our first granny police moment, where elderly ladies came up and started touching Juni and chattering about how many layers of clothes she has on. Chinese culture dictates that you must swaddle babies in about 20 layers of thick padded Michelin Man clothing before venturing out in any weather below 50 degrees. We had Juni in a big fuzzy flowery suit with a warm hood and they gave us a smiley thumbs ups. Whew. They did, however, pinch my arm about my lack of warm snow suit.
Chinese New Year Promotional Fanfare
Chinese New Year starts in 9 days and so stores are stocking up with incredibly bright red and gold decorations in pretty much everything. It's great to be here with this feeling of excitement in the air but we are bummed that we are flying home the day before the New Year celebrations begin. Our guide told us that nearly half of the cities' populations leave to go home and visit relatives in the rural areas for this nearly two-week long celebration. They've already begun testing fireworks in Nanchang.
Side note, I've never been able to pick out a tasty turtle or deep forest-green frog for my dinner at our local Walmart. Steve and I had a great time exploring and giggling about items for sale such as entire flattened ducks in a bag, whole dried pigs heads and baby lotion with snake oil in it.
The Jin Feng Hotel
Just thought I would throw a few photos of our hotel in here. It's pretty large, glossy and apparently people can smoke everywhere. In the front lobby is this huge blossom display with red envelopes hanging from its branches. At Chinese New Year, there is a tradition of putting money in red envelopes which symbolizes happiness, wealth and good luck.
Juni with her friend Ruthie. All the girls came from the same orphanage, Fuzhou Social Welfare Institute in Jiangxi Province so they may have played together in the past.
The five families in our group decided to have a play date after nap time and we all got together in the kids playroom on the 11th floor. All the babies have changed so much already and you can see their personalities starting to emerge. At one point another little girl tried to come up to me and Juni literally batted her away from me and seemed to be implying she didn't want to share her mommy. The other families thought this was a great sign of bonding.
Juni is now passed out next to us on the bed. She throws an absolute fit if we try to place her in the crib next to our bed. Last night, she held my nose or ear for most of the night when she wasn't pummeling me with her tiny feet. Good thing she's so cute.
Tomorrow we are off to visit Teng Wang Ge. Go Google it. :)
Love you all.
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