Wandering in Wuhan

Before I get too far into today’s blog, I wanted to spend a minute saying thank you to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law who have been spending a lot of time this past week managing the troops at home.  On Wednesday they took several of my kids to a pottery painting store and they had a great time!

Mia, our youngest, very wrapped up in her project.

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Luke, who has been missing his “twin,” Caleb, working on a car.

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Riley and Leah working together.  Doesn’t seem that long ago that we were here in China adding them to our family.

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We sure do miss Jessie!  She was our under the wire adoption last trip, but wasn’t as close to her 14th birthday as Katelyn was.

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And Brittany.  She has been our companion on all of our Chinese trips except this one.  Seems a little strange to be here without her.  She was such a help here and continues to be a help at home on this trip.

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Today was a free day after traveling to Wuhan.  We are not really “free day” people, so these days are far from relaxing!  We don’t like to sit and rest.  We like to do.  So, after sleeping in for a little bit (it does appear at this point that everyone has licked their jet lag) we headed down to the buffet breakfast.  We are staying in the Wuhan Best Western.

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Buffet breakfasts tend to be the same from place to place overall.  Some places have a different mixture of Western vs. Chinese breakfast foods, but they are similar.  We stayed in one hotel when we adopted Caleb that was almost ALL Chinese breakfast foods.  That was a little challenging!  But this one was on par with most.

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Caleb, the kid that never eats breakfast, pounds the breakfasts in China!

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Thankfully, they have most of our staples from home, like strawberry mashed potatoes, for breakfast!

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We had to pay a little extra for a higher floor.  We are wondering what the benefit is of a higher floor since in means me spend that much more time waiting on the elevator!

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It is hard enough to keep one 10-year old boy from pushing buttons.  What will we do with two?!

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In Harbin we were in a tourist area with a large outdoor shopping plaza next door.  Now, we are in the downtown area of Wuhan and it is a lot different.  I wouldn’t say it is better or worse … just different.  Our hotel is surrounded by little shops.

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I realize that guy doesn’t look to happy with me for taking the picture, but he wasn’t really upset with me.  More confused.  Now, there were OTHER people today that were not very happy with my picture taking.  Stupid Americans.

There are also a lot of street vendors.  Here are two that are preparing pineapples for sale.

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This is the local knitting club …

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These shops span the gamut.  There are food stores, scooter repair stores, book stores, clothing stores, you name it.  Some of the ones that we saw today that we haven’t seen before were window replacements stores (seriously, these people must LOVE their windows) and construction equipment stores.  This one I liked just because there was so much STUFF in it.

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While there were not many scooters and motorcycles in Harbin, probably because the area we were in, they are back in force in Wuhan!

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Kelly remembered an Haagen Dazs sign somewhere on the way in, so we went off looking for it.

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We couldn’t find it, but we did find a little window that had KFC ice cream cones AND the second one was half price!  Bargain.

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The problem was that Ali first asked for three ice cream cones, and then Caleb decided he didn’t want one, so we changed the order to just two.  However, the young lady already rang everything up and didn’t know how to void the order.  So she had to call for a manager.  The change we needed was all of $.50RMD, which is pennies is US.  So we kept telling her not to worry about it.  That is another thing Chinese people are very particular about … exact money.  Don’t leave a tip, they will come chase after you to give it back.  So don’t expect them to let you walk away without your change.  After several minutes I had my coin.

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But the girls also had their ice cream!

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Kelly offered to take a shot with the kids and I, so we stopped on one of the pedestrian bridges.

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I took another in front of some of the gardens that we passed.

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I had to snap this picture of a couple of workers quickly so that they wouldn’t yell at me!

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Here is how you know that Kelly has been in China too many times.  Take a look at this picture.

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This is Kelly eating food from a street vendor!  I have to admit, I never thought I would see this day!  A lady was making bread and then sticking it to the inside of a heated barrel to cook it.  It was very good.  Here is a short video.

https://youtu.be/l-R8IgOkJIc

Miracles will never cease.  Since Kelly was so very brave, Ali and I had some pineapple off a vendor cart a little closer to our hotel.

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None of us have gotten sick yet, so I guess it was all ok!

We spent a few hours up in the hotel room.  Kelly and the girls working on origami.

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Apparently, Katelyn has quite the origami talent.

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Caleb and I playing Uno first and then Risk.

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When we couldn’t stand it any longer, we went back out for a walk in the rain to a large park up the street.

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At the top of a LONG flight of stairs …

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… there was an old fort and Caleb manned the cannons!

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Kelly and the girls had a good talk together, with Katelyn talking about how much she looked forward to going to America.  When Kelly pressed her on why, she said that she couldn’t wait to go to our house and see all the kids!  Kelly asked her at one point if her teachers at the orphanage had prepared her for the adoption and what it was going to be like.  She said that they had.  You can tell the difference that kind of preparation makes as the process has been pretty painless so far.  She did have a night earlier in the week where she cried out in her dreams several times and she told us the next morning she was dreaming about crying as she left the orphanage.  While it is nice to have a smooth transition, it is also a relief to see her grieve a little over the process.

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She also spent part of the evening learning how to say her English name.

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Caleb wanted to be photographed in front of everything in the park, including a rock!

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We came to a structure that I am sure represented key figures in the Chinese culture.  I doubt that anyone here would want children climbing all over these sacred structures, but there was no one around, so we let them have at it!

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Katelyn doing a little Mary Poppins for us.

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Everyone sitting in the lap of someone important.

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A final shot of the three on our way out the door.

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There were several temples in the park, but they were all closed.

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In front of one of the temples was a very pretty waterfall and koi pond.

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On the way home, we stopped for dinner in a little shop just outside of our hotel.  We had come across it when walking around earlier in the day and it was a very clean little restaurant run by what appeared to be a Muslim family.  The food was awesome and we fed everyone for about $10US.  We will definitely be back!

https://youtu.be/ykU7Z33vsAg

Sunday will be a day of sight seeing in town and then we will get Ashely and Charley on Monday.  Looking forward to growing as a family again!

Cameron