Ladybug Adventures

Saturday, November 12, 2005 7:13 AM CST

Subject: Our last day in Beijing

Today we met our guide at 10:00 am and went to tour a Hutong. A hutong is the old style neighborhoods in Beijing where cars are not allowed because the streets are too narrow. The only transportation in a Hutong is either by foot, bicycle or rickshaw. Our guide hired us two rickshaw drivers and a Hutong tour guide who showed us around for about an hour. Believe me, a ride in a rickshaw is definitely an experience. We got to visit a beautiful park, a kindergarten for the hearing impaired and the home of one of the residence all in the Hutong.

It was amazing to see the home of this family in the Hutong. It was very small and very basic. Yet the lady of the house told of how their life had gotten better in the past few years as they now can afford to own two television sets. One in the small living room for her husband and one in the small bedroom for herself, so she and her husband would not argue over what to watch. :) She said that she and her husband, both in their early 60's are retired and together they receive a pension from the government of equivelant to about $300 US for the month and that is enough for them to survive.

There was another tour group there at the same time we were, who were from Australia. While the lady of the house was talking, Xue Zheng was more popular with some of the Australian ladies than the tour. They were very interested in the fact that this was our second adoption and thought it was great. They lady of the house was also happy that we were adopting Xue Zheng. She kept telling us Xie Xie (Thank you) for adopting her and pointed to her and Lisa's chest saying we had a good heart. She also liked seeing the photos of Emilie and was very pleased to see we had adopted two girls from China.

Our guide then took us to the shopping plaza down the street for pizza at Pizza Hut. She ordered for us and paid the bill and then had to leave, which brought on Xue Zheng's first and only melt down for the day. It is a very helpless feeling to be holding a screaming child in a Pizza Hut 6000 miles from, especially when everyone around you is watching and can understand what your child is saying, while we can not. She finally calmed down after about 10 minutes, only after we gave her some Sprite. We have found that they started her on soda much earlier than we would have preferred and she is very much attached to the sweet drinks. One thing we will need to work on when we get home, but are tolerating at the moment since she has had so many other changes in her life this week and many more to come as we prepare to take her from this culture she is so accustomed to, into a very unfamiliar environment for her.

After pizza, we stopped by a small ice cream stand to get a small cup of ice cream to share among the three of us. And of course, Xue Zheng loved the ice cream. We have not found a sweet thing yet that she does not like. :)

We brought Xue Zheng back to the room, so she could take a nap and she slept for nearly 3 1/2 hours. Steve decided to go for a walk while Lisa stayed in the room with Xue Zheng. Steve walked from our hotel down to one of the gates of the Forbidden City, which is only about a 10 minute walk. Steve took a few pictures around the gate of the Forbidden City until the batteries went dead in the camera. He then returned to the hotel and when Xue Zheng and Lisa woke up from their nap, he went to get some KFC for our supper. Pizza Hut and KFC are a pleasant change over the authentic chinese dishes we have been having all week. Don't get me wrong, the food we have had all week has been very good, but something somewhat familiar from home has been a great change.

We are in the process of trying to get everything packed up into our suitcases. As tomorrow we meet our guide at 9:15 am where she is taking us to the airport to catch our flight to Guangzhou. So this will be our last post from Beijing and if we can get everything to work we will post again tomorrow from Guangzhou.

Emilie, mommy and daddy love you and miss you very much!

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Xue Zheng