Wednesday

Starting with last night . . . Kyle laid SongLian down next to CoraGrace and she fell asleep. She is not asleep yet but laying down tonight. Today we began our day with breakfast (looked more like dinner). Something interesting; the buffet charges by height not age. Anyhow; this method is all good if you have small, petite Chinese children. Not us: both Noah and CoraGrace are in the Adult height and both SongLian and Josiah over the free little kid height--darn. After breakfast we met with our guide and the other Lifeline family to head out for some touring. First stop the 6-something (sorry, maybe Kyle remembers) pagoda. It was 7 floors high: lots of narrow steep steps. Our guide told Kyle that the steps are made for Chinese people not "big foot American like you." :) The view was beautiful as we looked out across a river and back at the city. SongLian walked and walked between Noah and CoraGrace as we looked around the pagoda. She has them trained well-- getting them to lift her off steps as she giggles away. Our next stop was a green tea farm. We learned all about the growing, harvesting and processing and then had a tea ceremony. Apparently all we get in the United States is grade C green tea; today we all tried fresh grade A green tea. We even chewed on the tea leaves to aid in our digestion. :) There were several shops to visit at the tea farm. If we had any sort of interest in an item and walked away, how quickly the prices would drop: special for you. :) We came home, dug through the snack drawer and rested for a bit before both the other Lifeline family and us decided to head out by foot. SongLian's finding place is just a few blocks behind the hotel and I wanted to find something to put away for her from that area, so we headed off that way. Interesting how the shops changed in that direction. Along the street where our hotel is are nicer, fancier stores and new high rise apartment buildings. Reminds me of downtown San Fransisco. Everything is expensive (Hangzhou is a very rich town says our guide). Things change behind our hotel. Apartment buildings look older and smaller. The shops were small and had cheaper prices: more like China Town. It was fun to do some shopping there. We all headed towards Pizza Hut because our guide said they had lots of cheep Chinese food (and the menu has good pictures). So after all 10 of us parade through the restaurant and are seated we look through the menu and see NO CHINESE FOOD other than rice. What to do? Rice and pizza? We were not sure how the newly adopted girls would take to pizza so we used them as our escape and paraded out. Crazy Americans. We ended up ordering some food from the restaurant next door. Tried to find something on the menu other than rice and noodles (which both have pictures) and could only find pot sticker, or dumplings as they are called here (they were the best dumplings I've had here). Back in our hotel room we had some dinner and pretty much called it a night. SongLian had a great day with her brothers and sister. Kyle, Nonna and I all got the snub today. No more evil eye; just a giggle, smirk and a shriek. She was as happy as could be walking around with the kids help: enjoying being one of them. She walked down a whole hill of steps today at the pagoda between Noah and CoraGrace (quite impressive: I wish you could see this gal's determination). So today would be the day she enjoyed most being a sister. Yet, when it comes down to us she is quite comfortable with us all. She still prefers Kyle but is ok with me when he is not around. I got some lovely snuggles as I fed her an orange while Kyle waited for dinner. :) Tonight we put on tomorrows shirt to avoid the sparkle shirt issue (mean old parents). We also made her ride in the back pack carrier up and down the pagoda which made her not too happy. She fussed a bit and then stopped. Mean old Mom took away the candy a waitress dressed in Halloween clothing gave us as we made our escape. She forgave me when I gave her the orange. :) Well . . . the song of Hangzhou continues out our open window (just a bit quieter as our lullaby) --honking, banging, talking (people talk loud here--Natasha, Nola can't help it), both the garbage truck and the street cleaners play music. This is a very noisy city. But amazingly clean. Oh! And I figured something out today: those of you familiar with the "sparky crawl" in AWANA will know what I've talking about: that is what the traffic is like at each intersection, Only imagine that there are buses, cars, vans, motor bikes, bikes, and people walking. Some people pay attention to the signal lights, but not most. :) Picture man may post more pictures . . . :) Loving hearing from you! Eliza