August 28, 2004

Subject: Saturday in China

Today we met the other couples at Breakfast and decided to go to the
kids store near Wangfujing street, near our hotel. Some of us were
running out of clothes since we had no clue what to pack, and we
needed shoes for Emma! So we all met in the lobby and walked to the
store. For the first time in a week it was SUNNY!! We could see the
sky!! And it was blue!! The past week it has been so gloomy and
foggy, but finally the sun was out and there was a breeze! The walk
to the store was very nice. Emma fell asleep on the way there. The
store is called Guo Jing Kids Stuff Store (I'm pretty sure thats the
name) and it's the store we went to on Gotcha day when we got our
strollers. It's a HUGE department store full of kids toys, clothes,
shoes etc! We first needed to buy some toys for Emma because she is
so busy and into everything! We found a soccer ball that's soft and
plays music for her, and got a very cute toy that is a tree house
but the parts of it are stackable and it plays music. Hopefully this
will keep her busy! We also bought her some shoes, since we didn't
bring any and her ones from the orphanage don't match all of her
outfits!! (Nah.. she needed shoes!) We found an adorable pair of
squeaky shoes that are blue trimmed in red and have a monkey on
them. The squeak is also a lot quieter than the ones she has now
which are very loud!! We also bought her another pair for her to
grow into. Emma has the tiniest feet!! Her shoes are a size 13 in
Chinese shoes, so that could be a size 2 or 3.. not sure yet. We
also bought her a very cute dress on sale for $78 yuan. When we met
the rest of the group, all of the girls had squeaky shoes on and
were so darn cute!! Claudio & Sera were watching Emma and I held
Kelly, Ray & Jeanne's daughter. Kelly is a BIG girl. And she will
only go to Jeanne and doesn't want to walk. So she is killing
Jeanne's back!! Kelly did go to me, but she preferred Sera (all of
the girls do) so Sera carried her all the way back to the hotel. She
didn't mind, she said Kelly would build muscle in her arms, just
from carrying her! Before we got to the hotel, we had lunch at a
place called Mr. Pizza which was good! Better than Pizza Hut!

Once we got back to the hotel, Sera pulled out her school books and
we did school. She's not too happy about doing school work while in
China!!

One of the highlights of today was when we were on our way to the
kids store, we found an Outback Steakhouse!! We went there for
dinner and it was great!! It's next to the Beijing Hotel, which is
very nice.. the girls were all tired so they walked around the lobby
of the hotel. The floor is almost glass looking and lights up from
the bottom and they loved that!!

One week from tonight we will be on our way home!! We're almost home!