China Town in China Town?

If you can imagine going to China Town of an actual China Town, we did it. Today, we went to what they call the Pearl Market and did a little shopping. We had taken a taxi there and opted to walk back. On the walk, what we saw, ugh. We went through the Chinese herb section and saw things like dried lizard on a stick, dehydrated seahorses, thousands of them. Apparently this is considered an aphrodisiac. And as if we had seen enough, there was an open shop with three large trays, each having a different variety of scorpions in them. These were thousands of live scorpions being served up to the interested buyer and funneled into a jar. These things were on display in such a way that a child could accidentally fall into or place their hand into the batch. What a sight.

On our way back, we did our usual Starbucks stop, did a little souvenir shopping, picked up laundry at a local shop and then back to the room.


This evening we spent probably 45 minutes going from restaurant to restaurant trying to decide what place wouldn't turn our stomach. The first place outside our hotel had seafood and really I should call it "see" food, because everything that was being served was out front in fish tanks or buckets. Things like shark, eel, turtle and things that I don't want to describe. My attention focused on one container on the floor in which I had to look closer thinking it was small turtles, but then realizing that it was large water beetles swimming around. As you can imagine, we opted to come back to the hotel and decided on the restaurant that we normally eat our breakfast at.

We're back now and all are in bed and I'm heading that way. Very tired.

Today, Emily has become noticeably more comfortable with molding into our family. She was instigating teasing and playfulness on most every occasion. She was actually searching ME out on most occasions to get my attention and tease with me.

It was a most interesting day. The river that our hotel is situated on, "the Pearl", is lit up tonight with every shop and tree shining all it's lights. Why on a Tuesday night, we don't know. It wasn't like it last night.

We had a funny misunderstanding the other night. Each night the staff comes to the rooms to provide an extra service. Well, the first time we experienced it, we were in the room and they knocked. Ana answered the door and they stated what they were here for. Ana turned and told us that there were hear to give us the "$10 dollar service". We all looked at each other and later discovered what they were trying to tell us was the "turn down service". We had a good laugh. The service was to remove the bed covers, place a towel at the foot of each bed with slippers and put chocolates at the head of the bed in a persimmon looking container. They probably did some other things that we weren't aware of.

Before we called it a night, Ana, Andrew and I went up to the 27th floor and looked out over the river. Ana got some shots and I shot some video. It likened to the Vegas strip.

I forgot to mention that around noon today, all the adopting families in our group got together for what they call the "red couch" photo. It's just us all gathering with the kids for a photo to remember the occasion by.

Goodnight and good day.