Mei Mei did great last night, as I mentioned in my previous post, she is no longer grieving and is sleeping well in her playpen all night.
We woke up early, had breakfast and headed downstairs to meet Grace and the Cole family to head to the U.S. Consulate for lan lan's and mei mei's appointment.
We took a van to the U.S. Consulate appointment which was about a 30 minute drive. Mei Mei did not want to eat much for breakfast and I am glad she didn't because on our way to the consulate appointment she threw up when we had gotten there in the van.I am not sure exactly why. I at first thought she may have been getting sick but once we got in the building, she wanted to have a mandarin orange that I had in her bag.
Anyways, we got sworn in and took the Oath. Shortly after we were called up to the window and we had an American officer interview us. We turned in all of Mei Mei's paperwork and the process was painless. Before you knew it we were done and off to the next place on our agenda.
On our way back to the hotel, Mei Mei threw up again (all 11 pieces of mandarin that she had eaten, poor baby) I figured out afterwards that it had to have been that she got carsick.
At 11:30am, we met as a group and headed to the Pearl market. The Pearl market was a great big market place with like 8 floors. I have to say that all the stores and malls here are huge and they have high buildings everywhere. Very Very high !
At the pearl market, we bought Mei Mei her very own Pearl Necklace and matching earrings. This is a gift that will be given to her the day she marries. Many years from now.
After shopping at the market place, all the families kinda went their own way and we invited Grace, our guide to have lunch with us. We went to a nearby Pizza Hut.
After lunch, we grabbed a taxi and headed to the Children's wholesale Market place. This was another huge shopping strip with clothes, shoes and anything you basically need for children. Basically, the only thing I was looking for were jeans for mei mei.
It took us awhile to figure out how to shop there. Since it is a wholesale market, you can't just walk into a store and buy one piece of clothing. They sell the items by volume. Hence, wholesale market. What they do have are bins outside their shop and in these bins you can find one piece items and buy them. We finally found a store that had jeans for mei mei... Such cute jeans too ! We ended up buying 8 pairs of jeans for $25.00 u.s. dollars. Super cute jeans.
After our shopping spree, we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel. It took us forever to get a taxi to stop for us. I think the cab drivers don't stop for Americans because of the language barrier. Seriously, it took us like 20 minutes to get a cab to stop for us and you pretty much have to get in the way and hope they don't run you over and then open the door to their car.
It was a long morning and afternoon. We were told by grace to all meet downstairs in the lobby by 5:15 as we were going to take our group picture from CCAI and also have all the babies take their pictures too. Not on the "Big Red Couch" like the one at the white swan but our imitation of it on the "Big Brown Couch" at the China Hotel.
After our pictures, we then headed out as a group to the marina to go on the Pearl River Dinner Cruise.
It was a nice 1.5 cruise with a buffet dinner. I did not eat the dinner because it didn't look that great but Mei Mei ate like a horse while we enjoyed the scenery of the buildings all lit up. We got to see the 2nd largest building in the world. It is a TV satellite building and I was told that there is a mid-point in that building that people are allowed to bungee jump... That is just plain crazy. After the dinner, a funny looking clown came out and entertained everyone by juggling and doing some cool tricks. Mei Mei enjoyed the clown, got a balloon and got to spin a soccer ball on her finger (I tell you, this kid is talented).
After our dinner cruise, we came back to the hotel and called it a night... We were busy busy busy !
Chong, Chong; Maya; Mei Mei; Lan Lan; Evan & Kyle
