The first day of the rest of our lives

The first day of the rest of our lives

 

We were told that Kangnan woke at 6AM, and we found that he was prompt.  He'd slept through the night without any noise or movement as far as I could tell.  At 6AM, that boy awoke, sat up quickly, yawned, stood up, immediately grabbed his toy car and started running it around the room.  0 to 60 faster than any car I know of!  No tears that morning--just busy being a boy.  He grabbed his Lightning McQueen car and started flying it through the air, shooting down imaginary spaceships, making his own sound effects.  He looked out the window at all of the buildings below, and laughed at the pigeons flying by.  We took him to breakfast at the hotel, Chaz carried him down the buffet line, showing him all of the dishes to see what he'd like.  The buffet was, I believe, pretty typical Chinese fare--most of it looked similar to Chinese lunch and dinner.  He didn't seem interested in much until he saw the watermelon, then he nodded his head vigorously and smiled.  Chaz got him some watermelon, some juice and a fried egg.  The kid is a good eater, but he doesn't hoard food and he doesn't overeat.  He may shake his head "no" at new things but he will always try a bite when we insist.  Jeremy and Maddy were really anxious to help him feel at ease, so they'd fetch him juice, and cut his watermelon, and help him take the seeds out of his watermelon.  We spent the rest of the morning in the room, getting to know him and playing with him.  We found out really quickly that this kid needs to burn off some of his energy--he never stops moving.  We found out that the hotel didn't have a pool, and we couldn't let Kangnan run up and down the hallways without disturbing the other guests, so we decided to investigate what looked to be a park a couple of blocks away.

 

Along the way we bought some purple sneakers for Jeremy in a shop off of the street, where only one of the salespeople knew a few words of English.  Gestures will get you mostly there, we found, so it wasn't a problem.  All of the people in the shop just stopped to stare at us, and the one girl who spoke some English seemed to be the envy of the rest of them, because we were talking to her.  There were plenty of people who had set up tables or areas on the sidewalk where they were trying to sell things, mostly cell phones.   There was a large pedestrian bridge over one of the streets, which I was grateful for, as crossing the street was something that I was dreading.  Eventually we did have to cross one part of a really large intersection.  This proved to be tricky, because the road had three lanes in each direction, plus two bike/moped lanes on each side, and not everybody is convinced of the necessity of obeying the rules of the road.  The bicyclists and moped drivers seem particularly unconcerned with stopping when the lights tell them to--they just keep going.  And they go in unpredictable directions--you can be sure that if they're supposed to be going in a specific direction that SOMEBODY has decided that they're just going to go in the opposite direction, so you have to look in ALL directions when you're crossing a street.  This doesn't seem to bother anybody--the cars that are affected by all this wrong-way-ness just honk, as they wish, people get to where they need to go, and somehow nobody gets hurt.  It's a miracle.  A loud, honktacular miracle. 

 

 

 

The park was very well-maintained, but we found that the few grassy areas were fenced off with mini picket fences.  There were no slides or swing sets, and the only flat areas that you could run around on were covered with concrete pavers.  We opted for walking around part of the large lake that we found in the center of the park.

Everywhere we went, people stopped and stared.  Some people smiled at Maddy, but mostly people just pointed and stared.  I think that except for the other American couple, we were the only white folks for miles.  Lots of miles.  Quite a few people pulled out their cell phones and took pictures of us, mostly of Maddy.  A few of the braver ones would attempt to speak to her in Chinese, and a couple of the fathers with small children would actually speak in English, although they only knew enough to say "Hello" or "How old are you?". 

 

 

 

 After about half an hour of walking, our popular princess started to get really whiny, so we headed back to the hotel.  If all of those people could understand how much whining she was doing about all of the popcorn and candy that we wouldn't buy her from the stands in the park, and the talking-to she was getting due to the whining, they might not have been that anxious to take her picture.  I certainly wasn't--I pretty much just wanted to honk at her.

 

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at one of those itty bitty stores and bought some milk containers that came with a toy car, some sodas and Chinese junk food.  We got a tremendous amount of empty calories for $7. 

 

 

 

We spent the afternoon playing peek-a-boo, cars, and trying to teach Kangnan our names.   He was so cheerful that I wondered if it was just a defense mechanism to help him cope with his loss--he didn't cry or seem to mourn at all that day.  We found that he loves to dance to music, and wants people to join in with him.  He also knows when he's doing something that he ought not to be doing, because he'll get an impish smile on his face, and try to hide what he's doing.  He is, however, very good--when you tell him "Boo" or "Ting hua" (listen to me), get him to sit still and look you in the eye and tell him to calm down (we used both hands palms down, as if we were trying to push something downwards) or tell him to be quiet with the apparently universal finger-to-mouth "shh" noise, he'd get suddenly still, say "Oh", nod his head, and stay still and quiet.  For up to a minute.  I think that's about all you can expect out of an active four-year-old who's cooped up most of the day.  We got him to watch some more Cars 2, he'd dance to the music and laugh at the appropriate spots.  We played more peek-a-boo and THEN he discovered the joys of wrestling with his new big brother.  Jeremy and Kangnan spent ages wrestling together, both laughing the whole time.  It was wonderful seeing them bond, and I think that was the turning point with Kangnan's unwillingness to be touched.  Jeremy wasn't wearing a shirt, and Kangnan suddenly discovered that Jeremy is very ticklish when you stick your finger in his belly button.  So tickling matches ensued, and we were all cracking up by the end--that little guy has the most infectious laugh! 

 

We had dinner at the hotel, and some of the dishes looked suspiciously like leftovers from breakfast and dinner.  They came around with the roasted lamb and beef again, so it was good.  They had small desserts, some of which were meticulously decorated and quite yummy.  They also had some ice cream--vanilla, strawberry, some not-very-chocolatey chocolate and some purplish ice cream that tasted vaguely berry-ish.  I asked what it was, and the maitre d' had to fetch his iPhone, type the name into his translation app, and show me the English translation.  Taro.  I had no idea that taro tasted like berries.  Or was purple.  Must look that up sometime.

 

After dinner, Kangnan wanted to touch Maddy's hair--he couldn't get enough of playing with it and flipping it.  She put up with this very patiently for about 10 minutes until he started to get a bit rough, then we had to tell him "Boo".

 

We watched Cars 2 some more, and Kangnan climbed into bed with Maddy.  He squeezed into bed behind her, leaned up against the headboard and wouldn't rest until she leaned up against him.  He watched the movie, stroking her hair and shooting glances at Chaz and me, smiling, and hiding his face behind his hands. 

 

We went to bed a little after 8PM.

 

The view from our hotel room that evening:

 

The building with the pyramid looking thing on the left had fiber optic lighting running up the edges of the building and would change colors in streaks running up and down the building.  Here is the same building close up during the day: