A whole lot of a fun and a little bit of mourning

We found that not only does Kangnan know how to wash his hands, he knows how to brush his teeth, and he LOVES to brush his teeth.  He will sneak into the bathroom, giggling, grab his toothbrush and start brushing his teeth, when he knows that it's not time to brush his teeth.

On Wednesday night, I decided that I'd try to trim his nails with him awake, just to see if he was used to that, and if he'd trust me enough to let me do it.  I took the nail clippers and got his attention.  I squatted down next to him, pulled the trash can over to me, and cut one of my nails, he watched attentively.  I then gestured to his nails, and he looked me square in the eye and held out his hand.  He insisted that I at least look at each nail.  We did all of his finger and toe nails, no worries!  When we were done, he looked at me with his adorable grin and gave me two thumbs up.  I said, "Good BOY!" and held my arms out and gave him a hug.  I leaned my face towards him, and he leaned towards me and gave me a kiss.  That knocked me back--we'd been working diligently on getting him used to contact and felt that we'd made some small progress and here he was, giving me a kiss.  That one moment made all of the waiting and all of the paperwork, and the jet lag, and the worry, and the honking at ungodly hours of the night, worth it. 

Thursday morning our guide took us back to that park to show us the kid's section.  Kangnan has progressed so far that when Jeremy holds out his hand, Kangnan takes it and holds on.  When Jeremy lets go, Kangnan searches for his hand and grabs it again.  Melts my heart.   Physical contact that you take for granted with a biological child who has been with you since they were born becomes so much more significant with a child that you've only known for a few days.  You want to make up for so much lost time, and you realize just how big the little guy's heart is when he trusts you enough to WANT to hold your hand after he's only known you for three days.

The park that we'd visited earlier in the week was so much larger than we'd imagined.  The kids and Chaz went on a very large ferris wheel, and they went on a couple of small kiddie rides beyond that.

Inside the ferris wheel:

We paid the equivalent of one dollar to let Kangnan ride on one of those bouncy horses that used to be so popular in the US before everybody realized that they were really pretty dangerous:

There was a double-decker carousel:

We saw lots of people out doing Tai Chi to music, one particularly interesting group was doing a very long routine in front of a beautiful pagoda. 

There were several other large groups of people doing what looked like line dances with some soft martial arts moves, choreographed to some music.

There were some inflated water wheels that you could walk/roll across the water in...

Then there were groups of men doing some tricks with some plastic tops that made buzzing noises when they were spun.  The men would have strings which they would wind around the tops, and the tops would spin as they would manipulate the strings around their bodies, spinning and twisting.  We got a lot of video of some of these men, we'll get it posted once we get back to the states.

Everywhere you went in the park there were people with these tops, people dancing, people doing Tai Chi, people playing hackey sack, people playing badminton, people riding the rides, people walking, people taking boat rides. 

There was a small alligator park inside of the park, Maddy desperately wanted to go see the alligators, but we were having none of that. 

Maddy and Jeremy both wanted a toy mace that was half blow-up mace, half plastic nunchaku.  Maddy was wearing her traditional Chinese dress with her Very Fancy Indeed shoes, carrying her toy mace, swinging it over her head and announcing that she was a beautiful killer.  Indeed.  More people walked by with raised eyebrows and smiles.

We walked all the way around the park, it was probably at least a mile around--our main purpose was to burn off some of Kangnan's energy.

The weather in Taiyuan is beautiful--sunny, the air is much less "hazy" than Beijing and dry but not too dry.  Chaz Googled for "Taiyuan altitude" and found that it's at 1500m above sea level.

For lunch our guide was going to take us to a Chinese restaurant, where she would order for us, since nobody in Taiyuan spoke English.  We found that the restaurant was down for rehab, so she took us to a Brazilian barbecue restaurant and buffet instead.  The restaurant was on the fifth floor of what certainly seemed like a hotel.  The decor seemed very Chinese to me, but it was very nice-looking.  The buffet had some yellow watermelon and some pretty little formed rice cups that looked like flowers:

The waiters were wearing vaquero hats, and a tartan plaid apron with tartan accents on their uniforms.  That was pretty funny--we had four continents represented at lunch--we were North Americans in Asia at a South American restaurant where the waiters were wearing a traditional print from Northern Europe.  There were 24 kinds of meats available, the waiters would come around with the different meats on the spits, carve some out for you, and stamp your card indicating which meat they'd just served to you.  Our guide would always let us know what kind of meat was being offered.  We didn't stay long enough to try all of the meats, but we tried almost all of what was offered.

Our guide, Anna, translating into English the name of the meat that was being offered:

 

They had pork, chicken, bacon-wrapped chicken,

something that our guide just said was "seafood" but she didn't know the exact translation (we skipped this one, because "seafood" is just a little too broad), a vienna sausage-looking thing, a cut of beef that's used to make pot roast (this was really tender and very flavorful), roasted dumpling with a spicy rub, mutton (our guide kept pronouncing this almost as "marten", and I was not about to eat a bird, so we turned her down until we finally understood what she was trying to get through to us), a whitish mushroom soup with a sweet flaky egg bread crust on top, and finally, beef tongue.  That tongue was seriously over a foot long, and the tip of it was curled as if it were trying to lick the spit:

We would offer a little bit of everything that we tried, to Kangnan.  Sometimes he would shake his head, but when we'd insist, he'd try a bite.  He didn't always like everything, but he was so compliant and sweet about the whole meal.  Apparently he's learned the peace sign, because he started flashing it at us during the meal.

We ate dinner at our hotel.  Again.  After dinner we went back upstairs to watch Cars 2.  After the movie was over, Kangnan had a brief meltdown, crying for his Nana again.  We always remember that no matter how much fun we make sure that this whole event is for him, he's still lost the only family he'd ever known.  He can't really understand that his parents abandoned him, and that the family that he'd stayed with for most of his short life was just a temporary arrangement before he got to his permanent family.  We still can't communicate with him really well, and he still gets frustrated with us when he can't make himself understood.  He's such a sweet boy though--his foster family clearly raised him to understand boundaries, and to obey when grownups insist.  He plays with a lot of energy, but when he and Maddy accidentally bonk heads, and she cries, he goes and hides under the covers and is clearly very sad until she comes and hugs him. 

He's so full of joy and life that he's made this transition shockingly easy.  He always runs down the hotel hallways, spinning his left arm in a circle and hooting.  He wants to be the one to push the elevator buttons, and we frequently wind up making unplanned stops at every single floor.   He stops what he's doing every so often to turn to Chaz or me, and just grin.  He'll give us one or two thumbs up, depending upon how happy he is, and he INSISTS that we give him one or two thumbs up in return, otherwise we get a lecture.

He is such a joy.