tl;dr: A quieter day of sight seeing and shopping, we give Mama a bit of love early on then have a few issues and want Baba even more.
We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow as we are heading to Shangrao to visit Elspeth’s orphanage by van (4 hour drive each way) so I don’t know how long this update will be. As well I will probably not post too much information on our visit tomorrow as it is pretty personal and the person it most involves is only 21 months old and can’t yet tell us what she is willing to share with friends and family.
Now today started with a visit to the Pavillion of Prince Teng which is right beside our hotel (I mean you could probably punt a football from our hotel to the grounds) but for some reason this required a 20 minute drive through rush hour traffic. The humidity was crazy even at 10am but we forged on. This morning both girls were vying for my attention, so I got to climb the 89 stairs with a girl in one arm and one holding my hand. Luckily it was Elspeth the lightweight in my arm or I would not have made it up. We then rode in an elevator (7th century China was really advanced) to the top to catch the show. Katrine was fascinated, but it didn’t really hold Elspeth’s interest for too long, so you have to ask Heather and Katrine if it was any good. After the show we headed down a level for some retail therapy and Katrine got to spend most of her pocket money for the day. Down another level and Elspeth was getting a bit too adventurous for my liking so I picked her up (all 16 squirming pounds) and refused to put her down. Well that meant it was time to see if Mama was any better. And for a while, including a snackage and drink break, all was well and then it was time for Baba again.
We got back to the Hotel before noon, so we decided to do a bit of functional shopping to replace the SD card reader that decided not to work once we got to China. In the meantime Heather had a lie down having eaten something that didn’t agree with her the day before. Walking up to the local pedestrian shopping district we walked right past the stores at the beginning of the street we were supposed to go to, ate lunch at KFC (when in China eat American fast food) and finally found a Sony store to full fill our technological needs. We headed back to the Hotel with Katrine downing her second ice lolly of the morning (at only 16cents Canadian I don’t mind indulging her). By the time we got back to the Hotel, Elspeth was 1 hour past her naptime so we put her down an sleep was gained within minutes. At this point Heather wanted to continue her convalescence and Katrine was desperate for some Baba time so we decided to go for a swim. The only real problem being that Elspeth woke up, found that Baba was not around and had a mini breakdown. For the rest of the day she wanted me real close by. This does not bode well for tomorrow, but given the rate of change in China if we don’t go now we may never get another chance.