Touring Guangzhou.

CJ 11.28.2010

Touring Guangzhou A Little.

By the way… a note… I have noticed that I have way more pictures of Maria than I do Kimi on here… it is not because I favor Maria… but because she is much more calm and still that Kimi, who moves constantly with arms flailing… It is very hard to get a picture of her in focus at all. And seriously you all don’t really want to see all the pictures I have of her making faces and snot running down her nose… which I am not sure what that is about but, her nose is running most of the time these days… not from sickness, just running. But mostly because she is just so busy, that not only are we chasing her down, thus the camera is in the bag while we chase after her, but she turns and runs off as soon as we let go of her, which means its hard to get a picture of her face anyways… She’ll get better. She has to. She has a photographer crazy mama!

At breakfast we discovered these tough bread rolls that Kimi can eat on her own and it takes her a while to chew on… plus it lets her do all the biting and chewing she could possibly want!! Haha! so we put a couple in our bag for later for her!

We went to a park this morning. It was a beautiful day and the park was beautiful. My favorite part was the rose garden. Hundreds of rose bushes. Along the way I was giving Cordelia a lesson in photography. She said her husband likes to take pictures and they have some nice equipments but she doesn’t really know a lot about how to take GOOD pictures. So we focused on the rule of thirds and composition and a few lighting issues. She is so cute and was having fun learning. She kept wanting to try and take pictures so I could critique them! Heehee! So cute! We had a good time chatting and walking. Then we headed to the Pearl Market. Oh. My. Word. I have never seen soooooooo many pearls in my life… I mean bags and bags and strings and strings of them!!! Very cheap too. I beautiful 14 inch strand of small or medium pearls might be $100, however, I wasn’t willing to pay that much money out right now, so I bought a couple small bracelets for about $20 each. I know I am kind of cheap… but we don’t really wear a lot of jewelry in our family… its better to feed an orphan somewhere in the world for a year than buy pearls that you only wear once in a while. Or send Bibles to China, where only one Bible will bring approximately 25 people to Christ. We can always take the bracelets apart too and make another one or even make a watch band with them later. Its not something the girls will get for a long time either. Anyways it was so much fun looking at the MILLIONS of pearls they have there… there are 5 floors in a rather large mall and all the stores sell either pearls, or glass, or turquoise, or amber. It was so much fun! And so beautiful. Like the store of Amber. Amazing yellows and oranges and even dark reds! I had no idea pearls came in such an amazing range of colors either!! Purples, pinks, yellows, greens so pretty to look at in bulk! There of course was a jade store too, and I am drawn to it too, because of its beautiful green color. Finally, to Jerry’s delight we exited the building. Don’t get me wrong, Jerry likes to shop and he even bought the girls a little something, but he was tired of the pearls and the jewelry! Haha! We stopped into an embroidery shop. Where I picked up some little coin purses for less than $3 a piece. I really love the embroidery art! Especially the ones with the Lotus flowers and leaves, those are my FAVORITE!!!

So we walked along the crazy shopping plaza! Oh my!!! SOOOOOO many people… all with black heads. You would look out over the head tops and it was just all dark! So funny! Plus we are just a little taller than most of the Chinese. We stopped into a department store and looked realy quicka t a few clothes for Kimi, didn’t find anything, but we bought some wipes and I changed Kimi in their bathroom. Its so funny to have to change a 3 year olds diaper while they stand up… not so easy! Then we headed to the street where they sell the pets! Kittens, puppies, birds, turtles mostly. They had these white fluffy kittens there… so cute! Then we went by the street with all the spices and herbs you could possibly ever want! Tons of dried mushrooms and fungus in these huge bags! All kinds of weird things, dried star fish, dried lizards, other things I didn’t even know what they were. We went by the scorpions, they sell for food. We did not see any snakes, though, Alex and Anthony. Maybe they were on another road.

We crossed the mote to Shaimen Island we are staying on and decided to eat at Lucy’s again. Of course we asked Cordelia to eat with us. Where we ended up talking about GMO foods and the stuff from “Food, Inc.” They also have a problem with GM foods here in China and people know its better and want to eat organically, but it is about 3 times the money to eat that way. And no one in the city can grow their own because they live in condos. Which we learned… when people buy a condo they buy it for 70 years… then it goes back to the government. Weird, huh?

While we ate both girls decided to POOP!!! Oh my word! Both of them just exploded! We left right away and came back to the room, stripped them down and put them in the bath. I rinsed their clothes and Jerry took them immediately to be laundered! He also picked up our laundry from yesterday. It was about $14 for a good size plastic bags of clothes. Not too bad, considering the hotels we have been at charge about 5-6 dollars for a shirt! Once we got them all nice and dressed again, we headed down to the play room again. There were other people in there, so Maria just stood there until I had her come sit on my lap and mess with a toy a little. Then as soon as everyone left she got up and was running around screaming and giggling. Then when a Chinese lady came in with her 11 month old boy, Maria went back to “bump-on-the-log” again! Crazy kid!!! We left a few minutes later.

We came back and put the girls to bed, since they didn’t nap. Well, Maria napped about 15-20 minutes in the van but we were out all day! They were both asleep within minutes! It was before 8pm! Jerry went out to find something to eat I think… I journal-ed and then couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I laid down and fell asleep too. I figured he would wake me up when he came back in. It was just after 10 when he came back in, so excited he could hardly stand it! He said he was walking along this little street and there were a couple of shops there… he stopped for some reason in front of one of them and a llady came out asking him if he was the one she had seen yesterday who had adopted two special needs little girls, he said yes, then she asked him if he was a Christian. He told he was and she said she was too, but she had lots of questions, so Jerry spent all that time talking with her and helping her understand some things without his own Bible, using hers which was a Chinese/English NIV parallel Bible. If any of you know us you know we are King James Version readers, because of all the important things that are missing and changed in the new versions! However I am sure that the Holy Spirit brought everything jerry needed to remember to his memory. She told him he needed to preach these things at her church! Haha! She also asked him if he was a theologian! Hahaha! His answer, no, I am “just” a construction worker, but I study my Bible A LOT. She was rather shocked. She was so excited, and their meeting was 100% God ordained… we have been praying that we would be able to share our belief in God with someone in China. So jerry is going to find a usb drive to give her some info to help her with her studies. Yay!!!