I am not so brave after all!

First, I want to say that when Charles posted that “we” woke up at 2:30, he meant himself and Mia.  I woke up at 1:00 in the morning, wide awake.  Big bummer!  BUT…we did NOT make it to the 7 or 8 p.m. we had planned last night.  We ate “dinner” around 3:00, and were passed out in bed by 4:30.  We were starting to feel physically ill from lack of sleep, and Mia…let’s just say…HAD to sleep! ( I think jet lag is still with us because none of us feel 100%.)  For an extra added surprise, around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. the turn-down service rang the doorbell a few times, pounded on the door and ended up breaking the safety latch hinge, sending the screws flying in their attempt to come in and get our beds ready for us to sleep in…hmmm…  I guess from now on we will remember the Do Not Disturb sign!  The “funny” part about that is that on any normal night, I may have peed in my pants out of sheer FEAR.  All I did was barely open my eyes and think to myself that I sure hoped they stopped making all that noise soon.  I remember thinking once they saw us in the bed they would go away.  THAT is NOT a normal reaction for ME!!!  I seriously would have flown out of the bed, heart racing, freaked out on any other night!  In the morning when I asked Charles how he liked our little “interruption”, he looked at me with a puzzled face and said he thought that was a dream.  My hero!  I am glad he was here to protect us!  ;)

 

This morning, Charles was taking a nap already at 5:30 a.m.,  I decided to get ready for breakfast, so I plugged my flat iron into a different power converter than I did last night.  A few minutes into heating, the converter started making an odd buzzing sound.  All the sudden, the converter literally shot out of the wall at me, landed on the marble floor, and one of the metal prongs broke in half vertically!  I have NO idea how that could happen, but I am pretty sure I could have started a fire.  I went running out of the bathroom to tell Charles, but he was snoring and missed the whole thing.  That man can truly sleep anytime, anywhere.  I envy that!  (BTW, my flat iron appears to be fine, THANK GOODNESS!!!!  My hair is naturally somewhere between wavy and curly, in a cave-woman kind of way.  Not pretty.)

 

We went down for the breakfast buffet shortly after it opened at 6 a.m.  I mean, when you wake up at 1:00 and 2:30, you are HUNGRY by then!  (Plus, our dinner was at 3 in the afternoon!)  There was an impressive selection of food.  I am not brave when it comes to food, so I passed on most of it.  Charles was as brave as always with the food.  Poor Mia, the milk addict.  They mostly serve soy milk, YUCK!  She can’t stand that, and I can’t blame her!  We found what seems to be “regular” low-fat milk at breakfast.  She did drink it, but it does not taste like milk does back home.  Also, not sure why, but the egg yolks are kind of orange instead of yellow.  Breakfast was good, though.  And this time, the coffee was not horrible.  Whew!

 

We moved to a non-smoking room on a non-smoking floor.  I can still smell it, but it is much better, and I am not as stuffed up in the nose department!  I am taking a break from unpacking and ironing right now.  I am going to iron Kennedy’s clothes next!!  Probably the first time I have been excited about ironing!

 

OK, now on to the REAL reason for the title of my post.  We ventured out to Walmart today.  OMG!  I do not know if I can muster up the courage to do that again!  I am not so brave in a foreign country.  This city is the most authentic area of China we have ever been in.  People who understand and/or speak English are very few and far between.  In Guangzhou, particularly on Shamian Island where we stayed the whole time when we were here to adopt Mia, is geared more toward adopting Americans.  Many people smiled at us and were friendly.  Let’s just say the looks we get on the street here are, ummm, not quite the same.  I was actually scared.  I was thankful we did not have to cross the street, but the underground passage to the other side of the street was very intimidating to me.  When we emerged on the other side of the street, people were even less excited to see us than near the hotel.  Walmart was actually underground as well.  Very odd.  The smells, I cannot describe.  The layout was the most random arrangement possible and we struggled to find anything.  At one point, there was a lady handing out samples of chips with chopsticks.  She was popping them right in people’s mouths!  I am the queen of germ theory, so imagine my horror when she came somewhat aggressively at Mia waving that sample in her face.  I said no thanks as nicely as I could and pushed  Mia quickly out of the way.  (Random memory, I was frisked with a hand held metal detector at in the airport in Guangzhou, and when she was done, she pushed me out of the way.  She did it to Charles and Mia too…so I did not take it personally…but WOW!) Anyway, back to Walmart.  People were pointing and staring like crazy.  We were looking at stuff on one row where a lady was stocking the shelves, concentrating hard.  She turned around and saw me, got caught off guard, did a triple take, nervously said “Ni Hao” (hello) and started giggling!  I had to laugh!

 

When we finally found the check-out lanes, we were REALLY the center of attention.  There was a gaggle of older women together at one register staring and pointing at Charles.  One of them called someone on her cell phone and was obviously telling someone about us.  It was funny.  What was not so funny was the not friendly woman behind me who looked me in the eye and then hit me in the back of the legs with her cart.  I moved a little and she did it again.  I positioned my foot discreetly to block it from hitting me as hard, so she pushed it harder.  She finally switched lanes.  Not sure what THAT was about.  I will say, there was a small handful of people, mostly teens and young adults, who actually smiled and proudly said hello in English.  There was one older woman when we were walking to Walmart who was walking her dog.  That is not a common sight.  I smiled and pointed the dog out to Mia, and it caught her attention.  She said hello in English, then caught up with us a few steps later to say good morning in English as well.  She looked so proud of herself and it was cute!  The dog, was adorable!  Of course, I LOVE dogs!!  Oh, and we saw the cutest little Corgi running around without an owner.  Too bad we can’t bring him back with us!!

 

When we made it back to the hotel, the relief I felt made me realize how truly tense I was during the whole adventure.  Last time, we did everything like that with our guide.  Now I know why.  Lesson learned for me!

 

Time to get back to unpacking.  Mia is hovering over me, imagine that.  She wants me to post for her and say that loves and misses everyone so “really, super much”!

 

Please excuse any typos.  I am not in to the whole editing thing here.