A Day at the Park

I suspected that today would be a good day when Kate woke up smiling. On previous days, she woke up like me and Sam, which is slow and a bit groggy. Today, when Dawn greeted her with the usual “ni hao, mao mao”, she scooted off the bed and showed off her toothy grin. We visited a local park this morning, and she agreed to her first stroller ride! We saw lots of interesting stuff at the park: 20+ kids playing in a kiddie pool full of little goldfish that they could catch with nets [so cute], and a group of 60 year old women playing hackysack [I joined them and they schooled me], and a cool old man with a parrot. Kate let me give her some water at the park; it was a scorcher, so desperation can be a magical thing! Overall Kate had a great day.

We broke up our routine of only Chinese meals and hit up Subway for lunch; one of a few western restaurants near our hotel. Kate wasn’t into the sandwich but she liked Pringles and she loves apples. Tonight she let me give her some ice cream, which was a tender moment given my fondness for ice cream. Beyond the Subway and 7-Eleven ice cream, the food here has been fantastic. Our guide Elvin has taken us to a Chinese restaurant for lunch & dinner every day, and Dawn captured it well: we think the places are legit because they’re full of Chinese, not westerners, but Elvin is probably ordering some of the tamer items on the menu to appease the gringo palate. Last night we branched out with some pigeon – very tasty! Tonight we had 3 more families join our group [they had been in Beijing meeting their children], and tomorrow I think 4 more families arrive, so tomorrow night we will be “that group” of Americans piling out of the tour bus.

Kate had another big break-through tonight: her first English words! During their bedtime ritual, Dawn was reading a simple word book to Kate, and she started mimicking almost everything Dawn said. She did really well with apple, ball, and cat [she’s clearly advanced and wanted to start in alphabetical order, even though the book is not organized that way]. She has her ups and downs, but hey, it’s been only 6 days since her world was turned upside down! She’s such a sweetie and we’re having a lot of fun getting to know each other.