A Visit with Friends

This morning we realized what a celebrity Kate is here in Guangzhou. We went to the “pedestrian street”, a labyrinth of open air markets and mall-type stores. Kate got plenty of attention, and our friend told us that the comments were very consistent: “she looks like a foreigner”, and “she’s pretty.” Our friend was a young girl who approached us about a block from our hotel and asked if she could practice her English with us. We’ve read various things about such encounters; certainly most of them have pure intentions. Well, our friend was very helpful and stayed with us for about 2 hours! Kate warmed up to her quickly, and she eventually carried Kate [which Dawn’s back applauded]. Most Chinese seem to think that Kate is our biological daughter, and are surprised when we tell them that she speaks Mandarin, not English.

Kate was walking more today, and continuing to be more confident to explore new things. She’s acting more like a toddler now, which means she doesn’t want to sit still at dinner [it takes me a long time to fill up eating with chopsticks] , and she likes to leave her mark in the hotel room or store by leaving stuff strewn everywhere. She seems to feel much better after 3 days of meds, although it seems Dawn got some of the bug with some fever & coughing. We are so glad that Kate is showing more of her true self. I convinced her to give me about 3 high-fives today – her first voluntary contact with me. She treats Chinese men the same way, so at least I don’t feel singled out. J

We had a really fun visit today with 2 of our friends who made the trip up from Hong Kong: Ruibin & Tracy were classmates of mine in grad school at Duke. It was great to catch up with them in their homeland and introduce them to Kate. Our reunion had a bit of a “Small World” feel, 8000 miles away from our first meeting, sipping green tea instead of Durham’s finest sweet tea. While chatting about our various jobs, I was reminded how refreshing it has been not having a vibrating Blackberry on me at all times. And the “great firewall of China” blocks us from Facebook and even Blogger [big thanks to my sister Sharon for posting our updates], so we feel quite out of touch. We learned via email that our son Sam rode his first horse [the non-carousel variety] and got his first bee sting today, so he’s making the most of his summer vacation!