Dinner

One of the great things about our hotel --and there are many, in fact, this hotel is not open to the public, only businesspersons and dignitaries such as the Trickles-- is its proximity to the city center. It's a 15 minute walk (more, since I'm carrying and extra 35 pounds of Yaojie + whatever he's snacking on at the time :) Tonight, we walked with the other adopting couple to dinner at a food-court type place. I found some delicious looking noodles and rice dishes that I knew we would like. I tried to motion to what the chef was preparing in the wok and then point to myself and shake my head "yes". Can you believe he did not understand this sophisticated means of communication? :) The chef and other workers kept asking me all sorts of questions, none of which I understood (which reminds me, Ni Hao Kailan really failed me as preparation for this trip --all I can say is "red" "hello" and "slippers"...) At last, he made the dish. Now I had both dishes that I wanted but when I went to pay, they motioned me towards a kiosk. After standing there, befuddled and smiling for a long while, I understood that I had to pay elsewhere and went to pay. At the kiosk, they showed me a sign that said to use a debit card. I presented my credit card and they said "NO". Nor did they want cash --what does a girl have to do to get her boy some noodles? In the end, I realized that you have to prepay on a card and then use the card to buy the food... *duh*, makes sense to me now! My victory at securing the food was short-lived since that's when Yaojie spotted the orange pop and threw himself right down when I told him "no"... here we go again! People lined up to stare. I was just about ready to call a cab and head home --Yao wants me to carry him everywhere, which I happily do, but it is taking a toll on this out-of-shape mom!! Anyway, he calmed, ate his noodles, ate our rice, ate the meat, even ate onion soup with one hand and chocolate ice cream with the other. Things were good. My happy little boy was back. That's when he had an accident in his pants and because this is painful for him, he screamed our in pain continuously. I ran to the bathroom, mentally determining how I was going to get him home pantless. We get in the stall, discard the diaper and realize the. stall. has. no. toilet. paper. In fact, there is not toilet paper in the entire room. Luckily, the other mom came to the rescue. The same thing happened on the way home and I had to change him in the public hard. As I mentally calculated just how much money we would have left after I had to post bail... But all in all it was a happy day. Yes, there were tantrums, but that is expected and also far surpassed by the love, smiles, and joy that the day also brought.