Dr. Sun Yat-san .

Bonjour, aujourd'hui nous sommes alle visiter la place ou le Dr. Sun Yat-san a ete enterre. C'est un beau parc dans une magifique montagne. Splendide mais beaucoup trop de marches.

Nous sommes retourner du parc vers midi trente et nos deux enfants ont sauter le diner pour aller droit au lit pour la sieste. Ils s'etaient endormient en auto sur le chemin du retour.

Samuel continu de faire du progres. Il a eu droit a son premier bain avec sa soeur et papa. Il n'a pas aimer au debut mais il a terminer son bain en etant confortable dans l'eau. Nous sommes aller souper dans un restaurant que nous avons trouver Lundi. C'etait tres bon. Ils nous ont montrer le poisson vivant avant de le faire cuire afin de nous montrer que le poisson est tres frais.

Une bonne journee en general encore, demain nous avons une autre visite en matine.

A plus tard.

Hello All,

I didn’t post last night because my son wanted me to hold his hand through the bars of his crib. I wasn’t going to pass that opportunity up, so I laid on the bed for 45 minutes with his little hand in mine. Heaven. Since those 45 minutes happened to be around 8:00 pm and since I need to keep moving around that time or fall asleep, I consequently…fell asleep and didn’t update Jie-Jie’s blog. So, worth it. Of course it is now 4:00 am and I can no longer sleep :-0.

So, today we visited Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen’s tomb. It was stunning. It felt so good to be in a quiet, park-like setting surrounded by huge trees and green bushes. We felt fantastic as we pushed our children’s strollers along the wide ‘avenue’ toward the tomb. Then we saw the stairs :-0. Of course we knew there were 392 stairs up to the tomb, but to see them rising up in front of us was a little daunting….Jean-Pierre carried Jie-Jie in his stroller up the stairs and I held the handle part of Eva’s stroller while mom carried the bottom part. It helped that there were some parts of the climb where we could push the strollers up a ramp that ran between sets of stairs. Anyway, we made it both up and down without anyone getting hurt or throwing out any body parts. That evening we went for supper at our new favourite restaurant just down the street from our hotel. We ate there for the first time on Sunday. That was quite an experience. Sunday morning Jean-Pierre had been out scouting for places to eat because the suppers at the hotel are very expensive and not very good. We went out for a good meal with our guide one of our first nights here, but that restaurant wasn’t heated (we could see our breath as we ate) so we didn’t want to eat there again. Anyway, we decided to try the restaurant that Jean-Pierre had seen. We were very concerned about what we might get though because we had had quite an experience at lunch.

At lunch that day we decided that we just wanted a plain old bowl of noodles so we struck out in search of some. We ended up in a little ‘restaurant’ in the subway system of the city. The person who spoke token English was placed before us and with much hand gesturing and laughing we were finally able to order noodles with 'diced chicken'. They diced the WHOLE chicken. To our surprise, we found feet, heads and eyes in our noodles. Imagine if we had ordered beef and noodles! I have to say, Mom was a real trooper. She ate a lot of her chicken. I ate all the noodles and not much of the chicken. Jean-Pierre sat there with a glazed look on his face and didn’t eat much of anything .

So, you can see why we were slightly hesitant to order when supper came around. Anyway, we were tired and hungry so we jumped in with both feet. The restaurant brought out their token English speaker, but she actually spoke English very well. Not a bad start. Jean-Pierre insisted on having something with chicken or beef, but our ‘guide’ kept suggesting fish. We finally gave in and ended up ordering fish, rice and vegetables. The woman was a little worried because she didn’t think that would be enough food, but we insisted so she placed our order. A few minutes later, a young waiter came over to our table with a LIVE fish in a basket. We started freaking out. We figured he was going to cut it up right there and we’d have to eat it. Our reaction had him scurrying back to the kitchen, likely wondering what the hell those foreigners were going on about. The vegetables came out first. I think it was bok-cho. It was delicious. Next was the rice with shrimp, peas and corn. Also very good. Finally the fish arrived. It was both gorgeous and delicious. It was kind of deep fried with an incredible sweet and sour sauce on it. Wonderful.

O.k., O.k., now the good stuff. Jie-Jie continues to settle in beautifully. We are reaching the magical 3 day mark and it shows. We had a few tears yesterday when he woke up from his nap, but that may have been because he had wet himself (perfectly understandable since he hadn’t had the chance to pee before he fell asleep in the taxi and then we put him right down for his afternoon sleep). Anyway, wet pants gave us a good opportunity to give him a bath. We had made overtures toward bathing on Tuesday afternoon, but he wasn’t having any of that. He went running from the bathroom like his pants were on fire when Jean-Pierre tried to take them off and he wouldn’t step foot in there again while Eva and Jean-Pierre were in the bathtub. Since he was clean when we got him, I’m sure he wasn’t afraid of bathing. I think his reaction had more to do with the feelings of vulnerability being naked bring.

Anyway, he cried a little and insisted on sitting on Jean-Pierre’s knee for the first half of the bath, but by the end he was enjoying himself. I was glad to finally have the chance to get him naked so I could get some cream on his dry, dry skin.

He seemed more relaxed and comfortable once the bath was finished too. That evening he was cuddling more with Jean-Pierre and he sat on my knee to watch some TV. That little boy sure loves his Baba. Jie-Jie has never rejected me outright, but he has really bonded with Jean-Pierre. He searches for his baba anytime he goes out of sight and it’s so beautiful to see the way his face light up when Jean-Pierre comes toward him. (I have to say that Jean-Pierre’s face gets quite a glow too). Jie-Jie also prefers Jean-Pierre when he is unsure of a situation. At the moment Baba comes first, Mama second and Lao-Lao is starting to come up a close third. I can’t imagine that first place will ever change now. It’s so precious.