Dec

6

Day 4, Money & Wal Mart day

Filed Under Morgan | Leave a Comment

We woke up and missed breakfast trying to get ready for the day. Morgan got to eat but Becky and I missed out. Note: Eat breakfast not only is it the most important meal of the day it could be your only meal or best meal of the day. The rest of the trip I would eat at least an omelet and anything else that appeared American along with toast and orange sauce. They don’t call it orange juice it’s orange sauce. I wanted to get some juice for Morgan so I found a waiter and ended up paying about $10.00 US for a liter of apple juice that Morgan wouldn’t drink. Oh well I tried. Morgan would only eat baby food and some table scraps. She is a pretty agreeable little girl. Today we have to pay the fee to adopt Morgan so we got back on the bus and went back to the Civil Affairs Office. All the families in our group filed back in to the room where we had gotten our little girls. Then Kelly asked one person from each family to come with her to pay the adoption fee. You know we were told about how critical they were about the bills but I never expected what I saw. We entered a room there 2 young people sitting counting money. It was kind of intimidating they were very serious. I had brand new bills fresh from the mint. I even had to remove the original band around the bills to give them the money. They were hunched over the stack of bills counting and inspecting each one. I was kind of irritated that we went to all this trouble to get brand new bills and they still inspected each one for creases and bent corners. God forbid I have a tare in one of them. Once we got through that with receipt in hand we had our second family picture taken for the adoption certificate and one of Morgan for her Passport and Visa. Then we had to meet with an official and declare that 1.) We would accept this child. 2.) That we would treat her as our own. 3.) We would provide a home, food and education for her. That was easy for us, the answer was a definite “you bet your communist A** we do!!!” or “H*** YES!!!” actually we politely smiled and said “yes we do.” I felt like we were getting married to this child, in a way we were. On the desk of this official there were 2 little flags. One was the Chinese flag and the other was red background with I think a yellow hammer, stars and a sickle. I asked what flag that was and our guide had to ask the woman holding the interview. We were sharply told that it was the communist party flag. I was just curious. Everyone there was so serious it was hard for me not to make jokes. This was supposed to be exciting and happy times for us and the girls. I think it was just the way things were. Once again we made a brake for it out of the building child and receipt in hand. Later that afternoon we all piled back in the bus and had our first outing to Super Wal Mart. Everyone stormed Wal Mart like an attack force of commandos with one mission in mind stroller and FOOD!!! Becky and I spotted a medium sized stroller for about $40.00 US. All of the little umbrella strollers were taken by other groups before us. Not a big deal but by the time we left Nanchang I was about to get rid of the stroller because I kept kicking the dam thing, I was too tall. Oh, when we picked out the stroller we wanted one of the Wal Mart employees assembled it right in front of us, pretty cool. Try to get that done in an American Wal Mart. While we waited for the guy to assemble the stroller we were getting approached by people wanting to try out their English. I was lucky to get to talk to two girls I think they were high school age. They spoke pretty good English and I spoke terrible Chinese back at them. I learned quickly that I need to stick with English. This Wal Mart was on the 2nd and 3rd floor of a 3 story building. We started out on the 3rd floor and worked our way to the 2nd where the food was. FOOD!!! Let’s see Pringles, Ritz and cheese crackers, Coke, American comfort food. Then we walked past a deli that I have never seen anything like. If there was a gross food group then most of the stuff in that deli and meat department would fall under that category. Let’s just say you don’t see that at home and you wouldn’t look at it and say “you know some Texas Pete and that ought to be pretty good.” Anyway it was a fun experience, once again with Rock Star attention. When we got out of Wal Mart we noticed a KFC right next to our bus. FOOD!!! We were running late but we managed to get what ever they had already prepared (wings). Those were some dam good wings at the time. When we got back to the room we pigged out on our loot and played with Morgan. That night when we put Morgan to bed in her crib she was very congested. We let our guide know and they said to give her another night and we’ll see how she does. Morgan had a rough night but she slept all night. Note: While I really haven’t mentioned it Morgan was usually hanging on one of those front backpack things facing my chest. Becky’s back is not a strong as mine so I carried her most of the time and Becky kept up with the diaper bag. It worked out really well for all of us. Morgan would sleep a lot when we carried her like that. I think Morgan was happy to have the attention. Also every evening we would boil water one liter at a time to clean bottles and scald our hands and fingers. You really begin to appreciate potable tap water after 12 days of boiling water.