Last Day In China

Today was a free day for us so we got up, had some breakfast and went to the zoo with another family in our adoption travel group. Chinese zoos allow you to get much closer to the animals (sometimes a little too close) and it's apparently more common for zoo patrons to feed the animals because the animals knew just what to do when people came around. Lora and I did get to feed the giraffes and now I've been licked by a giraffe. Chinese zoos are also not at stroller-friendly so getting around it was a bit more of a challenge. Got to see a panda bear though so the trip was a success.

Rode the subway to and from the zoo. That was a bit of a trip. Their system for getting tokens is very straight-forward after you've done it once but the first time was a bit rough for us. Not enough English speakers around. We figured it out and got where we needed to go. The return trip was much smoother.

Afterward we came back and lounged around the hotel room and started packing up to leave. Received Joshua's travel visa, which is nice, now he can actually enter the U.S. Met the same family for an early dinner. We ate at a Malaysian restaurant. (We were actually going to eat at a Cantonese restaurant but when we got there they were looked at us as if they thought we weren't going to like it there. I think the food would have been fine but we looked at the menu and decided it was a bit pricey for us. It was a much nicer restaurant so I'm thinking we would've been out of place with all the kids and they seemed content to let us walk away.) At the Malaysian restaurant the food was good, the price was right, what else can you ask for.

On the way home we stopped off at Starbucks and Heather got some hot chocolate. We're now 50% bathed and 80% packed up and just about ready for bed. Tomorrow will be a long day, 38 hours long to be exact....

 

Leaving China after being here this long is bitter-sweet so I thought I might summarize my emotions on the event:

• It'll be nice to go home and sleep in my own bed.
• I kinda like living in hotels, someone else always cleans up the mess.
• It'll be nice to get back to our normal diet (I'm not on any kind of "diet", I just mean it'll be nice to eat familiar foods again). Mostly looking forward to free drink refills, glasses that hold more than 6 ounces, and ice.
• It's been fun and rewarding to try some new flavors and use chopsticks all the time. I might start using chopsticks at home, Heather will think I'm crazy.
• It'll be nice to get back into our normal routines.
• It's been nice to be away from work for awhile, not necessarily looking forward to returning. (Don't get me wrong, I like my work and I love the folks I work with but playing is always more fun than working. That's why it's called playing.)
• It'll be nice to be back in a place where I can read the signs, read the menus, have a conversation with a stranger, and understand when someone is talking to me.
• It's going to be hard for me to learn more Chinese if I'm not in China. We're hoping to find a way for Joshua to continue learning Chinese and not lose what has already been gained in that department. However, the reality is that it'll be an uphill battle which means he won't likely come away as a fluent Chinese speaker, me neither.
• I'm excited for all of you to meet Joshua. I'm excited to see some of you again too.
• It's been nice to have him all to ourselves for a while (although, for his benefit we won't necessarily be social butterflies when we got home so we'll still have him to ourselves for a while, mostly). It's also been nice to be away and not have all the distractions of daily life.
• It'll be nice to stop spending so much money.
• Not looking forward to adding up all the bills...

 

On the eve of our departure I can honestly say this has been a grand adventure, one I'll remember forever. What a way to have a child. What a way to spend your vacation.