Another day breaks and this time I slept pretty good though Julie was up for an hour and a half in the middle of the night. I'm hoping we are getting close to being over the jet lag hump. We all got ready and were down at breakfast around 8AM. Nothing new on the buffet, but it is the biggest and safest meal of the day for us. Blaize did a great job with a lot of fruit this morning. Part way through we were joined by the family from Maine. It's nice to have someone to share stories and experiences with.
Today is the day Julie and some of the other people in our group are going to visit the orphanage in Xianyang. For obvious reasons, Blaize isn't going back to visit so he and I will chill in the hotel room while they are gone. Julie got ready to go and Blaize and I killed time with his stacking toys. We had fun looking out the window at the busy city street, more stacking and looking at pictures before he was rubbing his eyes and ready for a nap. I got him ready and put him in his crib and he was out pretty fast.
Julie and the others came back around 12:15 and sounded like they had a nice visit. It was a special treat for them to be able to visit the orphanage as many of them don't like visitors or flat out won't allow them. We are getting low on formula so headed out into the rain to go to the grocery store. We had to psyche ourselves up based on the experience we had Sunday and were braced for more chaos. Lucky for us it was really calm and quiet in the grocery and we found everything we needed, including more coffee, and bought some peanut butter, potato chips and Doritos for a bit of a 4th of July in China celebration. While picking out formula we were approached by multiple workers who wanted us to scan a QR code in the WeChat application for coupons. I tried to play along and after scanning they kept pointing to the beer picture in the ad. I am guessing it is like the grocery store loyalty cards back home but it was wasting time as we couldn't communicate and I wasn't going to be buying beer. We checked out and headed back to the hotel.
In the room we made lunch for Blaize and enjoyed some of our "American Feast." Blaize seemed like he was getting tired, so we put him down for a nap but he didn't sleep. We are going to dinner with some of the other families at 4:30 and were hoping he'd get some rest but he seemed to have other plans. We killed some more time while he threw a tantrum and then it was time to go.
We walked over to the same mall we had visited a few days ago when the lights went out on us. Our guide was kind enough to join us and helped order food that would work for everyone. We must have gotten to the restaurant early as most of the workers were doing pre-shift team building/calisthenics that seemed more like line dancing. The food arrived and was very good and we all ate our fill. We had fun talking with everyone and our poor guide was peppered with questions about all things Chinese. She did great answering them and taking it all in stride. She then took us to the nearby metro station and showed us how to buy tickets and which stops to go to tomorrow. We're going to be adventurous and go to Muslim Quarter that was literally the end (or beginning depending on your nationality) of the legendary Silk Road. We went back to the hotel and are in for the night. Tomorrow is a no paperwork or formal sightseeing tour kind of day so we'll see how it all plays out.
Operation Gotcha - Day 13
Operation Gotcha - Day 13
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