Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Fun Times & Not So Fun Time

After we went to Meili Joy's finding spot, our awesome guide, Rebecca, had us stop for lunch. When we walked in there was an entire fish market, including a standing pool with fish in it. Craziness.

Rebecca ordered for us and our driver and we had fried rice, noodles, and some type of peanut dessert with hot tea (of course).

After this, Meili was exhausted. She cried for about 30 minutes on the way home. We called it a day.

That night, we went out to dinner across the street and experienced some of the disturbing evening scenese. Apparently, there are a couple of extremely disfigured and disabled people who are brought out by other people to the streets at night. They are laid in the middle of the sidewalk. We had been prepared for this, and last week, apparently, they were on the walking over passes. But, I still can't get over it and we literally almost stepped on them. We understand there is nothing we can do and giving them money isn't the best idea. I won't detail out the scene for anyone; but I have never seen anything like this before.  I was grateful again for the work that A21 and other anti-trafficking organizations are doing around the world. And I wanted to scream and punch the people we suspect are trying to make money off of these individuals, the ones lurking to the sides.

We are having so much fun in the hotel hanging ou with her and playing and eating noodles. I am grateful for the down time because it is a very busy area. We also spend a lot of time packing up all of our things to take with us. Exchanging money. Making sure we have snacks for our little princess, etc.

We were very grateful for a huge group that came in on Friday night.

On Saturday morning 11 families got on our big tour bus and went to the Medical clinic. It was crazy, and our guides did an amazing job.

We all lined up first for photos, and our little girl had JUST fallen asleep in the carrier. She falls asleep on me in the carrier almost every morning. She seems to sort of glaze over around 9:30 am and if I'm holding her or we get in a van, she sleeps great. Anyhow, we had to wake her for her photo. So, it's a pretty funny photo. Then we go from room to room in our groups. One was for weight and height. She was great, and then cried a little. Then one was for drawing blood. They just changed the TB test from a patch test to drawing blood. They actually took her from us for about 4 minutes and did the procedure. I was so sad for her, and happy to get her back. She sweats like crazy when she gets upset.

Then we had to have them listen to her heart. Our guide was going to stay with us, but she was running back and forth. And the first nurse was talking to me in Mandarin, and I had no idea what she said. She came back with another doctor. He listened to her heart, and they talked. Then he went and got another doctor. I was getting super nervous. The third doctor came in and they all talked. We found Rebecca by then, and she said that they were saying she still had a slight heart murmur. We expected that she may have this since she had open heart surgery last year. They told us that the doctor who was the third one they brought in was "a very famous good doctor".

We were there forever. Meili started to get super wild, and we were glad to get back to the hotel.

We went to the Banana Leaf with Angie, her Mom, and her boys. We had our first crazy experience with service. We had heard great things about this place. First they brought us one big menu, we finally flagged someone down to give us a second menu. We ordered our food. We loved the green beans and chicken and rice that Angie ordered was good also.We also liked the spring rolls. Our noodles never came, and that was when the fun began. We waved at about 7 people. They would lift their hand at us and keep going. What?!

Finally, we had poor Cameron translate that we didn't get our noodles. Then 20 minutes later they still weren't there. So, we told them, we didn't want them, we want to go. So, we tried to just get dessert. We asked Connor (who has been with Angie for a week) how to say "Mango Pudding" in Mandarin. He can read the characters and then Cameron interprets what he says (in Mandarin). So, he reads it. Looks at us and says "Mang Go Pu Deen" In a specific cadence. Hilarious. So, we say "mango pudding" as "Mango Pudding". Finally after arguing with them, we settled everything.

What a night!

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