Now this is China

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Today was a bit of a Ellie and Daddy day. Having had Ellie’s picture taken and scanned into a computer at the passport office, Caroline passed Ellie to me. The next thing I knew, she was sound asleep:

She slept this way for the next hour and a-half while we walked through the People’s Park of Nanchang.

Finished with the walk in the park, we ventured back to the hotel for lunch and our first play date. The hotel hosts many families who come to adopt from the Jiangxi Province (there’s a group of families from France here, too), so they provide a children’s play area on the 4th floor; that’s were Ellie, Emiline, and Macy met for their first play date:

The first play-date a success, the girls returned to their rooms for their afternoon nap. When nap time was over, Ellie, Emiline, and Macy were readied for a walk down the pedestrian zone. You can imagine what a sight we were…three American couples, one with bleach-blonde 8 year-old twin girls, each carrying a Chinese infant in a Baby Bjorn.

On the way back to the hotel, we stepped out of the pedestrian zone on to a side street. WOW! Now you knew without a doubt that you were in China.

(pictures: top-side street we walked throug; middle-preparing rice and bananna leaves for dinner; bottom-assorted frogs for sale, probably not for fishing!)

Side streets such as this are where you truly get a feel for a country, its people and its culture.
What made this day’s trek into local-Ville so interesting was Ellie’s reaction.

We’ve noticed over the past two days that whenever Ellie is feeling overwhelmed, anxious or out of sorts, she self-soothes. Her self-soothing mechanism is sticking her middle and ring fingers in her mouth and sucking on them. During yesterday’s stroll down the pedestrian zone I noticed Ellie putting her fingers in her mouth almost none stop. She seemed overwhelmed at all the sights, sounds, and smells. Culturally, finger sucking is taboo as we discovered when a middle-aged woman walked up to Ellie, looked at the two of us, said something and pulled Ellie’s fingers out of her mouth.

Today, when we began walking this side street Ellie had her fingers in her mouth. As we went further down the street, she took her fingers out and with both hands, held on to the flap of the Baby Bjorn. Her head turned from side to side, taking it all in. She was relaxed, calm and comfortable in this environment.

She was home.

Quote of the day: Macy’s (one of Ellie’s orphanage pals) parents sharing what they overheard another Westerner ask the server at the Chinese restaurant where they ate last night: “Do you have any tea?”