Thursday was a free day for us in terms of adoption appointments, sso we had breakfast and then made plans to go shopping at the local wholesale markets.
Happiest when food is involved!
We have noticed that Lydia does not close her mouth around a spoon when being fed. Based on how she acts when we do spoon feed her, we suspect that the food was kind of poured into her mouth maybe to help things go faster. :( She also does not understand how to drink from a straw or an open cup.
We made plans to shop with a local woman named Ann. Her business is to take adoptive families shopping at wholesale markets in China to help them get better prices on souvenirs and jewelry. I went shopping with her in 2014 and knew she helped me save a lot of money compared to prices we saw in other stores. I definitely wanted to shop with her again! We met her in our hotel lobby at 9:30 after breakfast. Ann has an amazing, bubbly personality and is also one of the fastest walking people I have ever met in my life. We trailed behind her to catch a cab to our first stop, a large wholesale market pictured below:
She took us to a number of shops to get traditional Chinese clothing for our kids as well as other souvenirs on my list. It was fun to watch her bargain with the shop owners when she felt we were not getting a good deal!
This shop looked like I was in the wholesale Chinese version of Hobby Lobby...
...and this one was like the Chinese version of Pier 1!
Our next stop was the jewelry markets. We stopped at a couple of jade dealers first and then went to two different pearl vendors. The pictures and video below are from the vendor that sells 'wedding quality pearls' as Ann calls them. I got Lydia a baby sized bracelet and necklace that will be a keepsake for her. Hannah also has a set that we bought for her in 2014. They are so much cheaper than US prices and SO pretty! It was amazing to watch the ladies hand string the pearls after I chose the strand I wanted.
Happy girl while we were buying her pearls! Bryan was so helpful keeping Lydia happy while I shopped. She seemed to really enjoy being out and about.
We shopped with Ann for 3 hours and then came back to our hotel. We ate take out from the Cantonese restaurant downstairs in our room and then put Lydia down for a nap. Before her nap we tried to get her to crawl or scoot around to get to snacks or toys and girlfriend was not having it! She did enjoy playing with the bracelets we brought though! :)
After her nap we went to eat dinner in the executive lounge. Lydia sported one of her new bracelets and was thrilled to eat and eat. We made the mistake of letting her eat a ton of dragon fruit which subsequently ended in a horrific diaper the next morning. #lessonlearned
I also realized you can get wine in a to go cup from the executive lounge and enjoy it upstairs in your room! #winning
No comments:
Post a Comment