China Day 13 - When Do We Get To Go Hommmmme?

I'm borrrrrrred. Can you carry meeeee? I'm tired of noodleeeeeees. I want my own beeeeeed. When is it MY turn on the iPad? I'd love to say that these were phrases from Sir Whine-a-lot, but all this went on in my head today, and Steve admitted these thoughts started for him on day 4.

I probably wouldn't bother posting about today, but I want to confirm that we're still alive and didn't die from inadvertently drinking the water or eating some uncooked animal tripe, as well as to document our experience for our children, who will probably one day say, "Why'd you record all that boring crap on those boring days? This is really boring stuff, mom. You probably filled up a lot of people's inboxes with this stuff and the poor people probably couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe. Gosh."
We had our US consulate appointment at 8:30 am, so when we get home, Autumn will immediately be a US citizen. We couldn't take a camera, so there are no pics of that.

Then I spent the rest of the morning hand washing our clothes for the next 4 days, so we don't have to pay $50 to have it done again. After laundry, we went to Shamian Island again, and had lunch at Lucy's again, and the kids played on the playground again. We spent about four hours there before taking a cab back.

At one point, Josiah said to me, "don't speak Chinese to me," because while he was dilly-dallying while the cab waited for us in the middle of a one lane road, I was screaming at him to "lai!" (come). I've said the words lai, ni hao (hello), xie xie (thank you), and bu yao (no) so many times in Chinese, that they now come out naturally to everyone around me.

The waterfall at our hotel

Josiah got cornered by a Chinese woman on the island who didn't speak any English. She kept going on and on in Chinese. I said, "tell her wo bu dong," which means I don't understand. He said it, but she wasn't convinced. She kept speaking to him in Chinese as we walked. He just gave her a weird look. She asked him his name and said a bunch of other stuff I didn't understand. I kept telling her he didn't understand. I was glad he didn't understand because sometimes they say stuff you don't want them to here. Telling them how lucky they are to have parents. I hate that. The whole family's lucky to have each other, not just the kids. Heck, it's not even luck, it's God's providence.

Tomorrow, we're going to walk the mall across the street. It's called The Friendship Store. We get Autumn's visa in the afternoon, then we take a train to HK on Friday, Ocean Park on Saturday, fly home on Sunday. The home stretch.

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