Day 14 – Dinner Cruise

Today we got a slow start. Doing the zoo and circus in one day will wear you out for sure, but it was worth it. We ate breakfast as usual and then headed out behind the hotel to explore the hotel’s little garden area. It was impressive. Tons of fish in neat little ponds and Samuel really enjoyed looking at all of the fish.

After enjoying the gardens we went to the supermarket about 5 blocks away for some water (we were out and you can’t drink the tap water here) and a few other things. We spent some time exploring that store, it is a supermarket on the bottom level, but then there are five more floors of stuff. Which, come to think of it, it seems like a lot of the shopping places we have been to have five or six floors, its nuts!

After shopping we headed back to the room for lunch and naps. After naps we headed out to a late lunch. We were going on a dinner cruise later, but we had been given the heads up that the food on the cruise was terrible and that eating first would be wise. So we ate at a restaurant called (drum roll please) “The Italian Restaurant”. I know clever huh? Lunch was good for “eating italian in China” standards, which isn’t saying too much.

Then we headed back to the room, cleaned up, and headed down to meet our group for the dinner cruise. I have to say, all in all the cruise was really nice. The food was terrible (as we had been warned), but seeing the city while traveling on the river was really neat. I still think this city feels like a mix of New York and Las Vegas, with tons of large buildings and tons of neon lights!

One of the “high points” of the cruise was a clown doing entertainment. She really was pretty decent, she juggled balls and “knives” (fake knives) pretty well. But, after being at the circus last night, the antics of a clown performing the trick of spinning a soccer ball on her finger and then transferring the ball to spin on someone else’s finger was a bit underwhelming. I think there is a photo of me looking underwhelmed coming to this post, so when you see it, you will know why.

One of the real high points of the cruise though was continuing to spend time with new friends. Both Jess and I have really enjoyed getting to know several of the families that are here adopting and I’m very hopeful that we will be able to stay in touch and support one another beyond this week.

Tomorrow is a big day, the day that our entire journey to China was planned around. Tomorrow is our appointment with the US Consulate to finalize the US side of things and get Samuel’s Visa to be able to travel home. We are very excited about it! Stay tuned, tomorrow’s post should be a good one!
Adam

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