Day 3: Market and Playtime

We woke up at 6 am this morning but I'll take it!  At least we feel well rested and on "China time" now.  Jack woke up and reached over to touch my face and kissed me so sweetly - melt my heart!

He is so awesome (have I said that already?)  We headed down to the hotel breakfast buffet at 7am.  We learned last night at dinner that Jack is a MASTER at chopsticks.  We've taken several videos of it, although I'm not sure how to record that and put it on my blog - I'll post a video of him showing us a thing or two tomorrow.  He flips the chopsticks over so that the fat end is in his bowl, which gives him a bigger surface area to grip with (I told you this kid is a smart cookie!) and just handles it like a master.  He ate a bowl of noodles, a bowl of rice and two eggs all with chopsticks this morning.  It is amazing.  I'm sure the locals are getting a kick out of Dustin and I oooing and aaaahing over every time he uses his sticks to scoop a bite.  It's hilarious!
After breakfast we headed out with our map to find a supermarket where we could get some diapers, wipes, laundry soap and a stroller.  We found the store and everything except for the stoller.  I went up to a lady who worked at the market and started pantomiming like a crazy person, pointing to Jack and then making stroller wheel motions with my hands but she had absolutely no idea what I was asking for.  She had half the store of workers talking a hundred miles a minute in mandarin to us, pointing every which way about where we should go but in the end, they just shook their heads and we gave the obligatory "SheiShei (thank you)" and walked out.
We were back at the room by 10 am and thought we'd try the hotel pool with Jack.  We bought a pool float for him at the market and got ready to go down.  When we arrived at the pool, Jack held on to my hand for dear life and started shaking his head and pulling me back out of the gate.  Nope.  No pool for this boy... not today anyway.
So... a whole day ahead and nothing on the schedule.  The hotel we are at sits at the shore of a small lake surrounded by a wooden boardwalk for pedestrians, so we thought we would venture out to a small carnival/ park area about a half mile from the hotel.

Did you notice we don't have an umbrella?  Yeah, I didn't either... until a little elderly woman came down the boardwalk toward us and stopped us, pointing at the sun and at Jack and obviously scolding us for not having our son under an umbrella, like she was holding.  Eeek...  we stopped at the next street vendor and bought a very overpriceed umbrella (Dustin said we got hosed) so we wouldn't offend any more sweet little ladies on their morning walks.  Dustin looks so manly with his gold embroidered umbrella ;)

We took Jack to a little carnival area at the park where there are kiddie rides and he rode a little choo choo train.

We came back to the room to order some noodles to share (this heat really kills the appetite) and face timed with the kids back home.  It was so good to see their faces.  We miss them terribly.  Jack liked playing peek-a-boo with the kids on my phone:

We are back at the room now.  Jack is napping and it gave me time to catch up on writing.  Our internet is sketchy so  finding a time when we can get on has been tricky but not impossible.  Tomorrow is another open day with nothing on the schedule so we'll venture out to a park and possibly some shopping, but mostly we just want to spend time playing with this little guy.