Our First Full Day

Today was the first full day that we had Sarah with us. She is a beautiful little girl, but is she every obstinate. She wants her way, wants to do what she wants when she wants it, or she pushes things away, pushes us away and throws a fit. Quite a difference from Emily when she was a baby.

We did enjoy some gentler sides of Sarah, as she got quite cuddly a few times, and we had fun when Emily and Sarah played on pillows on the floor. She seems to prefer Steve to me, though he's been in the room more with her as I had to try to find the Bank of China today (I'll tell you that one in a minute). She talks quite a bit and will try to carry on a conversation with you, and she had her first bath today, which was tolerated, but we didn't get the tantrum we expected from her.

Emily continues to be tremendous help and doing exceptionally well with all this. She is very patient with Sarah and helped with her diaper changes, with feeding her and is generally very concerned about Sarah's well-being. She broke down once today, telling me she wanted to go home and another time telling me she just wanted to be alone as she didn't know what would make her happy. This is a long trip for a little person.

OK, Bank of China. Our hotel will not cash American Express Traveler Checks. The only place, we are told, that will cash them in Wuhan is the Bank of China. Our Chinese guide said it is only a 10 minute cab ride and wouldn't go with us. Three families needed to run to the bank so a rep from each family headed out with our little card with our destination printed on it by the concierge. No taxi would take us, they just kept pointing us to another cab, and then finally to the other side of the street, even with the bellhop trying to help us. They kept pointing and telling the bellhop it was just a few blocks away; we should walk. We headed off, and came to a bank called the Construction Bank of China. According to a partial English-speaking manager, they could not help the other two families that needed a credit card advance, but they could cash my traveler checks; however, the Bank of China was just a few blocks away, so we decided to stick together and all go there and he seemed to like that idea. Many blocks later and we've stopped in the Agriculture Bank of China, the Merchants China Bank, etc. etc., and yes, a Bank of China, which is too small to cash my checks. It is drizzling out and we have no umbrella and we were ambushed by four little kids, about 5 years old, hanging on us begging for money. One literally threw her arms around the legs of the guy with us and hung on. One grabbed my arm and walked with me for over a block, pleading. She was the size of Emily...it was hard to watch. We finally gave up after stopping at five banks. It seems no one here really knows the difference between banks; as long as it is a bank, it is "the bank of China."

We headed back to the first bank that had said they could help me. I was waived upstairs and got there to find not a soul in the room. Went back downstairs and the English speaker looked confused, and then went with me to a woman behind the desk. No cash check...go to Bank of China. We gave up and walked 'home.' Later today, we solicited our guide to go with us to the Bank of China.

To top it all off, I tried to convert 2-$100 bills at our hotel and there were little black ink marks on them. Sorry, they can't convert them for me. Can you believe it? I had to go back to the room and find other bills to convert into RMB.

All the families did get a trip to the Carrefour, something like a Super Wal*Mart, that our guide set up for us. It took about an hour and 15 minutes for everyone to find what we needed...certainly harder to shop when you can't read anything. We did see many brand names we recognized, like Tide, Pampers, Maggie, Ritz, Kraft, Lays, Bugles, Coke, Pepsi and Johnson and Johnson.




Back in the room late this afternoon, it was difficult as everyone was tired and Sarah was overly hungry. Two kids do keep you busy and it is especially hard living in two rooms with no activities, limited TV in English (ESPN and HBO), and limited food that a five year old and baby can or will eat. We're only two days away from being half way through our journey.

Ann