A Beautiful Day in Hefei

After a full day yesterday, we all slept great last night.  It was wonderful!  For breakfast, we headed up to the 29th floor for the breakfast buffet, which is included with our stay.  The buffet has some Western food, but the majority of the food is local cuisine.  (Elli has been eating a lot of watermelon.)  With the language barrier, it has been a bit of a challenge trying to figure out what Kamea likes to eat.  She does not like rice or dumplings, but we figured out today that she loves noodles.  She ate two large servings of noodles for breakfast, and wow, she's really good with chopsticks!  

After breakfast, we went back to the Civil Affairs office to be interviewed by the Registrar and the Notary. I guess we passed, because we received our Certificate of Conformity of Intercountry Adoption.  (We weren't too worried about it.)  While we were waiting for some paperwork,  our guide asked Kamea several questions in Mandarin.  Kamea surprised us by counting to 10 in Mandarin and then singing the ABCs in English (probably about 75% correct!).

By mid-morning we were done with our appointments, so we had the rest of the day to ourselves.  The girls played with Barbies and Polly Pockets on the floor of the hotel room for quite a while.  We enjoyed listening to them communicate and watching them play.  So sweet.

This afternoon we walked to a sprawling, beautiful park and pavillion area, not far from our hotel.  It was a gorgeous day, probably in the mid-70s.  Within the park is a large lake and there were several people floating through the lake on small motorized boats.   Other than crossing through the obnoxious traffic to get there, it was really relaxing.  It was nice for the girls to get out and run a bit, too.

Later in the afternoon we walked to Walmart for a few more necessities.  This morning my flat iron fried. Literally.  The voltage here in China is different, so in order to use electronics, small appliances (and flat irons),  you have to use an adapter to change the voltage.  For some reason the adapter failed this morning.  Thankfully, Walmart sells flat irons so I won't have to go the rest of the trip with frizzed out hair.

After Walmart, we walked through an attached mall and spotted a Pizza Hut.  We weren't sure if Kamea would eat anything there, but since they offered a few noodle options we decided to try it.  Thanks to a waitress with some basic English, we figured out that all of the noodle entrees, other than spaghetti, were hot and spicy and most children do not like them.  We decided to give spaghetti a try and she devoured it.  As we were eating, she started playing with the extra straws.  She quickly unwrapped them, put them in her little fingers and used them as chopsticks!

Overall, we've had a fabulous day. The highlight occurred when Kamea leaned over and kissed my cheek - -out of the blue - - she just leaned over and did it.  She did the same to Jeff a little later on.  We are over-the-moon happy!