While you were busy sleeping, my Chinese family and I were out on the town. See what I mean? Don’t you think Annabelle resembles her mom? There’s something about those eye…No wonder the boys in the Dominican Republic thought Kim was Tim Ling’s mom–they called her “Chino Madre!”
It’s Sunday, and I felt a little weird about not going to church. I wish that we had scouted around for a worship service to attend this morning. Instead, our group took a tour of the Chen Family Temple, which has been converted into the local Folk Art Museum. We got to look at some incredible examples of painting, ivory/bone carving, sculpture, embroidery and silk work. The whole atmosphere of the temple/museum was pretty impressive. I was blown away by the detail in some of the carving.
A Formal Tea ceremony was next on the agenda. We got an education about how the Chinese serve tea, and learned a thing or 2 about the benefits of drinking tea. Kim’s thinking that we might adopt tea as a new Sublett family tradition.
Yes, that’s really the size of the teacups! Kim’s probably coming home with a set of ’em, so feel free to invite yourself over for tea.
I don’t know if it’s coincidence or if she has an eye for photography, but here are a couple of shots that Annabelle took today at the tea shop.
The Roux fam has taken to calling us Uncle Stac and Aunt Kim (that’s a total win!), and Annabelle had quite an afternoon with Marcus and Lauren. First, Kim took Annabelle and Lauren downtown by taxi to shop for boots for Annabelle. They found an entire mall of shoes, little tiny shoe-store cubbyholes, all packed together into a great big mall…and, of course, the women came home with boots and a new pair of shoes for Annabelle. She had a nice pair from the orphanage, but these definitely look more girlie than the ones she’s been wearing.
Here are the girls hitting the official 9-year-old-hip-chick pose:
The girls and Marcus spent a good chunk of time tickle-fighting and bouncing off the beds. Most of the time Marcus was on his own, but he didn’t seem to mind. You should have heard Annabelle laughing! She’s really opened up today, and is very expressive. Kim taught her to say boots and shoes, and I’m pretty sure that she has the shopping thing down, too. Like mommy, like daughter…Some of the guys in one of the shoe shops must have been laughing at Kim and the girls, because when they realized that Annabelle was our daughter, and that she could understand them, they cracked up!
Our day started and ended with a skype session with Sadie and Delma. This morning, Annabelle initiated her first conversation with Sadie: “Good morning, Sadie. How are you?” That was pretty sweet to watch. And tonight Annabelle was showing Sadie some of the things that we sent her before we arrived. She picked out all of our favorite colors and matched them with our names, saying each one as she went. She stumbled a little over “Yellow–Sadie and Annabelle” I think AND and ANNABELLE are a little too similar for her yet.
I don’t know if you can see it, but she wrote her name on the box her boots came in. We didn’t prompt it, either. She found a pen and started writing. Lauren said, “Hey! She wrote her name!” I’m sure that we’ll see new developments in her every day. She’s a smart cookie, and picks things up quickly. We can’t wait to get back home, to have all our family under one roof. 5 more days…
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