let the pampering begin, and ming tin (or ting)

OK, so I think she’s starting to feel like part of the family.  Kim and I have been looking forward to this day for about 5 years; I have no idea how long Annabelle has been dreaming of being part of a family.  This morning Kim took Annabelle and Lauren downstairs to the nail salon.  The lady doing their nails couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact that the American girl didn’t go with the American mom, but the Chinese girl did.  Once she understood that Annabelle was adopted, she couldn’t figure out why Annabelle understood her Cantonese.  Most girls are adopted as babies, and don’t learn Cantonese.  To be honest, Kim and I can’t grasp why Annabelle was on the Waiting Child list, other than the fact that God wanted us to be her parents.  She’s incredible.

We had to take Annabelle back to the clinic today to get her TB test read.  It was the quickest walk in-walk out that I’ve ever seen, and we were back in the shopping district on Sha Main Island for the rest of the afternoon.  It was pretty interesting to poke around the little shops for a little while.  The shop girls are interesting to talk to.  But after seeing the same chopsticks, baby shoes, and jade dragons in 5 different places, I was ready to move on.  The day was much brighter than the last time we were there.  I think the sun actually made an appearance today, at least for a little while.

In one of the scarier moments of our trip, Lauren got clipped by a car today while we were walking around the shopping area.  Everybody walks in the street, because the sidewalks are under construction.  There was a bus parked on the side of the road, and Lauren had just started to step around the bus when a shiny new sedan zoomed through the space.  Fortunately, the car had collapsible side-mirrors, so when it grazed her shoulder, the mirror folded out of the way.  She wasn’t hurt, but she sure could have been.  We were all scared, and I was a little ticked at the driver for going so fast in the middle of a lot of pedestrians.  For just a moment I was glad that I don’t speak Cantonese.

We snapped this picture for Levi…Jack says Hi.

We’ve got an interview with the American Consulate tomorrow.  Actually, Amy has the interview.  She’ll call us if there are any questions about our application for Annabelle’s visa.  Once we have the approval, it takes 3 days to process the visa.

We just got off a Skype appointment with Sadie’s 3rd grade class back home.  She’s doing a series of presentations on China, and since we’re here, Mrs. Buggs skyped us in.  How cool is that?  Annabelle even stayed up to meet Sadie’s class and say hello.  She bailed on Sadie’s talk about the animals of China, though, and buried her head under her teddy bear. It’s late here, and still a little hard to believe that we’re done with Monday and they’re just starting. Before the call I pointed out the Chinese word for school to Annabelle, trying to explain why we were staying up so late. She looked at it, and said, “Oh, school.” I think she understands a lot more than she can tell us.

I have been using Google’s translator to try to ask her questions. Tonight I asked if she had a fun day. She tried to type something into the translator, but couldn’t get it right. So she wrote the characters out for us. There are lots of people who can translate here, but I’m going to need some help when we get home! She was trying to write ming ting. I’ll post the pic below. Anybody got a quick translation for the circled characters?