What day? Gotcha Day? Oath taking ceremony? Passport day? Nope, even better: Shopping Day!
We spent about 3 hours walking around Shamain Island visiting the local shops. If you’ve ever been to the beach, it’s kind of like all the Wings or Eagles stores–every place has pretty much the same stuff, except that here you find Chinese things, and you can haggle over the prices. It turns out that the younger members of Team Sublett have the gift of haggle. We came back to hotel with our arms loaded down by the goods that we’d bought. No sense taking any of this Chinese currency back to the states, right?
We bought some practical things (jackets and gifts) and some utterly “I want that” things, like rice-picker hats, swords, and things that will find their way to the back of the closet a few days after we get back to the house.
But man, was it fun walking around with all the kids. Almost every shop-owner was in awe of the size of our family, and it gave us a bargaining chip, too. “I can’t pay that price. I have so many children to feed!” The kids seriously did a great job of bargaining for the things they bought, and I don’t think anyone is feeling any buyer’s remorse. And yes, Lilly and Josie walked around all day dressed as Mario and Luigi!
We ate supper with all the families again. They’ll be leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow, a day ahead of us. We’ll be sad to see them leave. We’ve really had fun hanging out with them. Today being October 31, our kids decided to pay all the families a visit before bedtime to do a little Trick or Treating. A couple of the families were expecting them, and graciously played along. Just what we need, more candy! It’s been fun watching our kids interact with the other families. We have some great kids…Can you tell what each one dressed up as? Annabelle went as Sadie–wearing her hat and carrying her balloon around…what a goober!
Tomorrow morning Kim and I will take Isaac to the US Consulate, where we’ll take our oath to care for him as one of our own children. Then maybe we’ll head back to do some more shopping…we’ve still got some Chinese money in our pocketses.
2 Comments
amanda · October 31, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Cant wait to hug all of your necks… three days… we are counting down!!!
Melinda · October 31, 2011 at 8:49 pm
Would you ask those young uns to haggle down a few sets of chopsticks- maybe even kid chopsticks- for us? I’ve been showing off my mediocre skills using skewers and the girls want to learn too (though they like just stabbing the food too- ode to swords, I guess).