the universal language

This is a shot from this morning’s adventure at the new park.  Dave and I bagged it, letting the girls (and poor Marcus) go it alone.  It was a pretty cool park, with lots of people playing ping pong, dancing, and some excellent workout machines sneakily camouflaged as playground equipment.  Bravo, Mr Chinese gov’t exercise czar (chairman?), bravo.  Kim said they had arm-thingers, and leg-thingers, and back-scratch-thingers, which is pretty much how Josh Cone describes the workout circuit at the YMCA.

So what is the Universal Language?  I know–you’re thinking LOVE or LAUGHTER, right?  Not even close.  It turns out that the universal language, at least as it relates to 9 year old girls, is barbie.com.  Or neopets.com.  Or some other dress-up-your-doll-and-play-online-games.com.  That’s what Annabelle and Lauren did for most of the afternoon.  The Roux clan departs for Indy, home to the Super Bowl bound Colts (we watched the playoff games on their laptop using slingbox!) a day before we do.  We’re not quite sure what we’ll do without them around, or how Annabelle is going to handle it.  Those 2 are tight.

Our schedule is a day behind most of the other families on our trip.  Because Annabelle is older, she had to get a TB test, which meant another day of waiting for the clinic to read the test.  The other families took their Official Oath today at the American Consulate here in Guangzhou.  We’ll be doing that tomorrow, completing the steps to get Annabelle’s travel visa.  As I understand it, when she steps off the plane onto US soil, she becomes an American citizen, just as if she were born there to me and Kim.

We hit the Japanese steakhouse again tonight, and pretty much ate the same meal as the other night, which was cooked right in front of us.  We’re trying to pay attention to what Annabelle eats/doesn’t eat at each meal.  Some of the stuff is easy–meat, ice cream, ramen noodles…sounds like a college kid, doesn’t she?  But we’re not sure about the huge rice noodles that she eats for breakfast, or the stuff that was wrapped up in a grape leaf this morning.  She picked all the veggies out of the noodles that we gave her tonight, and doesn’t seem to drink very much with any meal.  But she did like the giant prawn that we had for dinner!

We’re in the home stretch now.  Kim started packing tonight, trying to make sure that we have room for all the stuff that we’ve bought while here in Guangzhou.  It’s been an incredible week, and we’ve made some great new friends/family, but we’re ready to be home.  Skype is great, but it’s not substitute for snuggling on the couch, sitting around the table, or tucking into bed.  We’re getting Annabelle started off right with the PSU gear.  Now we just need to get her home!