We still haven’t seen the sun in Hangzhou. Today is very overcast, but not raining. We took a taxi to the tourist area with our guide. It was a very nice area with lots of stores with different handmade crafts. I was surprised that the people are not as pushy as in other tourist areas that we have been in. There were all sorts of interesting stores and booths. Silk and clothing, cotton batting, tea, bamboo painting, stone carving, etc...

Everywhere we went people were staring at us. One older gentleman came up to us. He was carrying his granddaughter. He spoke excellent English and told us how beautiful our children were. His granddaughter was about the same age as Yong.

At the end of the street there was a familiar icon, a McDonald’s restaurant. We went in and got some hot chocolate and French fries to warm up. I noticed the pies had a green filling. Eva said they had green bean (pea) filling. We didn’t try them.

We purchased a dragon and a dinosaur made out of bamboo sheath. The man in the booth made Jen a grasshopper while we watched.

Yong wanted something, too....so the man made him a dragonfly. Outside the next store one of the ladies gave Yong a balloon. Of course, Jen wanted one, too. It couldn’t be a different one, it had to be one exactly the same. At another booth the lady running it gave them good luck symbols for the Chinese Spring Festival.

We had a fun time except for one small problem. We couldn’t get Yong to go into any of the stores. If we started looking like we were going to go inside, he would start crying and thrashing around so we couldn’t hold him. When we would put him down, he would fall on the ground and not let us pick him up. Talk about drawing a crowd. We decided not to push it. Maybe later Eva and I (Teresa) will leave Paul with the kids and go shopping alone. Jen and Yong played with the balloons all during lunch.

After lunch everyone took a rest and then we headed to the swimming pool. The pool here is indoors and heated. It is quite large and unique in that it is landscaped all around with a waterfall, plants and statues. The lighting is low, so it makes it look like it is twilight. I think the sleep must have dulled our intellect. I mean what straight-thinking person would take a child that has lived in an orphanage his whole life, and probably has never seen a body of water bigger than a bathtub, to a swimming pool and think that he would enjoy it. He didn’t. He cried when we put his swimsuit on. He cried when we took him into the pool area. He stopped crying when I held him close. Again, in my intellectually impaired state, I thought that meant that he wanted to get closer to the water. WRONG. We finally came to our senses and got dressed and left. He was much happier walking around outside.

We ate dinner at the hotel buffet. I thought I was brave trying the Singapore Chicken Stew, Taro balls and duck. It was the stuff I didn’t try that was too scary. They had whole duck, chicken and other fowl hanging from a cart and they were ready to carve you off some. There were also a bunch of Hangzhou appetizers that didn’t look very appetizing.

Tomorrow we will go walking around the lake here. Hopefully we will be able to see some sunshine. Eva says this is a great city to live in; but I couldn’t do it without seeing the sun at least every 3 days.

Yong Yong loves a drink called Wahaha. It is a lactobacillus drink. If anyone knows where we can find it in the United States, let us know. It has been a lifesaver.

Oh, Alasha and Carly, your little brother is a Teletubbies fan (Ha Ha).