Saturday was our originally scheduled check in day at the Garden. Our adoption agency travel agency offered to upgrade us free to an apartment! We spent time packing and moving to the new area. It is not as ornate and decorative as the hotel but very nice! We have two bedrooms - one with queen size bed and one with the Chinese version of double beds, two bathrooms - one full an one with shower, full kitchen with all implements needed, and washer/dryer! I will post a few photos for those who may be interested in seeing it.
It is wonderful having more space!! We are so grateful to SSIT for arranging this for us.
Billy took the three big girls skating at Martyr's park which is near the hotel. Ally Kate JingXin was one happy girl. Billy said it was obvious that she had skated before. While they were there Maya Grace and I walked to the former Jusco store now called Aeon. It is a Macy's/Belk style store. It is expensive in my opinion. I went to look for Ally Kate a pair of jeans. She wants to wear jeans like the other big girls. I only brought her one pair which are like jeggings and since she insists that she must wear two layers of pants they do not work. It will be interesting to see this little one in the heat of the Alabama summers. Hopefully she will not insist on the multi-layers of clothing that she wears here. After a lot of hand gestures I finally found a pair in an affordable to me price range. I was once again of reminded how the Chinese shopping system works. Someone helps you in a department. They write a duplicate receipt for you. You then go to a cashier to pay. The cashier takes your money and gives you one of the duplicates back plus the register receipt. You then return the receipts to the original department where you chose the item and the salesperson then gives you your item.
After getting all settled in the apartment we met with our guide to go over the paperwork required for the visa application/consulate appointment. Our appointment is 2/19 and this will be our last piece of official business in China.
There are currently nine families here from our agency. A dinner was arranged for the families at a noodle shop behind the Garden. It was nice gathering with other families. When we returned back to the hotel I noticed that Ally Kate was not acting herself. I felt of her and she felt a little warm. She laid down on the bed and fell sound asleep. I did not sleep well the entire night due to my fear that she was getting ill. When we woke up on Sunday morning she said she felt fine and did not feel as if she had a fever.
We went on a bus with other families to visit Chen Clan Family Temple. It is a beautiful place but our trip was very hurried due to the number of families who started out by shopping and this took up much of the time.
We left there and went to a park. On the way there I noticed that Ally Kate was not acting her usually bubbly self. While we were walking in the park I felt of her and she definitely had a fever. She motioned for me to pick her up. She initially said that her ear hurt and then said her head hurt. I held her and she immediately feel asleep in my arms. Our time there was to only be an hour so I just sat in one spot with her while the others walked around. Our guides were working to try and find a physician to see her. I did not want to go to a Chinese hospital. The clinic at the Garden Hotel did not have an MD available until 7pm that evening. Our guides located another Western style clinic who agreed to see her at 2:30pm that afternoon. We returned to the hotel for around 30 minutes prior to leaving for the clinic appt. I was able to give her children's Tylenol and her fever started breaking. The clinic was called Eur Am International Medical Center. We were seen almost immediately upon arriving there. The physician was Asian and spoke excellent English as did the other staff there. The MD looked at her throat and said that her tonsils were swollen and has pus on them. He did blood work which showed that she did have a bacterial infection. We were given Amoxil, Flagyl, and a cough medication. The total cost was $194 US. Much better than in the good ole USA! We were very thankful for our guides for helping us to get Ally Kate seen so quickly. Obviously we stayed in the rest of this day. Thankful that Anneli and I had visited a small market on Saturday night after dinner and stocked up on snacks and instant noodles. They came in handy for dinner.
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